The elephant and the man

When designing our new website we fell in love with the idea of doing something new this time. Something different. So this is the story about how we have an elephant on our website. Her name was Chandni, she was beautiful and such a sport when posing. But let’s tell the story from the beginning. The way it happened.

During our discussion about how we wanted to be portrayed as a company, as a team and as people, it was brought up that clients might have a defined idea about people who work in India. But we can’t hide the fact we are from India, the reply was. Our name is IndiaNIC. And we shouldn’t, again we discussed. There is no shame in that. India is beautiful. It has beautiful culture, wonderful food and loving people. Yes but then again some clients judge this branch of online business, thinking that Indians are slow, cheap and don’t deliver quality, was the reply. The words on everyone’s mouths were: ‘But that’s not us’. So here was the tough question. Then who are we?

Discovering yourself as a person is a very tough thing to do these days. Putting a label on yourself and defining who you are? It’s easier to build a house with your bare hands. Imagine discovering who you are as a company and how you can portray that to people who want to get to know you. Everyone’s answer: It won’t be an easy one for sure. But we sure aren’t going to let that stop us. So off we went with the debate. Well we’re persistent that’s for sure. And brave, said another team member. Fearless even, someone else completed. But at the same time professional.

The entire process of defining who we are was about finding out how we can show everyone that we’re fun, honest and real.

So where does the elephant fit into this story you may wonder? I’m getting there. While looking for inspiration we came across an image of a man with an elephant. It was so beautiful and original, and the connection between the two was so visible, the kind of love that was between them, we just stared at it for days. We couldn’t use it of course, so we were all a bit disappointed and pushed the idea to the back of our minds. One day we were called into the office of the CEO. He looked at us and said: ‘You really want an elephant right? It’s India, let’s get an elephant’. Just like that? ‘Just like that’. Being the adventurous soul that he is, when we asked who will pose with the elephant, he volunteered.

Next morning we were all getting ready to have a wonderful time at the photo shoot. Oh and we sure did. Both the models quickly became comfortable with each other and did they deliver? Well, see for yourself. Here are a few images as well as the behind the scenes video from that day. The conclusion? Everyone had a blast, and in the end, we got our elephant picture.