My v2.0 today is a work-life balanced person.

I trust the process of life and have learned to wait. As cliché as it may have sounded a year ago, good things did come to me because I learned not to proofread the Creator’s work of art. (iykyk)

I exercise, meditate, read, work, cook, and spend time with my family.

What can I say? I am wealthy; intellectually, professionally, and personally.

I came across the Hebrew word ‘Husa’ in the above book which roughly translates to ‘an artist’s love for his or her own creation even when it’s imperfect’.

The word had just scratched my skin that day, it’s indelibly lodged in my heart today.

I own my imperfections and failure as much as I own my success today.

Fast forward to today, where do I stand?

Well, to begin with, I have been married to the person I love, woohoo!

Alsoooo, we run a successful performance marketing agency, Adruto.

We have now learned to delegate instead of breaking our backs every time a new project comes in…with our 9 thoroughly capable, diligent, and passionate team members.

When I say passionate, I mean people with a clear vision.

Now that I have one helluva of a team, touchwood, it feels like growth was always a stone’s throw away. Their unanimous dedication to work has beautifully woven success stories for many brands today. We have helped more than 25+ brands both in India as well as overseas in just a year’s time climb the sustainable growth ladder and unlock new growth avenues.

Now that I mention sustainability, this is what we have eventually gotten to embrace as our agency’s core principle, ‘Sustainable Growth’.

We helped every business identify bottlenecks that inhibited their growth, whether or not it fell in our gamut of work. It felt, and still feels like our duty to steer the brand in the right direction to help it grow profitably.

I didn’t want to gallop fast and gallop alone, I wanted to tread far and that’s when I decided to team up with my vibe matching tribe who wanted to be the long players in the game.

We are today A players in acquiring clients, yes! But also, AAA players in retaining them.

That’s what makes me super proud today!! Retention has been a global concern for most agencies out there, well, what can I say? Not for us!

We never stopped believing in ourselves, we never took shortcuts to success. Our roads have been rocky and edgy yet worth every drop of sweat to trod upon.

Numerically we stand at 21L+ INR average monthly earnings, with 35% gross profits and we have an ongoing contract with 8 brands.

We upskill every day; be it to learn to cruise through a new cuisine at home or to learn a new art in our field of work, we undauntingly roll up our sleeves and say, “What’s next?”

We very well started with performance marketing but are much more than just performance marketers today. We are leaders who learned valuable skills such as app marketing, growth marketing, building a personal brand, building assets to building the most valuable weapon of all, ‘a robust mental health’. We preached the same to everyone in and around us. Now our frequency is upped to resonate with gleeful people whose glasses are half-full.

What differentiates the ‘me’ today from the ‘me’ a year ago?

My resilience.

Tripping, dusting off, and walking again, just like my favourite anime character, Naruto.

Naruto [Nah-RUE-toe]: a tireless optimist always preaching ‘Dattebayo‘ through pain and joy; translating to ‘Believe it’.

That’s how our agency Adruto got its name, an agency homonymous and synonymous with Naruto. Amen.

Closing this piece in the same spirit as my opening line, Pragyan 2.0 today is a successful, gregarious, spiritually enlightened and happy person.

I voted for the second time in my 28 years of faring in this democracy.

I was 18 when I placed my first vote. Right on!

First votes are always special. Not because we get a say on who should our leader be but getting your finger inked (for the first time) brings in a sense of Instagrammable-pride.

Contrary to the airy-pride bestowed, my first vote was awkward, to be honest.

For one, I came across an EVM for the first time. For a person who is typing this blog out, a single press of a button on an EVM is no mammoth’s task you would say but duh! It didn’t have a processor. You press for the candidate and then a paper trail is generated in the VVPAT that basically registers your vote. Interesting, yet but it was reallllly slow. So slow that I know who the person prior to me voted for and goes without saying that the person next to me would have know who I voted for.

Yes, nobody told us to use common sense. We didn’t care to wait.

Second, the list of candidates mentioned on the EVM were all names I took time reading out. That’s not something I am proud of. I always brushed away political discussions citing disinterest. I stood there taking guesses despite being a citizen of the largest democracy. I was ignorant and ‘akad-bakad-bambay-bo’ed out to choose one.

Well, guesses don’t fuel our country’s governance wheels. Every vote counts and I just wasted one of mine.

That brings me to ponder if one is lucky enough to vote right when one’s ditto 18, and rounding off India’s average life expectancy to 70, the votes one can place in a lifetime is around 11.

If I count Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha independently then roughly 22 votes.

Alas! Not all get to place their first vote at 18. Just 22 shots at choosing a leader and wasting one due to ignorance is nothing short of shameful.

It has become a clichè to quote, ‘every vote counts’ but does it not count?

The stakes are high and the chances one gets at it are like what the count of fingers on the hands and legs combined?

The basis of voting in a democracy is choosing a leader who mirrors the vision that majority dream of. And currently Hinduism is what most Indians have placed a bet on as a mainstream agenda a leader should disseminate. Not employment, education, food security, health or poverty, mind you. Just religious supremacy.

If it satiates the ego, why not?

High time we call a spade, a spade and oust ourselves of the blind beliefs that feed our limited imagination. India in 2047 should be an India where we make sustainable choices, where literacy is no more a far-fetched dream, where hunger becomes buried as a word in the dictionary, where innovation and growth is caste, creed, religion and sex inclusive and where the GDP is driven by the majority instead of a collective few.

Remember, choosing without rationale is allowing demagoguery of political opportunists to toy with our faith. And our faith doesn’t come cheap.

Signing off. Jai Hind!

The dark side we faced (still face) as a marketing agency…

5 months into 2024 made us realize that 2023 was the worst year for us as an agency

✅ We pulled in double the agency earnings in 2023 compared to 2024
✅ We plunged from a dozen to just a handful of clients in 2024
✅ We downsized our team by 25% in 2024

Now in absolute terms, we are doing worse in 2024

But in relative terms, we are better off mentally

In 2023, we dissolved client contracts almost like a mass layoff and as I come to think of it, the below were the ones close to our hearts 🖤:

1. A client, an advocate of toxic work culture, who was verbally abusive to our team all the time, similar to how salespeople get berated when they don’t hit their targets, got fired by us. Despite being our top-paying client, we decided to do what felt right
   • Money: 0, Self-Esteem: 1
     
2. Another client, who was very scholarly, kept making daily changes to our campaigns and bids. Our last conversation ended with Tum hi karlo’
   • Money: 0, Professionalism: 1
     
3. We had one client who didn’t pay us for three months and asked to work on credit until they get aired on Shark Tank
   • Money: 0, Art of Saying ‘No’: 1
     
4. There was a client who constantly asked loads of questions about our campaigns and strategies. We quite enjoyed educating him, until one day he removed our access to the ad account and started running the campaigns himself
   • Money: 0, Prevention is better than cure: 1

Most screamed toxicity to us

Now, on the brighter side, we rebranded from Whitbyspace to Adruto this year

We expanded from 400 sq.ft office space to 1000 sq. ft office

We are happier, healthier, find ample time to read & learn

Money is no more our standard KPI of growth

We would trade nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing for our mental peace

And if you are still reading this, you might as check how dope our website looks:

www.adruto.com