The journey of Justwords started with one question – How can content help a business do better business?
That single question became the foundation for everything that followed. In 2010, content was merely an afterthought, a nice-to-have if budgets allowed. The world was still warming up to digital marketing. Businesses relied on what they knew: cold calls, outdoor events, face-to-face meetings, and printed materials like brochures, fliers, and banners. That was the extent of content’s role back then.
Identifying a gap and filling it
But one person saw something different. Payel saw a gap in the market.
Coming from a traditional print journalism background, she had already experienced the power of storytelling and the way content was designed and laid out into neat boxes on newspapers and magazines.
Later, when she moved to a media startup, it opened her eyes to content in entirely new ways. She discovered formats completely different from traditional media, formats like e-magazines and newsletters, that were combining the power of content, design and being used for marketing
And this sparked a thought– why could content not play a role in helping businesses market themselves online and reach their target audience. She became convinced that content could play a bigger role in marketing a brand – something that was already happening in the other part of the world.
That is how things got started. Justwords was launched in 2010 – with the singular passion to help businesses do more business through the power of content marketing.
Fifteen years later, that idea still holds.
We’ve grown, changed, and evolved, but the core belief remains:
Great content isn’t just about visibility. It’s about impact.
And when done with purpose, it doesn’t just support a business. It helps build it.
What the Last 15 Years Looked Like – important business lessons
In the last 15 years, we evolved from offering only content creation services to comprehensive content-led digital marketing solutions.
When Google launched Google Business View—a Google Maps product that could show a 360-degree view of business interiors on their listings—we were selected as one of the agencies to roll out the product in India.
The next 3 years proved critical as it taught us some really important business lessons.
A. On one hand, we learned a lot about online marketing, especially local marketing, by working directly with the Google India team. This also helped us realize that if we really needed to help businesses succeed, we needed to tweak our offerings and build a complete engine around content.
“Success isn’t your entitlement – you earn it every day. Work hard, commit to customers, stay true to your values. Stay hungry for learning, be patient through ups and downs, and always have the right team. Not the most brilliant people, but those with the best attitude who want to be part of the journey.”
B. It made us realize that we veered off track by trying to sell a product that needed a strong sales force that was great with outbound sales. And in trying to sell the Google Business View, we changed our basic business strength – inbound marketing. We also had largely ignored what we were really good at – content and marketing.
This very critical realization helped us change course and get back on track to content.
But this time, we started offering more than just content services. We built our expertise as a content-led digital marketing agency that could develop inbound and organic growth engines for business.
This led to more sustainable growth with content at the core, and layers built around it with SEO, social media, CRO-led websites, design and paid advertising.
Building a brand and milestones achieves
Building a brand takes time, and we were in no hurry in the first few years of business. We grew slow, focusing on precision and perfection of our craft.
Our reputation grew as we became known for powerful content marketing and the growth engines we created for brands. Business growth came naturally—through referrals that validated our work quality and through the inbound leads our own marketing generated. Over the years, our work has expanded from India to global markets. We have partnered with startups, SMEs, and even Fortune 500 companies.
Here are some of the milestones we achieved in the last 15 years:
● We won Google’s PR and marketing award consecutively in 2013 and 2014. This gave us the initial leg up that we needed, helping establish brand visibility and trust among our target audience.
● From 2019, we started featuring regularly on the honour rolls of Clutch, Goodfirms, DesignRush, for our content marketing and SEO work. Beyond that, we also won various content leadership awards that cemented our unique position as one of the top content marketing-led digital marketing agencies in India. In 2024, we also won the ET-MSME best entrepreneur award. This award, which recognizes the best of the Indian MSMEs, was a real honour.
● We survived COVID. One of the hallmarks of a strong brand is that you know how to survive a storm. Having faced the lows of 2013, we knew what we had to do to survive. Even though this crisis was devastating, our resilience and our clients helped us walk out of the storm without much damage.
● Our focus on customer satisfaction and the effort we take to deliver quality work has helped us develop long-term client relationships that have lasted 5 to 8 years and more.
● We have been able to build a brand that is often the first choice of clients, because of our commitment to quality.
● In 2025, we launched our Canada operations to focus on our clients in North Americas and Europe. We also launched Justwordsdigital.com to make it easier for businesses across the world to find us.
But the deeper story is that we stayed consistent, we listened, we learnt, we adapted.
And we kept choosing the harder path when it meant doing the work better.
5 questions we asked our Founder and CEO on our 15th anniversary
1. What are some of the values or principles that have remained unchanged since day one?
Over these 15 years, our core values have remained rock-solid: an unwavering commitment to quality, meticulous attention to detail, respect for everybody, constantly exploring better ways to do things, fostering fun at work, and 100% customer focus. These principles have always been the foundations of our agency and have helped us get where we are by setting us apart from those who aren’t willing to go above and beyond.
