The Indian SMB and their relationship with digital -- it's changing faster than we expected

When we started this agency, convincing a small business owner in Jaipur to spend Rs. 15,000 a month on a website and some ads was a real conversation. Not because they lacked money, but because they did not see the connection between digital and revenue. They had been running their business for 20 years without a website and it was fine.

Two years later, that conversation is almost gone. The clients coming to us now already believe. They have WhatsApp Business set up. Some of them run their own Instagram. A few have tried Google Ads on their own and stopped because it was not working. The question has shifted from "why should I be online" to "why is this not working better."

What drove this change

The pandemic compressed about five years of digital adoption into 18 months. Businesses that survived without a website discovered that during lockdowns, the ones with an online presence could still take orders. That is a powerful lesson.

UPI changed purchasing behaviour in ways that are still unfolding. When payment became frictionless, the decision to buy online became much smaller. A customer who would have hesitated to pay online in 2019 because of card entry friction just taps and pays now. That changed what e-commerce looked like for small retailers.

The second thing is the tier-2 city effect. Digital agencies used to cluster in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru. The clients in smaller cities either paid the metro prices or went without. Now there are more local agencies in these cities, more accessible pricing, and more peer examples. When the printer across the street is getting leads through Google, the electrician next door notices.

What it means for how we work

We spend less time educating on why digital matters and more time on what specifically works for a particular business. Our discovery calls are different now. Clients come in with data, even if it is messy. They have tried things. They have opinions.

That is genuinely better. It means the work we do is more likely to land somewhere useful. The sceptics who need convincing from first principles are fewer. The challenge now is the expectation gap -- clients believe in digital and sometimes believe it can do more than it can, faster than it can. That is a different kind of conversation, but an easier one.