.jpg "Vikas Gawri")
From my experience, with the changing time, there is an increase in the rate of change in trend. Means nowadays every other week or day there is a new trend coming in the market. Due to this Human behavior is also changing much faster rate.
1. Tell us about your background and your journey.
I entered my footsteps in digital world in the year 2017 and at that time I was 17 year old boy who was just confused about selecting the subject for 11th class. I was interested in taking commerce + maths but sadly this option was not available in my school they were saying either you can take just commerce or PCM so my parents were forcing for PCM. And, I lost to my parents and took PCM, but I think losing to my parents was not that bad because today I am quite smarter than most of BBA course students and I thank my parents for that. ( I took BBA after passing 12th)
I come from a middle-class family who don’t have any family business but as I am Sindhi, and my belief was like that I don’t want to be dependent on my parents at least not financially. So, I first went for newspaper selling, at that time the salary of a newspaper boy was 500rs but by seeing a 12-year old kid coming for a newspaper selling the owner laughed at me saying the other boy isko kaam batake aa kya karna reheat hai.
I entered my footsteps in digital world in the year 2017 and at that time I was 17 year old boy who was just confused about selecting the subject for 11th class. I was interested in taking commerce + maths but sadly this option was not available in my school they were saying either you can take just commerce or PCM so my parents were forcing for PCM. And, I lost to my parents and took PCM, but I think losing to my parents was not that bad because today I am quite smarter than most of BBA course students and I thank my parents for that. ( I took BBA after passing 12th)
I come from a middle-class family who don’t have any family business but as I am Sindhi, and my belief was like that I don’t want to be dependent on my parents at least not financially. So, I first went for newspaper selling, at that time the salary of a newspaper boy was 500rs but by seeing a 12-year old kid coming for a newspaper selling the owner laughed at me saying the other boy isko kaam batake aa kya karna reheat hai.
The other boy took me to the street and I saw him distributing over 300 newspapers and 100 magazines in a single colony. For me, that was one of the hardest job I had ever seen, completely mind game, because if you see from the upper side, newspaper selling is not that tough but bro 90% of the houses had 2 floors and 3 floors. Each floor wants different types of newspapers, some want magazines inside it some don’t want any magazines. Memorizing it was seriously the toughest job. And after seeing this I told the owner I will come tomorrow but that tomorrow never came XD.
When passing 10th standard as I said I just wanted to earn some money and become financially independent because honestly, our family’s financials were not so strong. So, I went for a Job interview for AIRTEL. Job position was sales boy ( wo joh road pe sim bechte woh waale) but you know what they rejected me saying come to us when you become 18 years old. I went to more than 10 job places at that time and all of them said same.
But the thing is I was not disappointed at all that time, because you know that everything happens for a reason. And due to just sitting in my home, I ended up starting my digital journey. Now, I have completed my BBA degree and now dropping out from the study world & giving my full time to my content creation journey.
2. How did you come up with the idea of making content on Instagram and how did you go about executing it?
Well, most of my audience think that I started my journey with Marketians but that’s not the story. When I was 17, I thought to start something that can make some money for me and I ended up making a meme page because at that time meme content journey was booming. But I failed after 3 months because none of the content got viral and the name of the page was akhand hutiyapa, even today I laugh after hearing this username.
After this failure, I lost some hope and was back to my school journey. But after 2 months something stuck in my mind is like no boy you have to make some money before your next birthday come ( my birthday was after 3 months in December).
Then I started a fact page because from starting only my main interest was to gain knowledge and share knowledge. Today, that page is 1 million + and reaches upto 10m+ every month. Page name is 24.fact.feed. I still remember my first earning with that page it was a shoe page promotion who was asking for a story promo for 10 rupees and I agreed for that promo, that time my page had 18,000 followers. So, basically, I achieved my goal before my birthday, my first earning was 10 rupees, I know it sounds very less or weird but that day it gave me the happiness of smile that even earning a 1 lakh rupees did not give me today.
After 24. fact. feed, I had created many more pages like qualitick, myquestionmark, etc. that making over 2 million combined base for me on Instagram.