We have also always prioritized finding the right people who fit into our value system – folks who share our passion, and values, and are willingly walk that extra mile when customers need it.
2. When you started Justwords, did you imagine reaching the 15-year mark?
Honestly, at that point I didn’t think 15 years ahead. When you begin, you just put in your everything and believe that it’s going to work. That’s what I did. Without that belief, it’s very difficult to go on.
The beginning was really great, and then we also hit a low that almost shut us down. From there on, it’s been an incredible journey, where we learnt to adapt with the flow and scale up.
But I think I can say – we are looking forward to the next decade.
3. What’s the biggest business lesson these 15 years have taught you?
Success if not your entitlement, you need to earn it every day. And to achieve that, you need to be ready to work really hard, be committed to your customers and make sure they get the best, as well as stay true to the values your company was built on.
Stay hungry for learning more all the time, be patient through the ups and downs and believe that it always happens for the good.
And finally, always have the right team alongside you – and by that I don’t mean hire the most brilliant – hire those who have the best attitude, those who are willing to learn and be part of the journey.
4. If you had to describe the 15-year journey in a one line, what would it be and why?
“The journey of Justwords has been a journey of learning, unlearning, and growth – with resilience at the core and fulfillment as the reward.”
5. What’s your take on the role of AI in content marketing? What excites or worries you?
I have not seen a more transformative force in content marketing than AI, since the rise of social media. Yet all those people predicting “content marketing and SEO are going to be dead” are missing a valuable point – that AI is not going to replace us. It is going to push us to become better content marketers and create better content.
My take on AI is this –
AI has been both a revolution and a reminder. It’s revolutionizing the way content is being created and the way content is being searched and consumed. When search behavior changes this dramatically, content strategy must evolve just as dramatically.
The reality check is that human judgement cannot ever be replaced. Companies that thought they could fire their content teams and let algorithms take over, have since realised that authentic and strategic content requires human insight.
What genuinely excites me is AI’s personalization superpower. We can now decode audience personas with laser precision and deliver hyper-targeted content that speaks directly to individual needs and pain points.
What keeps me really worried is the flood of generic, AI-generated content polluting the digital landscape. That is what I call content without soul, strategy, or substance.
The silver lining? This content chaos is actually pushing our industry upward. Clients don’t need agencies for basic content production anymore – they need us for what AI can’t deliver: strategic vision, creative brilliance, and genuine human understanding of a business.
The agencies that survive are those that will embrace AI as a powerful tool while doubling down on what makes us irreplaceably human – empathy, creativity, and strategic thinking.
6. How do you want Justwords to be remembered when people think of its legacy?
When people think of Justwords’ legacy, I want them to remember us as the agency that made content marketing accessible to every business that dreamed of doing better.
We were among the pioneers who introduced Indian businesses to the transformative power of content marketing when most still saw it as ‘just writing blogs.’
We believed that quality content shouldn’t be a luxury – it should be within the reach of every ambitious business owner with a vision. It should increase brand awareness, authority and brand trust and finally turn prospects to customers.
I want Justwords.in to be remembered as one of the frontrunners who helped shape India’s content marketing landscape. We didn’t just follow global trends; we adapted them to understand the Indian market, the Indian customer, and what truly resonates here.
When a business owner anywhere in the world thinks about content marketing, I want them to think: ‘There’s this incredible agency from India that truly understands how to help businesses grow through content.’ That’s the legacy we’re building – one authentic relationship, one quality campaign at a time.
We’re not just creating content; we’re creating possibilities. And that’s how I want Justwords to be remembered.
The one message we want to share on our 15th anniversary
In 2010, we began with a simple belief – that content had the power to help businesses do better business. It is amazing that we have been able to actually translate that dream into reality, and live that dream every single day.
To our team members (the original gang, the ones who came in between, and the ones now), this is for you –
“Thank you for your hard work and contribution to this journey. Your passion, commitment, and hard work has built something extraordinary and beautiful. You don’t just work at Justwords; you ARE Justwords. Everything today has been possible because of your grit, belief and perseverance.”
To our clients, this is what we wanted to say
Thank you for trusting us with your dreams, your brands, and your stories. Every success you’ve achieved fills us with pride because we know we played a small part in making it happen. As we celebrate this milestone, I want you to know that our greatest achievements aren’t behind us – they’re ahead of us. The best stories are yet to be written, and we want to write them together with you.
Here’s to the next chapter of our journey together!
