Be Your Own Shark Tank | Suveer Bajaj | TEDxHRCollege
[Music] at the stroke of midnight hour when the world sleeps india will awake to life and freedom a moment comes which comes but rarely in history when we step out from the old to the new when an age ends and when the soul of a nation long suppressed finds utterance it is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of india and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity these words echo through the pages of history as prime minister neheru addressed the world as an independent india on the 15th of august 1947. i often ponder about the word independence set across various contexts be it the 15th of august 1947 the year india got independence from the british raj as a third generation immigrant from sindh having grown up with stories about how our families had to build from scratch after being forcefully thrown out of our homes this date is of personal significance to me when i pondered about independence for myself i'm reminded of the 10th of may 2008 the date i along with my 19 year old buddies founded a digital advertising agency in halls much like these amidst the global recession i was no older than most of you little did i know at the time that my urge to not drag myself through one more intellectually numbing internship would lead me to write the blueprint for the digital ecosystem across the country speaking of my college days if i was to think about independence in your context today on the 5th of march 2022 what does independence mean to you young teenagers overnight you are recognized as legal adults with the power to vote drive and do a whole bunch of other things that we can talk about later so what is the word independence truly signify across all these three different contexts it signifies power the power to make decisions that you choose to make and learning to thrive with whatever the consequences now relating these into my professional journey for me being independent meant learning everything on my own and by that i mean everything from learning about antiseptic cleaning soaps to washing the floors to learning quite miserably the importance of licensed softwares from preparing food for ravenous designers working till the wee hours of the morning to even doubling up as the in-house agony aunt on occasion this was an era when being an entrepreneur and owning a startup didn't have the glamour that it does today no sequoias and soft banks no ceos and ipos no exits and definitely no 20 year old millionaires we did it and did it all on our own before we knew it our motley team of four was over 200. our makeshift office in my bedroom was now offices across three cities we loved what we did and seized every moment as an opportunity to create the work we believed in with people who were committed to our vision in a culture that cultivated and fostered creativity and excellence this reminded us every day why we were doing what we did and i can say it made doing it a whole lot of fun by the mid 2010s almost every legacy brand in india wanted to work with us we managed digital solutions for cadbury l'oreal axe pepsi asian paints star tvz sony ipl teams isl teams hospitality fnb brands aqua bev brands even kingfisher airlines we've done this all on our own no investors no partners just a bunch of restless kids fearless and independent every newspaper wanted to know our story the traditional ad agencies hated us and loved us at the same time and soon enough the big boys took notice by 2014 we were on the radar of every global advertising network now to give you some context there are six major agency networks that own and control about 90 percent of advertising agencies globally consider a network to be a holding company exactly how the same holding company owns smokehouse delhi social and saltwater cafe the same company makes sure you have a good time whether at lunch for evening drinks or dinner later that night and gets rich while doing so similarly networks were formed because agencies started grouping themselves together with the intention of collectively solving their clients marketing problems networks deliver a wide variety of solutions consistently around the world and have very quickly become conveniently advantageous and reliable partners for their clients now as a 25 year old all this global attention from the networks came as a pleasant surprise to me maybe it was validation that we were definitely doing something right of course partnering with the network has its advantages the biggest one being that we had access to the best clients in the country and maybe even the world getting mentored by the best advertising minds in the world and getting recognition on a global platform getting infrastructure support to scale and most importantly what every indian parent wants for their child to be in a job where they are finally settled in life so we decided to think about exploring the opportunity with one of the world's largest global networks now the process of an acquisition is just like a relationship the first few months of dating are fantastic getting to know one another seeing the commonalities and the potential of the partnership and capitalizing on the strengths but once the honeymoon period wears off and things start getting real one begins to see the real picture this is what made me take a step back and really introspect were we going to run our business the way we envisioned it to be on boarding clients whose businesses we didn't necessarily believe in were we really coming up with ideas that we were truly excited about or just banging out campaigns one after the other just to grow revenue what was my own individual career map going to be in five years were the advantages really going to outweigh the disadvantages and most importantly were we going to solve the kinds of problems that we dreamed of solving after months of introspection and despite engaging extensively with key clients we decided to take a step back from the opportunity we knew deep down that what we wanted to retain was our independence and do the work that truly mattered to us in the way we had originally envisioned independence wasn't only about making our own choices it was about building pathways for our dreams and trust me it wasn't easy walking away from a check with more zeros that one could count on at the age of 25. now to be honest when the going at stuff sometimes i do ponder what would life have been like had we chosen to partner would we have gotten the chance to reject clients who wanted to work with lgbtq campaigns out of pure tokenism when they showed disrespect to the community behind closed doors maybe not would we have been able to diversify our advisory board comprising of a variety of experts from around the world instead of it just being people from one network would we have been able to evolve our business to produce films and tell stories that capture the heartland of india would we have been able to launch our own sas products on social commerce platforms the answer is probably no could i have been a part of the team that built india's first homegrown agency network to take india's creative talent to the world and the answer is no the allure of finding a strategic partner is tempting but we choose our independence just as we did 14 years ago amidst a global recession back in 2020 we launched india's first independent agency network this has given us a unique set of advantages and we've come to realize that this business is not about me or my partner it's about our clients and our teams that make it real as an independent network we have the privilege of choosing the clients and the teams that we work with and the ones we pass on we look for people and teams who demonstrate a similar passion as we do and more importantly live by the same values as we do we also have the ability to make choices that are right for our own network and are in line with our culture we hire entrepreneurs we reinvest our profits in doing the things that we love and enjoy and feed our souls as we continue to come to crossroads we are able to shift our gears without validation from anyone else this allows us to focus on our people and our clients to encourage them to push themselves to raise the bar and to really love something the journey of independence is a challenging one how do you get people to buy into your vision how do you wiggle your way into clients with your completely new advertising agency delivering on your promises to perform how do you recruit the best talent in the country on your team how do you grow and scale the business and keep up with times knowing that you don't have 20 million dollars in the bank how do you keep your head above water knowing that the next 20 20 could be around the corner and you don't have any safety net independence can be lonely at times constantly throwing yourself into the deep end of the water without knowing if there's a lifeguard or not but there's character built from throwing yourself in the water again and again something that i'm familiar with being a scuba diver when you're 100 feet under water by yourself and your corner down current your first impulse is to panic and abort the dive but if you trust your gut and your learnings you may just get to experience something that's beautiful today 14 years later digital is the everyday norm and everyone is an entrepreneur launching their next big startup that's getting funded and getting airtime but we are still creating our own blueprint in advertising we are writing a new roadmap for advertising in india and around the world i'm not sure how this story ends but know that you're a part of it know what you're going to experience i'm going to trust my gut and if you want to be a part of it you need to trust yours and know that this will be an adventure worth experiencing