3. What are the most essential qualities of a successful entrepreneur?
Well an entrepreneur is a leader so there are numerous qualities that an entrepreneur must have but for me top 3 are
Creativity – when I started 24.fact.feed all the other fact pages who have millions of followers were making a single content only. But I knew it that to gain the attention from the audience I need to do something different and I ended up making carousel content with call to action at the end. My audience liked it very well, and you know what I haven’t spent any high budget for the marketing or promotion of 24. fact. feed, this carousel post only made this page 1 million plus. So, I believe when all your competitors were doing same thing or using same strategy it doesn’t mean that you should also do the same, try to think something different from others and I am sure that will work like a magnet for you to attract the audience.
Patience – this is one of the factor that helped me a lot in my content creation journey. 24. fact. feed gained 10k followers in 5 months, 50k followers in 3 months then 500k in 2 years, and then for 1 million it took just 1 year. From this experience I can say that there are many ups and downs will come to your journey it’s upto how you react to that situations. Your reaction toward this difficult times decide whether you are going to achieve your goals. For me, patience is the key, bas karm karte jaao, fal mil jayega. Even when I talk about marketians, it took 2 years to gain 50,000 audiences but just took 3 months to reach the mark of 3,60,000. So, here in the digital world, it’s not like you came and become success, you have to show your will power to this digital world and then see the magic.
Decision making – most people don’t talk about this quality, they are like it is an easy task but when the time come for taking the decision this becomes the most difficult task. When the reels came on Instagram, all the fact pages were become down, my all earnings went totally negative. But I took the decision to go in favour of trend which was Personal branding, after 2020 I got it that I need to do something different on Instagram to exist here and I saw that personal branding is going to be the future and I instantly decided to start my journey of personal branding. I can say that this decision literally changed my life now.
4. What are some of the most important factors for running a successful business?
Belief – by this I meant to say that belief in your own product. If a company’s founder, its CEOs, and its all employees have a belief in their product then I think no one can stop that business to become successful and that’s why a business need to hire only those who belief in the ideology of the founder.
Change - This is 2022 and today the trend, the technology, the fashion, people behavior, all these things change really fast. For this, I think a business must have a sufficient space to take decision and compete with the changing environment of today. I had seen many business failed because they were not able to update their business model with the changing trend of the consuemer.
Customer – Most people make goal to sell a product to customer, but to sell a customer more than twice you need to sell them your service convenience at the first place only by this you’re making them loyal to your company, if you were not able to make them loyal then it is for sure someone else will come and offer a same product at the less price and sadly your customer will no longer will be your customer. A loyal customer are those who don’t shift even they’re getting the same aduct at the from price form your competitor and the reason is that be believe they belief that you will treat them with the best service of yours.
5. What opportunities have come after covid times and how did you scale up at that time?
After covid my all the pages that I build throughout the years either it was meme page or either it was fact pages, all of them becoming dead/down because that was then Instagram came with the idea of reels. And I was the one that got at reels is the feature which is going to become one of the best way for personal branding, as far as I know in my community of pages, I was the one to step in the field of personal branding. I started in march 2020, gained 50k followers in 5 months but after that I don’t know what happened to the algorithm of Instagram my all reach went down, till march 2022 I was stuck at 50k, not gained a single follower. I uploaded more than 500 content on my content but none of them got viral, I was quite disappointed with that because other creators was like they uploaded 10-15 contents and it become viral all of a sudden but this was not the case for me.
In march 2022 I was thinking to quite this content creation journey because practically I gave my 2 years and seeing no response to it seriously a big disappointment. But, I decided to give one more chance, the last chance, one more month to this, and then will stop if got no response. But luckily that last month my 2 reels got viral and then it gave me literally the best feeling. I can say when you put your 100% effort to anything, no one can stop you in becoming successful.
After covid we all know that the digital industry saw a big boom, I also started my digital marketing agency in the name of qualitick. Today, we have more than 10 long-term clients who are with us from a very long time.
