SRV Media: The Rising Stars of Digital Marketing in Pune

What would you call two young men who began with no seed funding and grew their business to a 150 million rupee company in under 5 years – Innovative? Hard- working? Successful?

I would simply call them enterprising. The company at hand is a digital marketing agency in Pune – SRV Media and the young dynamic duo are Rohit Prasad and Vikram Kumar – the founders of SRV Media.

Their story dates back to 2011 when they were still management students at Symbiosis Center for Information Technology (SCIT). Noticing a spark in these young technocrats, the then director of SCIT, Dr. R Raman (presently the Director of SIBM Pune), entrusted them with their first digital marketing project. It was a small project with a big challenge that they executed with flair.

Encouraged by their team dynamics and hunger towards digital marketing entrepreneurship they registered SRV Media, a digital marketing and allied solutions provider. Prasad and Kumar are both engineers and joined the MBA program with a fair amount of corporate experience. For the same reason, they were also offered plum jobs during the placement process. However, both of them eventually quit their jobs to build their entrepreneurial venture SRV Media.

So was it all smooth sailing from then on? You bet it wasn’t!

“Both of us are not from business families and we did not have a legacy to inherit. So I must admit we were cautious at first. However, there was a lot of buzz around digital marketing and we felt that we could make a big impact in this area.” says Prasad.

“In our early days, when we walked into a business development meeting, we had only one strategy in mind– convert and close the deal!” states Kumar with an earnest yet all-telling smile.

This attitude to take up any project in the area of digital marketing expanded their overall prowess in the area. “Today we feel confident to pitch ourselves as a one-stop solution for any digital marketing requirements. Our services include social media marketing, search engine marketing, designing and branding, mobile application development, website development, video and filmmaking and all their subsets.” rattles off Prasad in a single breath!

From just one client to 97 active clients, from 3 employees to over 120 employees, from one office in Pune to offices in 3 locations including Surat and Bengaluru, from a small nondescript room in an upcoming locality to a corporate office in Wakad, Pune – identified for the smart city project, these ‘smart’ technocrats are going great guns. Although their first few clients were from the educational sector and their expertise in digital marketing for the educational sector is unmatched, today SRV Media’s portfolio of clients are well balanced between education, FMCG, manufacturing and health care services.

So what next, is the question on everybody’s minds?

“We understand that being contented and delivering only based on client briefs will not be sufficient in the future. We want to be able to forecast requirements and counsel our clients on their future strategy – as consultants do. The only distinction is that we are prepared to put money where our mouth is and execute the plans as well.” says Prasad, on their future plans.

The company is now developing a tool that will mine client data, run meaningful analytics and provide insights into operational efficiencies like never before. This innovative tool will not only help clients do better, but will take SRV Media from being a digital marketing company in Pune to a data analytics and consulting firm.

Under their wings are several accolades that make India proud. Recently the young duo’s maiden venture SRV Media Pvt. Ltd. featured in the top 50 list of Google Partner’s Game On International Contest. What they earned was an all-expense paid trip to San Francisco for the Google Partner Summit, an opportunity of a lifetime for the young entrepreneurs.

When quizzed on their experience at the summit, they admitted that they gave it a skip. Their reason was simply – “work comes before all else!” – They had pressing work commitments and hence gave work priority over an all paid trip to San Francisco by Google!

“We are ever indebted to Dr. Raman and Prof. Sai Mohan Prabhu, faculty from our MBA days who gave us our first chance to prove ourselves. Someday we would like to give back to the society the way we got from it. We have started in a small way by funding and providing access to education to underprivileged children. However, we wish and hope to do much more in the future.” says Kumar, quite solemnly. Yes, it is true that our country needs great entrepreneurial talent to take it to the next level, but when their heart is in the right place, we know we are doing it right!