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Prateek N. Kumar started his career in hospitality and hotel management, where he found the business of events management particularly interesting. He worked with several event agencies, gained experience and then decided to start his own business. In April 2011, Kumar founded NeoNiche Integrated Solutions along with former colleagues Ashish Iyer, Valay Lakdavala, Indraneel Bhat and Ashish Sedani. NeoNiche is a marketing agency that promotes brands through events, road shows, exhibitions, conferences, digital marketing, customer contact programmes and social media.
“We just started with a dream, we had no resources and no backing. All of us came from middle class families and had no major contacts,” says Kumar, 34, Co-founder, CEO and Managing Director. The company borrowed things like furniture, office equipment, etc. from family and friends to start operations. It also faced more challenges than most other startups. For instance, during one of its first large events, the building that housed the startup’s office caught fire. The team had to work out of a make-shift office at Kumar’s inlaws’ house. Securing clients was also quite difficult.
“We had such a hard time with our first client. We literally asked him to give us business and if after delivery he felt we had done even a rupee’s worth of a job, we would issue him an invoice,” says Kumar. From hiring the first employee, closing the first vendor to getting the first project it was all tough. “We had no money and no work for the first six months,” recalls Kumar. But gradually the company gained acceptance.
Beating all odds, NeoNiche has grown to become a leading marketing agency in a relatively short span of time and counts the likes of Google, Gartner, Amazon Web Services, HDFC and Siemens among its 130-strong clients. “All cofounders worked without salaries for almost a year, we built our Web portal inhouse to save money and used several innovative—jugaad—ways to curtail expenses,” says Kumar, winner of the Indian Achievers Forum’s Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2015. Headquartered in Mumbai, NeoNiche has branches in Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai and also a presence in Singapore, Dubai and Sri Lanka.
The company works on two major business models. The retainer module, where the clients pay a fee for its services and a retail profit-sharing model. It also has a hybrid model of sorts for small and medium enterprises (SMEs)—SME Konnect—where it offers low-cost basic marketing services even as a separate team partners with the SMEs to build and execute their event needs. “Our immediate focus is to add value in the startup and SME space where we think a profit-sharing model will work better than the cost-based model,” says Kumar.
Founded with an initial investment of Rs 5 lakh, put in by the co-founders, NioNiche generated a revenue of Rs 25 crore in 2015-16. It now has a staff of 125 and has executed more than 3,500 campaigns. The founders expect revenue to more than double to Rs 60 crore in 2016-17. The startup has won 12 major awards including Emerging Company of the Year 2015 and Fastest Growing Indian Company Excellence Award given by the Indian Achievers Forum, Most Admired Event Management Company, Golden Star Award 2015-16 and Best Business Practices, Business Leadership Award 2016.
“There are ad agencies, event agencies and digital agencies, which offer us competition in their specific segment, but our end-to-end solutions for brands distinguish us, and have helped us grow,” says Kumar. NeoNiche’s plans for 2016 include investing in the digital and technology space for better brand marketing and establishing branch offices in Dubai and Singapore.