6. What is the biggest challenge in the startup industry at the moment?
If we will see with wide perspective towards the startup industry, the biggest challenge that the startups industry is witnessing is the unrealistic competition due to startup bubble. As of 2021 report, Indian startups had seen around 40bn dollar funding, but the twist here is that more than half of these startups are hardly profitable. But investors are putting their money in these startups for the sake of FOMO but by not seeing these companies through fundamental basis.
This bubble is similar to .com bubble in US. When the .com websites were in boom, every other person started creating websites and even raised millions in funding from the investors, but in the end that bubble burst out and we all know about that huge crash after that.
I am scared that same can happen to India also, and when this startup bubble will burst there we will see a huge crash in the market.
7. What are your views on the fact that marketing and business are changing so drastically?
From my experience, with the changing time, there is an increase in the rate of change in trend. Means nowadays every other week or day there is a new trend coming in the market. Due to this Human behavior is also changing much faster rate. And if the businesses wanted to be successful they had to plan their next move in marketing by keeping in mind this rate of change.
8. Since there is a lot of competition even in online businesses so how according to you a business can overcome this problem?
I think competition is everywhere whether we talk about competitive exams or we talk about online businesses, it all depends on your creative thinking and your willpower to beat that competition. 3 best things that worked for me and all of my clients are mentioned below :
1) Building community –
Building community is far and far greater than building just a large audience. You need to connect with your audience with your product by using their emotions for example zomato and paperboat do within their online platforms, they hit the user's emotions by uploading the relatable content, and that’s why today they have large real base on online platforms, no need to say many brands buy even fake followers. So, try to build community instead of just large audience, remember 100k community is always far and far greater than the 1m+ followers which is just a large number of audience and not a community.
2) Adapting the trend –
When it’s about online campaigns for business, most brands normally reach out to the celebrities but today they’re also hiring influencers which are mostly cheaper than hiring a celebrity and also meet the brand’s campaign goal very easily. This influencers trend came just after the time of covid and I see many brands are adopting this trend very effectively, so when it’s about online business always make your model completely free so your brand can change their strategies accordingly because there are just few companies that are able to do that, this makes you ahead of competitors.
3) Defining your brand –
When businesses run their marketing campaign or build a community the foremost factor is to define your brand image with that. Define your mission and vision to your audience and if they will have believe in your product they will itself do marketing of your product because that’s what the power of online marketing is. Imagine when you have a 100K community who have a belief in your brand/ business, how much revenue or sales you will be able to generate from that small amount of audience.
9. What are some of the best career advice that you have ever received?
We all have a question in our mind that how to find a goal in life or how successful people find their goal in life.
But you know what there is always a time in the life of one individual, the millionaires or even the billionaires do not know their goal or purpose of life. It is all about trying out new things, making new goals, and experiencing them.
All the successful people found their purpose by trying new things and exploring new opportunities. So, when you get confused about your goal, remember it’s about trying new things, making new goals and in the end you will find your purpose of life. It is just that some people find their purpose very early or some people find it later in life. It’s just a matter of time but don’t stop yourself in life just because you did not know about your purpose because everyone here is just like you or was like you, in some moment of their lives.
Interviewed By - Shashank Sehgal
When passing 10th standard as I said I just wanted to earn some money and become financially independent because honestly, our family’s financials were not so strong. So, I went for a Job interview for AIRTEL. Job position was sales boy ( wo joh road pe sim bechte woh waale) but you know what they rejected me saying come to us when you become 18 years old. I went to more than 10 job places at that time and all of them said same.
But the thing is I was not disappointed at all that time, because you know that everything happens for a reason. And due to just sitting in my home, I ended up starting my digital journey. Now, I have completed my BBA degree and now dropping out from the study world & giving my full time to my content creation journey.
2. How did you come up with the idea of making content on Instagram and how did you go about executing it?
Well, most of my audience think that I started my journey with Marketians but that’s not the story. When I was 17, I thought to start something that can make some money for me and I ended up making a meme page because at that time meme content journey was booming. But I failed after 3 months because none of the content got viral and the name of the page was akhand hutiyapa, even today I laugh after hearing this username.
