During the pandemic, Kajol Bheda spotted the explosive potential of brand storytelling, and in 2020, launched Scribbld, a Mumbai-based marketing/advertising agency. Armed with media production training from the UK and hard-won experience, she set out to bridge the gap between what brands want to say and what agencies deliver. Today, Scribbld is a bootstrapped, profitable agency working with marquee brands like Nykaa, Adani and Amazon Prime, among others.
What started as a one-woman army is now an agency with 50-odd people. In its expansion phase, it is working with brands on a retainer/project basis. The agency has marked its presence in India and has expanded to the UAE.
A listee of the 2026 Forbes India 30 Under 30 Advertising & Marketing category, which was reintroduced this year after 2023, Bheda talks to Forbes India about the inception of Scribbld, her learnings, vision and more. Edited excerpts:
Q. What inspired you to start Scribbld during the pandemic when the world was in a flux?
The idea of starting something on my own was always there. I wasn’t the brightest student in school, but I was the most hardworking. I have always put in the hard work to creatively think outside the box. When I got into college, I found my own footing because I realised that I had to pick something to do that had enough creativity, and also lets me explore other things. I did a whole host of internships in college, and I feel a culmination of all of those was an inclination towards marketing… that's when I realised that is what I wanted to do.
Just before the pandemic, I realised that video content had started booming, so I wanted to do something related to that. I went to the UK and studied media production. I came back to India in December 2019 and started looking for jobs. While this process was on, I also started realising that in most agencies, both India and abroad, there was a large gap between what brands wanted to say versus what the agencies were delivering. This was the time when everything was going from offline to online, and I found that transition fascinating. At that point, the idea was most critical. I wanted not to build the loudest company but one that will last. The need of understanding my audience a little more intimately is where I would say Scribbld was born.
Also Read: Kajol Bheda: Scribbling one campaign at a time
Q. In the few years of your journey at Scribbld, what are some of your biggest learnings?
One thing that I've really learnt is the importance of saying no. It is important to be selective with who you decide to work with. There's also a lot of merit in doing things the right way. So, saying no to all the wrong things, I think, is extremely important. That's something that I learnt the hard way.
Another thing is that nothing should be done without the network. A big hurdle for me was to build trust with the people I was working with. I didn't have any industry connections, I didn't have a legacy, I didn't have any relationships to lean on, so everything that I did has been built up from scratch. I had to fight for everything. I had to fight by showing good work. The people that I was competing with were already very big. My hurdle was not credibility, instead it was the lack of it. When I started Scribbld, I was 23 and a lot of people assumed that it [the agency] couldn't possibly be mine. I was asked if it is my husband’s business or my father’s. The thought process behind everyone asking was that a young woman couldn't build something of this scale independently. And my third biggest learning is that discipline is everything.
Q. Tell us about some big campaigns that you have worked on.
One of my favourite ones is with Adani Airports, who own the airports in Mumbai and some in France, Australia etc. They wanted a do-over of their duty-free identity. They wanted it to be an experience where people enter, and to some level, are able to identify with it. So, we came up with Ospree. Now, if you go through Mumbai duty free, at any point, you will notice that it's called Ospree. So, we rebranded it entirely. It was extremely significant in terms of sales, traction, the attention that duty free started getting. The kind of result that we heard of was mindboggling.
I’ll tell you a funny story. One time I was passing through immigration in Mumbai, and the immigration officer was asking me questions and asked for proof of work, and I told him to look behind and there it was—Ospree!
Another fun one was with a Korean skincare brand called Tonymoly. One of the campaigns that we did with them was that you can do skincare anywhere. It doesn't just have to be in your home—don't light a candle, don't do all of that, slap a sheet mask on your face and just be out and about. We collaborated with a bunch of run clubs. We saw people in theatres with masks on. It was wonderful… the kind of traction that campaign got.
Q. What next for Scribbld in terms of growth in India, and globally? What is the long-term vision?
Our long-term vision for Scribbld is for it to become India's largest independent agency. We have expanded Scribbld to the UAE and are working with brands in both Dubai and India. Global expansion is on my mind. I think India has just become such a superpower of late because we've got such a large audience to cater to. Everyone wants to work with the Indian market because there's so much diversity.
I've always said that our secret and what we want to do in the long term is hidden in our name. Scribbled isn't just a name. It's a promise that years from now—it could be 10 or 20 years or even 100 years—through every idea, brand and person that we've shaped, the world is going to know that we've scribbled our mark on it.
First Published: Jan 08, 2026, 17:27
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