Meet The Man Who Powers Digital Community In India
1. You have spent 13 years in Digital Advertising, Media & Marketing industry and in last 4-5 years, you have emerged as a hero in this industry. You have supported hundreds of young professionals and lent a helping hand to thousands in the industry, in fact, it wouldn’t be wrong if we call you out as a man who powers digital community in India. Tell us about hundreds of online communities & groups you manage and why exactly people call you Encyclopaedia of Digital Advertising?
Thank you for this opportunity, Agency Reporter.
My Vision and Goal is to have one Big digital ecosystem; a community with harmony; which embraces fresh talent, provides opportunity, gives necessary training & leads and celebrates success. Idea is to be self-sufficient with all our requirements.
I can see this goal is getting bigger and better.
Our groups are growing, the response has been overwhelming. The Digital industry has been very supportive, and my like-minded friends have always been very instrumental in building this up.
Today we have our own Digital Employment Exchange, which offers jobs daily. We also share these job posts on our various jobs groups.
We have our own campaign update groups, which help salespeople know relevant leads. Our own Newsgroups which help us get updates on the latest Industry news.
We have Forums like Digital Marketing Forum for Marketing, Digital Agency forum for Agencies and Indian Digital Forum for Industry leaders. We have Social Media, Influencer Marketing and Affiliate Marketing forums. We have Digital Women Forum for Women icons/leaders and entrepreneurs from our industry. We initiate networking events like Unified Digital Night, to create networking opportunities and harmony. We celebrate Unity amongst Publishers and Ad network Friends.
In 13 years of my Digital Career, I was lucky to wear different hats. I was into Marketing, Sales and Advertising. I understand the pain points, I have been in their shoes. This is my small effort within my capacity to ease out their problem areas.
I think I have a social responsibility towards our industry. This Industry gave me so much and these initiatives are my humble contributions.
Every initiative is the outcome of the challenges we face in our industry on daily basis. Unconditional love and support from the industry helps me improvise and work better towards such initiatives. I have always believed that Knowledge is power, only if it is shared and implemented in the right way. Going an extra mile has always been my style, I go an extra mile for these initiatives after accomplishing my current job responsibilities.
2. In a broad sense, tell us about the kind of people who are part of those groups? Almost everyone in those groups has a feeling of gratitude and respect towards you and your efforts. How do you plan to scale up?
In our groups, we have members from the Marketing Fraternity, Advertising Fraternity, Sales fraternity and investors who are keen to invest in promising projects. It’s like a dream come true. We found a common ground to have everyone in one forum. All our members understood our vision and that’s why we are getting bigger and better. If you have a common agenda that fulfils everyone’s needs, it is bound to become successful. I too feel the same sense of gratitude and respect for all my members in our groups.
Now, to scale up, we will be focussing more on new entrepreneurs in our industry. We have so many talented and Young Digital Minds in our industry. I will be keen to help them with all the ammunition in areas like PR, HR, and Sales. More Entrepreneurs we have, our industry will grow leaps and bounds.
We are keen to spread our initiatives to the college level; educate and train fresh talent for our industry. Right now, all our initiatives are on a Pan India level, we hope to take it global one day.
3. About 5 years ago you tried your hands at entrepreneurship with Circulogix and it ran for about a year but then what went wrong? What were your learnings from running your own venture? What is a piece of advice you would like to share with other entrepreneurs?
My entrepreneurial journey was very exciting with lots of learnings. I was not ready at that time to scale up. That’s why I paused it and came back to Sales. This is also one of the reasons for me to support young entrepreneurs when they need it the most. I never had such an opportunity. My advice to other entrepreneurs would be to keep it simple. Keep a very simple approach to your services and understand the need of the hour. With the scope of Digital expanding and improvising every hour, we need to be equally equipped to understand and come up with solutions and services. Our Ad sales guys should be more like Digital Consultants, educating about their products. Sales will happen automatically.
4. I hear you are a very humble, easy talking and generous human being – I think you are too good to be in this cut-throat industry. Have you ever thought of doing something else or you have just decided to turn this place around?
If you want to be good, you must be brave too. I understand the competition and I too understand my place in this industry. It took me a lot of effort and hard work to be in this situation. I tend to work even harder to get where I want to be. Humility and generosity come from the circle I am in. I have such like-minded friends around me. You get a lot more than you give and trust me it has happened to me many times. Competition is always there and will be, it’s how you improvise and equip yourself that keeps you inspired and stable.
5. Where are you headed from this point onwards? I have learned that deep inside one of your finest skill is professional matchmaking and you are a go-to person for many job seekers in the industry. What is that one thing you want to achieve by the time you hit half a century?
Hope is a magical word. My only agenda will be to keep that Hope Alive and Growing. Right now, we have created Hope to provide opportunities for Jobseekers. Provide relevant and talented candidates to Employers. I will be improvising more to make this process as simple as possible. I’m 43 right now; when I will be touching 50, I would love to leave a legacy of being selfless to our young and upcoming generation. If I can accomplish that; if I can inspire someone through my initiatives, I think my mission will be accomplished.