Enterprise: GrowthCat
Founders:  Vensy Krishna, Abhishek Anirudhan
Industry: Marketing, Advertising & PR
Year it was founded: 2018
Location: Hyderabad, Telangana

GrowthCat is a data-driven communication strategy firm specialising in full-spectrum digital marketing services for startups and enterprises. GrowthCat was founded by Vensy Krishna, a lawyer and digital marketing expert and Abhishek Anirudhan, a data scientist.

CEO of GrowthCat, Vensy Krishna speaks to GlobalLinker (GL) about their digital marketing firm.

GL: Vensy, share with us how you became an entrepreneur.

Vensy: I am a lawyer by training, and I started my first company in the second year of law school. It was towards improving access to legal education in India. In the initial days, when I was figuring out ways to market our products, I realised the importance of social media marketing, and spent a lot of time learning to master it. I then expanded my learning to website building, SEO, video marketing, LinkedIn marketing, etc so that we could develop ways to communicate better with our customers. I also got myself certified as a Digital Marketing Specialist. Over time it became clear that building a digital face for any brand is an art, and that there was a clear absence in the market for data-driven communication strategy.

So, by the time I graduated from law school, I teamed up with my partner Abhishek, who is a data scientist, and we started GrowthCat. We aimed to be growth partners for startups and small brands and wanted to use our expertise to catalyse their growth. Thus, the name, GrowthCat (Your Growth Catalyst)!

GrowthCat team at work

GL: What has been the most effective way of raising awareness about your business?

Vensy: Being digital marketing experts that we are, we bank heavily on social media. The best way for us to reach out to prospective customers and to attract talent has been LinkedIn so far. We are also betting heavily on video marketing. We get the best engagement on Instagram.

Over time it became clear that building a digital face for any brand is an art, and that there was a clear absence in the market for data-driven communication strategy.

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GL: What are some of the challenges you face in the business of digital marketing?

Vensy: We operate in a heavily saturated field. Every person who has created a Facebook page calls themselves a digital marketer these days, and this poses a huge challenge to companies like us while hunting for talent. Few digital marketers understand the importance of data, and fewer still know how to make decisions informed by data. Thus, we have a stringent recruitment model, wherein every applicant has a compulsory educational qualification requirement before applying for a month-long internship, followed by a training contract to the best-performing candidates. We are very keen on working with the best young talent in the fields of communication and branding.

GL: You are a Linker. Which offerings of GlobalLinker have helped you?

Vensy: We are grateful to GlobalLinker for offering a platform for young startups and  businesses to connect with others and to reach out to professionals. We hope that more startups and MSMEs sign up on the portal and make the most of what the platform is offering to entrepreneurs and professionals.

Also read: Lester Fernandes, CEO, BUDSTA Analytics & Insights Pvt. Ltd.

GL: What advice would you give to a new entrepreneur setting up their first business?

Vensy: To all the aspiring entrepreneurs out there, there is no better time to start a business than today, right now. Don’t wait for anything, or any qualification. You will learn everything you need as you run your startup every day. Start as soon as you can, invest a lot of time on self-learning, and take the help of free online content for any skills you need for your business, before you outsource the job to someone else.

Everyone has three resources in some measure: time, money and effort. If you have one of these in low reserves, you need to double down on the other two.

GL: What is the next big thing on your business agenda?

Vensy: We’re building solutions to automate at least some aspects of digital marketing.

GL: We would love to know the person behind the entrepreneur.

• Every day you wake up at - 5 am
• The first thing you do after waking up - Spend some time working out, then read a book, and then plan my day in detail.
• Three things you do to unwind/ relax - I read science fiction, I practice calligraphy, and I play with my dog.
• When you face a big challenge – I get excited and don’t give up until I solve it.
• The best piece of advice you’ve ever been given - Fifty years later, you should look back on the things you’ve done, rather than the things that you haven’t been able to do.
• The one book everyone should read - The Big Short by Michael Lewis. It is funny, it is hard to read, it is a commentary on what happens when people stop thinking, and it is a story about those who aren’t afraid to be weird in the world.

Also read: Raj N Phani, Founder, Zaggle Prepaid Ocean Services Pvt Ltd

Network with SMEs mentioned in this article by clicking on the 'Connect' button on their profile. Vensy Krishna, Abhishek Anirudhan

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