We had a candid interview with Mr. Amish Shah, Business Chief/ Director of Prosmit.
Being an MBA from Gujarat University, he holds more than 15+ years of marketing experience across national & international markets.
Amish prefers to describe himself as a Marketeer at Heart, Salesman by Head, and Entrepreneur in Genes. He is a self-learned Digital Marketer who got in-roads into Digital Marketing when Facebook was just born or Youtube was not acquired by Google.
After having more than a decade-plus journey in Digital Marketing, he’s today one of the renowned names in the Western region of India who is helping empower companies and individuals realize their Digital Marketing goals with his agency and training services.
Amish strongly feels for the physically disabled and believes Digital Marketing offers them a good career option. He, thus, imparts free Digital Marketing training to any such interested candidate or organizations working for their betterment.
Awarded as Entrepreneurial Achiever Award 2019 by his alma-mater S.K. Patel Institute of Management, his firm got featured on Social Samosa, ranked as Top 20 Most Promising Digital Marketing Companies in India. He gets featured regularly in local newspapers also. More info on https://www.prosmit.in/digital-marketing-about
He lives by the mantra of Aut Viam inveniam aut faciam. For more, connect with him on Linkedin.com/in/AmishProsmit or follow him on Twitter.com/AmishProsmit.
Here is the verbatim transcript of the interview.
1. What inspired you to launch PROSMIT?
Way back in 2006-07, I stumbled upon the concept of Digital Marketing while I was working as a Case Study Researcher for one prominent B-school in India. Thereafter I worked for the next 4+ years across IT companies of Ahmedabad that were trying to find the right track to approach it.
It was a nascent stage for this industry with too many uncategorized talents getting a chance and higher room for experiments or errors. But wherever I used to go around in social circles, people were simply blank when I would try to explain to them about Digital Marketing. It was a tough task but at the same time, I realized what if I tap the first-mover advantage for Indian markets. Being a Gujju, the startup bug caught me around 2011 and I took a risky plunge of leaving my high-profile corporate job for setting up PROSMIT.
2. Would you brief me about PROSMIT and how it works?
Prosmit is a boutique Digital Marketing Agency based out of Ahmedabad and in business since 2011 that has served more than 135+ international & local clients on a retainer basis. We focus on offering tailor-made impact-driven campaigns for Social Media (Organic & Paid), Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Ecommerce & Digital Identity Creation across platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Linkedin, Google, Youtube, Amazon, etc. Prosmit is coined from ‘Professionals in Sales & Marketing with Information Technology’ and is based out of Ahmedabad with Parent Firms namely SMIT Digital Marketing Pvt. Ltd & Prosmit Inc. For more, info visit: www.prosmit.in.
3. What was the core objective of introducing such a concept of digital training platform; where do you find your company today?
Since our setup in 2011, we were struggling to find the right talent for our business. Each time, we would hire freshers it would be painful to mentor and train them. We realized that working just as a Digital Marketing Agency won’t work alone. We had to step up as a responsible entity and be instrumental in talent grooming. That’s where we officially launched our training vertical in 2016 (5 years after our agency setup). Since then to date, we have provided professional Digital Marketing Training to 1000+ students and 125+ C-level Corporates. For more visit, https://www.prosmit.in/digital-marketing-training
4. Who can benefit from your training, and how?
Prosmit has been providing professional Digital Marketing Training since 2016 in all possible formats such as Private Coaching for Professionals / Small Entrepreneurs, Corporate Training for Industry Associations / SMEs, Group Batches for Managers / Business Owners, Academic Batch for Engineering / MBA Colleges as well as Seminar for Universities / Budding Entrepreneurs. Also as a CSR initiative, we offer free training to physically challenged candidates that can help get them employment. We are closely associated with Apang Manav Mandal, Ahmedabad, and have conducted numerous training programs for the same.
5. How different are your services than others offering similar services?
We are a boutique Digital Marketing Agency and focus on a limited but impactful portfolio of services. We neither try to be one more IT Company or a Graphic / Branding Agency that would list Digital Marketing as a side hustle. So our clients love us and they typically call us Digital Marketers by DNA. We emphasize 4 specific areas of impact for Digital Marketing, namely: Right Content, Catchy Designs, Engaging Videos, and Rightful Optimization.
6. How you plan to expand your company?
We are looking forward to giving away PROSMIT franchises. The plan’s ready and has just been rolled out as we see an ample amount of opportunities for both the Digital Marketing Agency & Training business. Specifically, in the post-COVID19 era, it may not be possible to drive complete organic growth under our fold. So, it’s better to partner with like-minded enthusiasts who are willing to undergo professional as well as business training with us and join our franchise program. That should help us scale up quicker. Interested parties can contact us on 8866001331.
7. How people are responding to this concept, and how fast is it gaining traction?
Yeah, we had given a shot to this franchise program earlier in 2017-18 but could not succeed much after the initial two franchises. But the time is ripe now. Since we rolled out franchise opportunities a few weeks back, we have already got few interesting calls but we do have strong criteria to zeroing on the kind of franchise partners we wish to get on-board. Mostly, the interested candidates are second-generation entrepreneurs or top corporates who are willing to give a shot for entrepreneurship in post-COVID19 times. They are ready to shell out our franchise fees and also undergo an extensive 3 months Digital Marketing training cum business mentorship program. Hopefully, once the first batch of our franchisees is out, you may find PROSMIT’s presence across many cities of India.
8. Do you see a need for more such companies in India? What’s the future of such initiatives in India?
Yes, there is. Since we started providing professional Digital Marketing Training in 2016, a lot of attendees would question us on why were we imparting training when that would also mean we were creating our future competitors. But we had an inclusive approach and believed that the Digital Marketing ecosystem still has a growth capacity to absorb more than 200 players just in the western region of India. Also, the training initiatives never hurt PROSMIT, instead, it only opened opportunities for us to collaborate with like-minded players trained under us for pitching larger projects.
9. How was your journey as the owner of PROSMIT, and what challenges do you face?
Well, that’s a long story. It’s a Startup Survival Story of a first-generation entrepreneur’s dream and I have tried to live by this mantra – Aut viam inveniam aut faciam (a Latin term for I shall either find a way or make one).
I was a risk-taker. Coming from a humble background, I clearly remember the days of my student life when with just 200 bucks in the pocket, I would be drafting plans of 20 lakhs plus and as on date for few crores. I had my shares of failures and rejections, but I kept going forward as I had no other plan B except to make my business idea succeed. But it could not be just a wild obsession, I had to constantly evolve myself and there’s a price that one pays to come out from the comfort zone. I do have a few more learnings from this journey, which I plan to share as an entrepreneurship series someday.