Great Companies: How did you get your idea or concept for the business?
Upendra Rana: An entrepreneur is born when he or she discovers their zest to explore new avenues in the market. I was working in the IT background when I found an opportunity in the digital space which is on boom. I quit my job to start my own business. That’s how ‘Make Your Brandz’ was born. The idea was to create a full-fledged digital marketing agency with a vision to provide excellent and cost-effective service to customers. Treading a new path is always difficult. When I started ‘Make Your Brandz’, nobody around me was aware of the endless possibilities of digital marketing. They were reluctant to avail digital marketing services. However, I successfully convinced them about the benefits of online space and how it would help a business.
Launched in 2015, ‘Make Your Brandz’ is now in the forefront to help people scale up the business. I have also written books about different aspects of digital marketing to educate people about its benefits, and the techniques involved. What was it like to build a brand in the highly competitive digital marketing landscape of India? I have spoken in length about my journey. Earlier I was a job seeker now I am a job provider. I single-handedly started this firm with an investment of INR 20,000 at Sahibabad in Uttar Pradesh. I did not take any financial help from my parents. Within a short span of time, Make Your Brandz has been able to carve a distinctive niche, winning the trust of numerous clients from different industry segments. Make Your Brandz has made digital branding easy for both small and big firms.
Great Companies: What are the various Services provided by Make Your Brandz
Upendra Rana: Currently, we are offering various services like
· Web development & design
· Digital Marketing
· SEO Services
· Social Media Marketing
· PPC Services
· Email Marketing
· Creative creation for Social Media.
· YouTube Marketing
· Facebook Marketing
· Instagram Marketing
· Content Creation and marketing.
Secondly, we are also into providing training in all aspects of digital marketing like SEO Training, SMO Training and so on.
Great Companies: What makes Make Your Brandz different from hundreds of other digital marketing companies?
Upendra Rana:
Our uniqueness lies in the quality of work & whatever we say we deliver to end users. We are cost effective as compared to others. Secondly, we have practical knowledge of the same.
Great Companies: What are the struggles and challenges you face?
Upendra Rana: Everyone learn from their mistake and I have also learn a lot. We gave our 100% at initial stage of our business towards client’s work, but lack of presentation came against us. Now we listen to all opinions & criticism and try our best to fix the loopholes. We are still learning on the way & that’s the best part about being in a startup you always learn. Learning never ends. The obstacles are way of advertising and age factor too, working on-Ground advertising & investment. We are young guns of Make Your Brandz that’s why it’s difficult to get faith from client, but we are working on it now we almost have overcome from this issue because of our quality work.
Great Companies: How do you plan to grow in the future? What does 5 years down the line look like for Make Your Brandz?
Upendra Rana: We want to capture international market of Dubai & UK.
Great Companies: If you had one piece of advice to someone just starting out, what would it be?
Upendra Rana: Do your homework: study the field in which you are going to start your work, understand the highs and lows of that industry and then get started.
Focus on One Core Product: Most start-ups have a great vision and a great idea: ‘It’s going to be awesome, and we have a huge amount of ideas and features that are going to be in this start-up.’ Focus only on the core product or business, get that built, and get out there! It’s good to have a big picture of where to go, but then chop each feature or service off one by one until you’re down to the minimum core product.
Be Prepared to Sacrifice: If you’re serious about building a great, enduring company, you have to be willing to sacrifice some things.
Build Great Relationships: No business can survive without talented employees, eager buyers, reliable suppliers, and supportive stakeholders and communities. While building your product and looking at all the data you can collect in the digital age, don’t forget to build close relationships and expand your network. It’s all about people at the end of the day.