After this failure, I lost some hope and was back to my school journey. But after 2 months something stuck in my mind is like no boy you have to make some money before your next birthday come ( my birthday was after 3 months in December).
Then I started a fact page because from starting only my main interest was to gain knowledge and share knowledge. Today, that page is 1 million + and reaches upto 10m+ every month. Page name is 24.fact.feed. I still remember my first earning with that page it was a shoe page promotion who was asking for a story promo for 10 rupees and I agreed for that promo, that time my page had 18,000 followers. So, basically, I achieved my goal before my birthday, my first earning was 10 rupees, I know it sounds very less or weird but that day it gave me the happiness of smile that even earning a 1 lakh rupees did not give me today.
After 24. fact. feed, I had created many more pages like qualitick, myquestionmark, etc. that making over 2 million combined base for me on Instagram.
3. What are the most essential qualities of a successful entrepreneur?
Well an entrepreneur is a leader so there are numerous qualities that an entrepreneur must have but for me top 3 are
Creativity – when I started 24.fact.feed all the other fact pages who have millions of followers were making a single content only. But I knew it that to gain the attention from the audience I need to do something different and I ended up making carousel content with call to action at the end. My audience liked it very well, and you know what I haven’t spent any high budget for the marketing or promotion of 24. fact. feed, this carousel post only made this page 1 million plus. So, I believe when all your competitors were doing same thing or using same strategy it doesn’t mean that you should also do the same, try to think something different from others and I am sure that will work like a magnet for you to attract the audience.
Patience – this is one of the factor that helped me a lot in my content creation journey. 24. fact. feed gained 10k followers in 5 months, 50k followers in 3 months then 500k in 2 years, and then for 1 million it took just 1 year. From this experience I can say that there are many ups and downs will come to your journey it’s upto how you react to that situations. Your reaction toward this difficult times decide whether you are going to achieve your goals. For me, patience is the key, bas karm karte jaao, fal mil jayega. Even when I talk about marketians, it took 2 years to gain 50,000 audiences but just took 3 months to reach the mark of 3,60,000. So, here in the digital world, it’s not like you came and become success, you have to show your will power to this digital world and then see the magic.
Decision making – most people don’t talk about this quality, they are like it is an easy task but when the time come for taking the decision this becomes the most difficult task. When the reels came on Instagram, all the fact pages were become down, my all earnings went totally negative. But I took the decision to go in favour of trend which was Personal branding, after 2020 I got it that I need to do something different on Instagram to exist here and I saw that personal branding is going to be the future and I instantly decided to start my journey of personal branding. I can say that this decision literally changed my life now.
4. What are some of the most important factors for running a successful business?
Belief – by this I meant to say that belief in your own product. If a company’s founder, its CEOs, and its all employees have a belief in their product then I think no one can stop that business to become successful and that’s why a business need to hire only those who belief in the ideology of the founder.
Change - This is 2022 and today the trend, the technology, the fashion, people behavior, all these things change really fast. For this, I think a business must have a sufficient space to take decision and compete with the changing environment of today. I had seen many business failed because they were not able to update their business model with the changing trend of the consuemer.
Customer – Most people make goal to sell a product to customer, but to sell a customer more than twice you need to sell them your service convenience at the first place only by this you’re making them loyal to your company, if you were not able to make them loyal then it is for sure someone else will come and offer a same product at the less price and sadly your customer will no longer will be your customer. A loyal customer are those who don’t shift even they’re getting the same aduct at the from price form your competitor and the reason is that be believe they belief that you will treat them with the best service of yours.
5. What opportunities have come after covid times and how did you scale up at that time?
After covid my all the pages that I build throughout the years either it was meme page or either it was fact pages, all of them becoming dead/down because that was then Instagram came with the idea of reels. And I was the one that got at reels is the feature which is going to become one of the best way for personal branding, as far as I know in my community of pages, I was the one to step in the field of personal branding. I started in march 2020, gained 50k followers in 5 months but after that I don’t know what happened to the algorithm of Instagram my all reach went down, till march 2022 I was stuck at 50k, not gained a single follower. I uploaded more than 500 content on my content but none of them got viral, I was quite disappointed with that because other creators was like they uploaded 10-15 contents and it become viral all of a sudden but this was not the case for me.
