INTERNAL · ROHIT × RANABIRCLIENT #1 · AUG 2026[VENTURE TBD]

The Nova Console.

How the two of us ship a 15-seat AI marketing team for VRX's Nova lens line — one engine, three phases — and get paid three times for it.

IN FOCUSAGENTS ONLINE
01 · The client

Not a startup. A 65-year-old giant's consumer brand.

  • BrandNova — flagship brand of Vision Rx Lab, Kolkata (reportedly EssilorLuxottica-owned). Our mandate: the lens line — digital, progressive, Rx.
  • FootprintLive e-commerce with 3D try-on · active Instagram, Facebook, YouTube — her PDF said "no website." The site is excellent. Ground truth beats the brief.
  • Our buyerThe Marketing Head. She sits in the approval seat. Every credential and API key stays with her — we build the machine, she holds the keys.
  • Why usWarm entry via the Disha–VRX lens relationship. One transparent line about that early — then the two never tangle.
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retail partners in India
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countries sold in
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Vision Rx Lab heritage
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employees at the parent
02 · The ask

She sent an org chart, not a brief.

Marketing Head the only human in the loop
Brand Head agent synthesises briefs · directs pillars · assembles output

Research

  • Market & competitor watch
  • Customer intelligence
  • Brand guidelines keeper

Creative

  • Creative director
  • Copywriter
  • Graphic designer
  • Video / motion

Growth

  • Social strategist
  • Performance manager
  • SEO & website
  • Influencer & PR

Commercial

  • Trade marketing
  • Product manager
  • CRM & CX

Compliance

  • Brand QA gate
●AUTO — research · scheduling · reporting ●SEMI — creative · copy · spend (she approves) ●SIGN-OFF — launches · budgets (always her)

Read it for what it is: an AI-drafted vision — facts wrong, ambition right. She's already sold on the dream. Our job isn't to pitch the dream; it's to re-cut it into something that actually runs.

03 · The trick

We don't build fifteen bots.
One engine, fifteen hats.

  • a.Brand Brain — one knowledge base (tone, rules, products, campaigns) every agent reads from. Built once, feeds everything.
  • b.Task pipeline — every piece of work is a task moving through states: briefed → drafted → checked → approved → shipped.
  • c.Role charters — a "role" is just a charter: prompt + tools + hand-off rules. The seats are configuration, not code.
  • ∴Adding seat #9 costs a day, not a month. Build fifteen separate bots instead, and we drown by the fourth. This architecture is the margin in our phase pricing.
04 · How work flows

Every deliverable rides the same rail.

BRIEF /TRIGGER RESEARCH +DRAFT COMPLIANCEGATE HER INBOXAPPROVE / REJECT SHIPPED reject with notes → redraft AUTO LANE — digests & reports skip the queue (her autonomy dial decides who rides it)
●state machine, not magic ●she approves at exactly one point ●nothing off-brand reaches her desk

This diagram is the whole product. Her PDF's five pillars are stops on this rail; the "Brand Head agent" is the dispatcher; the autonomy dial just decides which lane each role rides. When Ranabir explains it to her — this is the picture.

05 · What she sees

Her command center — and the reason we can skip the retainer.

NOVA CONSOLE — MONDAY 09:12
Inbox 4
Org chart
Role manager
Health ●
Competitor digest — W32AUTO LANE · SHIPPED 07:00
AUTO
Weekly performance reportAUTO LANE · SHIPPED 07:05
AUTO
IG carousel ×3 + captions — festive dropQA PASSED · AWAITING HER
APPROVE
Content calendar — Week 33QA PASSED · AWAITING HER
REVIEW
  • Inbox

    One coffee of approvals and her marketing week is running. Auto work flows past; judgment work stops at her desk.

  • Autonomy dial

    Every seat starts in draft-everything mode. She promotes roles to auto as they earn trust. She controls the dial — always.

  • Role manager

    Add, clone, edit, pause, delete any seat herself. Versioned, one-click rollback, test-run preview. Day-to-day change needs no vendor.

  • Health

    Green / amber / red per seat, plain-language alerts. She always knows the state of her team without calling anyone.

06 · The build
PHASE 1

The spine + the always-on agents

WEEKS 1–4₹1.75–2L · 50% ADVANCE90-DAY WARRANTY FROM GO-LIVE
  • Brand Brain — her guidelines extracted into the single source of truth. Everything depends on this; it comes first.
  • Competitor watch AUTO — weekly digest: ZEISS, Hoya, Kodak Lens et al. — whoever she names as the lens rivals.
  • Performance reporting AUTO — plain-language weekly report, not a metrics dump.
  • Copywriter + calendar SEMI — month of content drafted into her inbox via the QA gate.
  • Compliance gate v1 + console shell, approval inbox, Role Manager, health dashboard.
The Monday-morning close: digest and report waiting unprompted, a pre-checked week of content, one coffee of approvals. Phase 1's job is to make her feel the team working — that's what sells Phase 2 and Phase 3.
Research
brand brain
competitor watch
customer intel
Creative
copywriter
graphic
video
Growth
calendar + social
reporting
seo · site
influencer · pr
Commercial
trade analyst
crm · cx
product
Compliance
qa gate
lights up in P1later phase
07 · The build
PHASE 2

