Grapes Worldwide Embraces AI Revolution: From Regenerative to Identity AI in Marketing

"I run an organization of 11 people. I'm already valued at $100 million." This statement at an AI conference in Dubai completely changed Shradha Agarwal's perspective on artificial intelligence. When she discovered that the CEO on stage had no actual employees—only AI CXOs—she realized the marketing industry was standing at the precipice of a fundamental transformation. Today, as co-founder of Grapes Worldwide, Agarwal has her own AI team: a CFO, CTO, CMO, nutritionist, travel manager, and even an astrologer—all AI, all trained to think like her.

From creating India's first AI ambassador, Myra Kapoor, for Manforce condoms to launching Threesync, an AI-driven content creation tool in Dubai, Agarwal is not just adapting to AI disruption—she's leading it. "AI is solving that basic problem for you," she explains. "Let me do your job faster and better at a lesser cost. What else do you want?"

From engineer to MBA, from digital marketer to AI pioneer, this is a story of recognizing technological waves early and having the courage to ride them—even when it means replacing traditional processes with entirely new paradigms.

The Unconventional Path: From Engineer to Marketing Agency Founder

Agarwal's journey began unconventionally. "I was basically an engineer from ITM Gurgaon, and then after that typical 3D story—you do engineering then you do MBA," she recalls with a laugh. Her MBA at MICA Ahmedabad, the "mecca of advertising and communication," set the stage for her digital marketing journey.

But her real entry into digital came from an unexpected place: Bollywood. "I started writing for a Bollywood blog and that's where my digital journey kick started actually," she shares. This side hustle to earn "a few bucks because you wanted to go out on dates" led to a series of roles across different genres—events company, large digital agency, startup, and finally AEL as head of digital engagement.

The Personal Partnership Turned Business Partnership

The entrepreneurial story took a romantic turn when she met her husband through Jeevans.com and married. Like many couples, they initially decided not to work together. "We should not work with each other. It's better off. Marriage will be stable etc etc," Agarwal mimics the typical advice.

In 2015, she joined Grapes Software, which her husband had started in 2009. The company was making websites and doing SEO, but Agarwal saw bigger opportunities. "My calling was more marketing so I said why don't we increase our services and not just do tech."

The Evolution: From Grapes Software to Grapes Worldwide

The transformation from a tech-focused startup to an integrated marketing agency happened through strategic expansion, driven by client needs and Agarwal's diverse background.

Winning Clients One Service at a Time

Their first major break came with HomeShop18, where Agarwal's ex-boss gave them an opportunity to pitch. "I said that's okay, all I need is an entry to the door, let me prove myself in a room full of board people," she recalls. They won the pitch.

Then came Maruti Suzuki Nexxa. Starting with the website, they impressed the client enough to be considered for social media. Despite being positioned as a tech company, Agarwal leveraged her background to win that business too. When digital media buying was mentioned, she didn't hesitate.

"I actually paid a person who was running media for a large organization, one of the top five agencies in India, paid her per hour, used to sit in Starbucks, learn and revive all my formulas for media planning and buying," Agarwal reveals. This willingness to learn and invest in herself became a pattern for their expansion.

The Pandemic Realization

COVID-19 brought a crucial realization. Digital agencies were working because clients had no choice, but Agarwal saw the future: "Digital is just a medium, it's not just going to be oh you are a digital agency, you're supposed to adapt the mainline work."

They dropped "digital" from their name, hired talent from offline agencies, and repositioned as an integrated agency. "We started working as an integrated agency and we were scaling, growing as a company, revenues were rocking," she says.

The International Expansion: From Delhi to Dubai

Despite success in India, Agarwal identified a critical limitation: "India is a large market with a lot of client requirements and we are not process driven at all." Clients wanted everything "yesterday," creating a stressful work environment.

The solution? International expansion. "The only problem could have come was ethnicity, maybe culture understanding. Cost was great, right? There's no question to that." They quietly tested international projects before announcing their expansion to London and then Dubai.

The AI Awakening: Three Types of Transformation

Agarwal's understanding of AI evolved through three distinct phases, each revealing new opportunities for marketing agencies.

Phase 1: Regenerative AI - Content Creation Revolution

The first phase was about using AI to create content—images, videos, articles, websites. "AI is saying, 'Let me do your job faster and better at a lesser cost. What else do you want?'" Agarwal explains.

This addresses a fundamental problem in modern marketing: content fatigue. "Content fatigue is the biggest problem right now," Agarwal emphasizes. "If that's the biggest problem, that means you need to create more content but more content is not converting into more revenue. But you still have to create more content."

Phase 2: Identity AI - The Dubai Conference Revelation

The second phase began at that fateful AI conference in Dubai. When Agarwal saw the CEO with 11 AI CXOs, she realized AI could create identities that think and work like humans.

"Now you will see I have a CMO, I have a CFO, I have a nutritionist, I have a travel manager, I have an astrologer, I have a PR person—everything," Agarwal shares enthusiastically. "And I've trained them, they know what I think, how I think, and they give me answers on the go and the voice command is fabulous."

Phase 3: Agentic AI - The Synchronized Future

The third and most advanced phase is agentic AI—creating AI systems that work together in synchronized fashion. "What I'm looking forward to now which I'm really researching on is agentic AI," Agarwal reveals.

"If I create an LLM model on top of it which has an operation where these guys can work in a synchronized fashion with the commands I give them and take the job from zero to even 70%. That would be amazing," she explains. "And it's not far. It's already launched."

The Threesync Venture: Democratizing AI Content Creation

Putting her AI knowledge into practice, Agarwal launched Threesync in Dubai—an AI-driven organization focused on content creation. The tool addresses the limitations of individual AI platforms by combining them into a unified interface.

