Talented launches AI-native venture mktgstack to expand Grid model

New Delhi: Independent creative agency Talented has announced the launch of mktgstack, a new agency positioned as an AI-native growth partner for founders and brand operators. The launch marks the latest addition to Talented’s ‘Grid’ of specialised marketing agencies.

mktgstack has been founded by former Talented executives Namrata Chawla and Varun Khiatani. The agency is structured around the view that not every marketing challenge requires an advertising campaign and that contemporary brands increasingly rely on alternative growth levers.

Explaining the rationale behind the launch, co-founders Namrata Chawla and Varun Khiatani said, “We’re starting-up because we think there’s a genuine white space in the agency business. Most great creative agencies that exist today were built for a different era of marketing, when growth was driven by a few large campaigns planned months in advance. 

That no longer matches how entire cohorts of audiences consume, engage, convert, and make decisions. For a lot of brands and founders today, growth looks very different. So naturally, their expectations from ‘creative advertising’ are also different. Ad campaigns have their place, but many brands now see stronger results from growth levers like

building their own distribution, founder-led storytelling, content & IP systems, AI enabled solutions and continuous optimisation of the assets and channels they already own. Our agency’s operating model will be designed for this sweet-spot. If the work doesn’t change behaviour, business outcomes, or momentum, we don’t think it matters how good it looks.”

The new agency joins Talented’s existing ventures, including creator and culture marketing agency The New Thing and fractional marketing consultancy Early Partners. Together, these form what the company describes as the Talented Grid of Companies. While some services may overlap, each entity operates with its own processes, pace, talent mix and performance metrics.

Talented founders Gautam Reghunath and PG Aditiya outlined the thinking behind the Grid structure, “We’re designing our Grid model as a network of distinct founder-led agencies, each with its own unique operating system. This matters because early-stage startups, established brands, and those in between operate under very different realities, from budget and team size to timelines and tolerance for risk. 

So, rather than forcing different forms of marketing for different clients that demand different balances & trade-offs into the same structure, The Talented Grid gives our clients the agency model that fits their context. Some of our agencies are optimised for craft, depth and cultural impact. Others, like mktgstack, are built to be lean, fast and highly efficient.

As AI introduces a new layer of leverage in how we operate, it’s now possible for leaner, founder-led agencies to deliver high-quality creative execution that previously required much larger teams and traditional agency infrastructure. mktgstack is going to be innately pacy & agile; an agency structured more like a speedboat than a cruise ship.”