Creative + commercial — the seats that make things and touch money

WEEKS 5–10₹2–2.5L · QUOTED AT END OF PHASE 1
  • Graphic agent — social statics on brand-locked templates. It physically can't go off-brand. (Print packaging stays human — we say so out loud.)
  • Video / motion agent — reels & product films, drafted cuts, she directs. Our unfair advantage — most shops can't actually deliver this.
  • CRM & CX journeys — welcome, post-purchase, re-engagement. Needs corporate access decisions → exactly why it's Phase 2, riding on Phase 1's trust.
  • Trade analyst AUTO — monthly review pack across 4,500 partners. Easiest for us to build; the one her bosses will notice, because it speaks revenue.
Her Monday grows: a calendar entry now arrives as post + caption + visual — one approval. Journeys run themselves under her rules. The trade pack lands before her review meeting, not assembled for it.
Research
brand brain
competitor watch
customer intel
Creative
copywriter
graphic
video
Growth
calendar + social
reporting
seo · site
influencer · pr
Commercial
trade analyst
crm · cx
product
Compliance
qa gate
lights up in P2live since P1later
08 · The build
PHASE 3

Specialists + the payoff: campaign mode

₹1.5–2L · QUOTED AT END OF PHASE 2FULL ORG CHART LIT
  • SEO & site content — lens product pages, lens-education guides (progressives, blue-cut, digital), rank-tracking vs the lens rivals. Publishing access decided by her team.
  • Influencer & PR — finds, shortlists, drafts. A human always sends. Autonomous outreach is how brands become screenshots.
  • Product research assist — monthly innovation digest from what the other pillars already know. Her calls, made on the console's intelligence, not by it.
  • Campaign mode + autonomy dial-ups — the Brand Head agent grows up. Seats that earned trust get promoted toward auto.
"Diwali drop,
these SKUs,
live on the 20th" →
research: context creative: assets growth: calendar + spend qa: everything
→ ONE reviewable
campaign package
in her inbox
Research
brand brain
competitor watch
customer intel
Creative
copywriter
graphic
video
Growth
calendar + social
reporting
seo · site
influencer · pr
Commercial
trade analyst
crm · cx
product
Compliance
qa gate
campaign mode
lights up in P3already live
09 · The retainer question — the case FOR

First, hear the retainer argument out.

  • It's staffAn agent team is an employee, not a deliverable. Things that work every day break, drift and age — and someone has to manage them.
  • WeatherThe world changes under it: competitor sites redesign, Meta changes export formats, models get deprecated. Not bugs — weather. It never stops.
  • DriftPrompts that wrote great captions in August are stale by Diwali. Somebody has to keep coaching the team as the brand moves — that's real monthly labour.
  • The nightmareNo one paid to watch it → the console rots quietly at our first and most referenceable client. She tells our industry "we tried the AI thing, it broke." The anti-case-study costs more than every retainer combined.
Rohit's counter is the next slide. Both sides live on this deck so the two of us settle it on purpose — not by default.
10 · The retainer question — Rohit's counter

Rohit's call: no retainer.
Here's how that stays safe.

01Role Manager

She changes day-to-day things herself — prompts, schedules, seats, autonomy. Versioned, rollback, test-run. Most "support calls" never exist.

0290-day warranty

After every phase's go-live: anything that breaks, we fix free. Confidence, in writing.

03Optional AMC

~15–18% of build value per year for external breakage only — platform API changes, model deprecations. Corporates' procurement usually demands a support term; this is our answer, and it's standard vendor practice, not a retainer in disguise.

04Mini-builds

New capabilities beyond a phase's scope are quoted as fixed mini-projects. Real work, real invoice — never free drift.

The trade-off, eyes open: no monthly floor means the build fees ARE the business. So they go up, not down — sell-and-walk pricing is always higher. And the self-service console she actively uses is what keeps the account warm for Phase 2 and 3.
11 · Money

Quote the phase. Know the total.

LIST — WHAT IT SHOULD COST₹6–6.5L
PHASE 1 · spine
₹1.75–2L
PHASE 2 · creative
₹2–2.5L
PHASE 3 · campaign
₹1.5–2L
OUR QUOTE — PROJECT #1₹4–5L
PHASE 1
₹1.25–1.5L
PHASE 2
₹1.5–2L
PHASE 3
₹1.25–1.5L

The gap buys the case study, testimonial & reference rights — not given away.

Open with Phase 1: ₹1.25–1.5L — never the total. Each phase sells the next.

Floor: ₹1L. 50/50 terms per phase · AMC optional · AI usage on her accounts, at cost.

12 · What we never promise

Said now, not refunded later.

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