In march 2022 I was thinking to quite this content creation journey because practically I gave my 2 years and seeing no response to it seriously a big disappointment. But, I decided to give one more chance, the last chance, one more month to this, and then will stop if got no response. But luckily that last month my 2 reels got viral and then it gave me literally the best feeling. I can say when you put your 100% effort to anything, no one can stop you in becoming successful.
After covid we all know that the digital industry saw a big boom, I also started my digital marketing agency in the name of qualitick. Today, we have more than 10 long-term clients who are with us from a very long time.
6. What is the biggest challenge in the startup industry at the moment?
If we will see with wide perspective towards the startup industry, the biggest challenge that the startups industry is witnessing is the unrealistic competition due to startup bubble. As of 2021 report, Indian startups had seen around 40bn dollar funding, but the twist here is that more than half of these startups are hardly profitable. But investors are putting their money in these startups for the sake of FOMO but by not seeing these companies through fundamental basis.
This bubble is similar to .com bubble in US. When the .com websites were in boom, every other person started creating websites and even raised millions in funding from the investors, but in the end that bubble burst out and we all know about that huge crash after that.
I am scared that same can happen to India also, and when this startup bubble will burst there we will see a huge crash in the market.
7. What are your views on the fact that marketing and business are changing so drastically?
From my experience, with the changing time, there is an increase in the rate of change in trend. Means nowadays every other week or day there is a new trend coming in the market. Due to this Human behavior is also changing much faster rate. And if the businesses wanted to be successful they had to plan their next move in marketing by keeping in mind this rate of change.
8. Since there is a lot of competition even in online businesses so how according to you a business can overcome this problem?
I think competition is everywhere whether we talk about competitive exams or we talk about online businesses, it all depends on your creative thinking and your willpower to beat that competition. 3 best things that worked for me and all of my clients are mentioned below :
1) Building community –
Building community is far and far greater than building just a large audience. You need to connect with your audience with your product by using their emotions for example zomato and paperboat do within their online platforms, they hit the user's emotions by uploading the relatable content, and that’s why today they have large real base on online platforms, no need to say many brands buy even fake followers. So, try to build community instead of just large audience, remember 100k community is always far and far greater than the 1m+ followers which is just a large number of audience and not a community.
2) Adapting the trend –
When it’s about online campaigns for business, most brands normally reach out to the celebrities but today they’re also hiring influencers which are mostly cheaper than hiring a celebrity and also meet the brand’s campaign goal very easily. This influencers trend came just after the time of covid and I see many brands are adopting this trend very effectively, so when it’s about online business always make your model completely free so your brand can change their strategies accordingly because there are just few companies that are able to do that, this makes you ahead of competitors.
3) Defining your brand –
When businesses run their marketing campaign or build a community the foremost factor is to define your brand image with that. Define your mission and vision to your audience and if they will have believe in your product they will itself do marketing of your product because that’s what the power of online marketing is. Imagine when you have a 100K community who have a belief in your brand/ business, how much revenue or sales you will be able to generate from that small amount of audience.
9. What are some of the best career advice that you have ever received?
We all have a question in our mind that how to find a goal in life or how successful people find their goal in life.
But you know what there is always a time in the life of one individual, the millionaires or even the billionaires do not know their goal or purpose of life. It is all about trying out new things, making new goals, and experiencing them.
All the successful people found their purpose by trying new things and exploring new opportunities. So, when you get confused about your goal, remember it’s about trying new things, making new goals and in the end you will find your purpose of life. It is just that some people find their purpose very early or some people find it later in life. It’s just a matter of time but don’t stop yourself in life just because you did not know about your purpose because everyone here is just like you or was like you, in some moment of their lives.
Interviewed By - Shashank Sehgal
.jpg&description=Vikas Gawri - Define Your Mission and Vision to Your Audience and if They Will Have Believe In Your Product They Will Itself Do Marketing (Entrepreneur From India)){kind=link}
0 Comments