Jaipur-based Atul Mathur shifted to Mumbai to do his engineering and started his career there with a digital marketing company. He says, whenever he went back to his home town and met entrepreneurs, he always found that they faced one common challenge – lack of resources to grow their business.
Atul felt he could do much more to help these startups and new ventures in Rajasthan and nearby regions to build a successful business, and hence decided to return to Jaipur and start his own venture.
“There were no digital marketing firms in Jaipur and I also saw a huge gap in terms of supporting as well as mentoring these startups,” says Atul.
Atul founded LocaGlobe, a digital marketing firm, in December 2015. The Jaipur-based startup provides a range of digital marketing services, which includes search engine optimisation (SEO), pay per click, social media marketing, etc.
Atul says, the trigger for starting his own firm also came from an incubation set up who sought his assistance to help the new startups in the State.
Addressing the gap
To begin with, the startup started providing services that went much beyond what a conventional online marketer would provide to its clients.
“Many businesses did not know anything about how to improve their business through digital marketing,” says Atul.
He also found that entrepreneurs who were into apparel making and were ambitious about growing their online business did not want to be tied down with any ecommerce marketplaces and wanted to carve out an independent identity.
According to Atul, the strength of LocaGlobe is its customised marketing plan for any new startup or businesses.
“We sit along with entrepreneurs to understand what kind of plan will work for them as each business will need a different strategy,” he says.
In some cases, the customers may require better SEO while others will need e-mail marketing and so on. It all depends on their business objectives.
Beyond digital marketing
However, Atul realised that his responsibility cannot just end at digital marketing, and he wanted to be part of the startup journey where he could provide other equally important inputs, which helps founders grow their business. This included things like selecting the right logistics partner, customer support, project management, buying the required software, finding partners, and also help them with raising funds.
“As we are deeply connected with the startup ecosystem, LocaGlobe has built a strong network with all kinds of professionals,” says Atul.
Today, LocaGlobe has customers from the segments including ecommerce, healthcare, and SaaS. The dominant ones are those in the consumer internet business who sell a range of products like apparel, fabric, cosmetics, electronic goods, etc.
LocaGlobe derives 85 percent of its business from customers in India, with remaining coming in from the US, the UK, and Ireland. Some of its prominent clients include startups such as Boat, Wonder, and Fabriclore. The startup has worked with 90-100 businesses so far.
The business
Digital marketing firms have proliferated in the country and they are present in several segments like boutique, medium, and large firms. In Jaipur, there are other digital marketing firms like CISIN, Kadam Techologies, DigitalMise, etc., but LocaGlobe seeks to create a differentiation.
LocaGlobe does not work with any fixed price structure, and in most cases gets paid only when the startup starts generating revenue.
“We do not want to bombard them (customers) with high retainer fee and take the risk of partnering with them to grow their business whereby we get our commission only when revenue is generated,” says Atul.
The team at LocaGlobe
This has helped LocaGlobe over the years as the founder claims that it enjoys around 90 percent retention rate with clients.
“We take this leap of faith where LocaGlobe is ready to invest in their journey and they also trust us,” says Atul.
According to him, the startup is growing at over 100 percent in the last few years and has generated around Rs 150 crore in revenue for the clients. Also, the Covid-19 pandemic accelerated the shift towards digital, which has turned in favour of the startup.
Despite LocaGlobe being located in Jaipur, it is able to attract and retain talent as the founder believes his colleagues are excited about the opportunity to being very closely engaged with the startup founders or new businesses. It has a team of 15 people.
The bootstrapped digital marketing startup has always remained profitable and has received several inbound investor interest, but is yet to take a call and raise investment.
Speaking about future plans, Atul says the startup would like to expand into larger metros like Mumbai, Gurugram, and Delhi-NCR, as it has been getting a lot of enquiries from these metros.
“Customers like the fact that we are willing to take risks along with them and our customised strategy is helping them grow their business,” says Atul.
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