Bata India Exits Creative Agency Retainers as Zocket AI Runs 100% of Creatives
Bata India rebuilds marketing around Zocket AI agents — briefs, creatives, publish, engagement — claiming ~1 crore / $1M+ savings and an 80% creative-cost cut with zero creative agencies on retainer.
~ Bata India rebuilds its creative engine around Zocket AI agents — briefs, assets, publish and engagement — claiming nearly ₹1 crore in annual savings and an 80% cut in creative costs ~
Mumbai, September 2026: Bata India has gone further than most brands dabbling with generative tools. Working with AI marketing technology company Zocket, the footwear retailer says autonomous AI agents now write briefs, generate creative assets, review outputs, publish content, manage consumer interactions and learn from campaign performance — with the in-house marketing team keeping strategy and final approval.
Badri Beriwal, chief strategy officer and chief business development officer at Bata India, put the shift bluntly: “100 percent of our creatives are now created without any agency. There is no creative agency, and there is no social media agency. It’s just Zocket, the bots, models, the brand guidelines, and the feedback loop that exists.”
Retainers out, humans stay on brand
Beriwal says Bata has exited creative agencies on a retainer basis. Project work can still bring agencies in for specific radical ideas, but day-to-day creative production no longer sits in that loop. “We do not have any agency on a retainer basis now,” he said. Campaign calendars are uploaded, priorities assigned, and agents start producing assets in hours rather than weeks.
The company estimates nearly ₹1 crore in annual savings from lower agency and production costs — and an overall creative-cost drop of almost 80%. Celebrity and influencer content increasingly runs through “digital AI shoots” after talent grant AI rights, with visuals shared back for approval. Beriwal’s check on quality: look at Bata’s Instagram feed and try to tell which frames were shot and which were AI-made.
Karthik Venkateswaran, co-founder and CEO of Zocket, called it one of the most complete AI transformations the firm has seen in consumer marketing agents powered by a living knowledge graph of the brand and its consumers. For marketers watching the agency model, Bata’s bet is clear: keep stewardship human, move production into an always-on AI loop, and reinvest the savings into building the brand.