"We have all your soras, neo banana, canva, see dance, veo 3, Higgsfield, etc. combined with a customized user flow on top of it which gives you better output than what you were currently getting from these tools," Agarwal explains.

The Business Model Disruption

AI is fundamentally changing agency pricing models. When clients see AI-generated content costing ₹3 lakhs instead of ₹1 crore for a TV commercial shot in Africa, expectations shift.

"If you know that the client is ready to bring down the cost by 10%, you quote 15%," Agarwal explains the sales strategy. "But when you know the client is ready to go down to the cost of literally 90% of the original cost and you are producing it at 95% less than the original cost and you still want that business, you go ahead and say yes."

Case Study: Myra Kapoor - India's First AI Ambassador

Perhaps the most revolutionary project Agarwal has worked on is creating Myra Kapoor, India's first AI ambassador for Manforce condoms. The brand previously had human ambassadors like Sunny Leone and Karthik Aaryan.

"Imagine the kind of power that we're bringing on table and we created the custom workflow for Myra and we are managing her page and we did the whole TVC for them," Agarwal says proudly.

Technical Challenges with AI Creations

But AI content creation isn't without challenges. "There are challenges with AI," Agarwal admits. "When you shoot and you do deep fake, she can't put her hand across her face and still be the same. It will change. There are challenges with side cuts. There are challenges with lip movement in Hindi dialect."

Agarwal points out that audiences are forgiving. "If you watch Bollywood movies, I remember Student of the Year—in one scene he had the tie on, the next scene the tie was gone, the next scene the tie was again on. So basically we're doing cuts and customers are okay with it."

The Distribution Challenge: Standing Out in Content Overload

With AI making content creation easier and cheaper, the real challenge is distribution. "People are bombarded with a lot of new content. Their attention span has reduced. They're expecting higher quality," Agarwal observes.

When asked about platforms potentially demonetizing AI-generated content, Agarwal has a strong perspective: "Who are you to interrupt me? I am creating content through AI at a faster speed at a lower cost. Consumers are watching it."

"We need to act faster and smarter to look at this as a technology to create more and more content," Agarwal advises. "The one who will win—it's the market of survival. In the jungle, anybody needs to survive. They need to ensure they're fastest, right? So why are we treating ourselves any different?"

The Gaup commerce Venture: Performance-Based Marketing

Beyond creative services, Agarwal launched Gaup commerce to address brands' business objectives directly. "We basically help retail brands to drive business online," she explains.

The model is revolutionary for agencies: "We're helping them with their modern trade sales, their B2B sales, their e-commerce and quick commerce sales. We're literally working like a distributor for them where we're charging on sales per commission. No agency wants to do that generally."

The Future Vision: Money and Fame Framework

Looking ahead three years, Agarwal's vision is refreshingly practical. "You need to define your company vision into two parts: how much money do you want to make? How much fame do you want to make?"

This clarity extends to client objectives too. "Any client who comes to us has two things: one is a long-term goal, second is a short-term goal," Agarwal explains. "Long-term is where they only have two objectives. Either it's a business goal where they want to make money, or it's a brand goal."

Agarwal's "riding the wave" strategy ensures brands stay relevant. "If moon lands today next door, you and me will be talking about the moon," she says. "If something happens in my school, you and me will be talking about the school. This is called riding the wave strategy."

Key Takeaways

Shradha Agarwal's journey with Grapes Worldwide offers crucial insights for navigating the AI revolution in marketing:

For Marketing Professionals: Understand the three types of AI—regenerative, identity, and agentic. Each offers different capabilities and opportunities for career advancement.

For Agency Leaders: Don't just use AI for cost savings. Use it to create new value propositions. Threesync shows how combining AI tools can create better-than-original outputs.

For Brand Managers: AI dramatically reduces production costs but introduces technical limitations. Understand these trade-offs when planning campaigns.

For Entrepreneurs: International expansion can solve domestic market challenges. Sometimes the cultural differences are less significant than the process improvements gained.

For Everyone Facing AI Disruption: AI is not replacing humans—it's amplifying them. Like computers and internet before it, AI enables each person to produce more value faster and better.

The agencies that thrive in the AI era won't be those that use AI to replace humans, but those that use AI to enhance human creativity while solving the fundamental problem of content fatigue. As Agarwal demonstrates, the future belongs to those who can create more content, faster, better, and cheaper—without losing the human touch that makes brands memorable.

About the Guest

Shradha Agarwal is the co-founder of Grapes Worldwide, an integrated marketing agency with offices in Delhi, London, and Dubai. An engineer by training with an MBA from MICA Ahmedabad, Agarwal's journey spans writing for Bollywood blogs to leading one of India's most innovative marketing agencies.

Under her leadership, Grapes Worldwide has evolved from a web development company (Grapes Software, 2009) to a digital agency (Grapes Digital, 2015) to an integrated marketing powerhouse (Grapes Worldwide, 2020). The agency serves major clients including Lava, JBL, and CP Plus across branding, creative, technology, SEO, and PR.

Agarwal is a pioneer in AI applications for marketing, having launched two ventures: Threesync, an AI-driven content creation platform in Dubai, and Gaup commerce, a performance-based retail distribution service. She created India's first AI ambassador, Myra Kapoor, for Manforce condoms, demonstrating the commercial viability of AI in brand building.

A vocal advocate for AI adoption in marketing, Agarwal speaks extensively about the three types of AI transforming the industry: regenerative AI for content creation, identity AI for AI team members, and agentic AI for synchronized AI workflows. Her practical approach to AI implementation—from using AI CXOs to building custom AI tools—makes her one of India's most forward-thinking marketing leaders.