Interview with Kapil Gupta: co-founder of OMLogic

Online marketing is a generalized term nowadays. Almost everybody, and you can mean it to be exact, everybody seems to be an expert in online marketing. Lots of people crack friends puns on people who dare to call them SEO guys or experts. However, whatever may be the amount of generalization, businesses can’t do without its effectiveness. Online marketing, has been and is one of the most important tool to make sure the online business thrive the competition and is able to reach its potential.

OMLogic is not an outsourcing company, but a strategic partner for online marketing success. OMLogic is founded by four serial entrepreneurs in 2007. The company has come a long way, helping business-houses harness the power and magic of the web to expand their reach and take on bigger players in the game.

We had an email interview with Kapil, one of the co-founders of OMLogic.

Q1. Tell us something about OMLogic.com. How you thought of starting it?

I thought of starting OMLogic 4 years back while I was working at IBM living in the US. There seemed to be so many business models which were being developed online in US (education to insurance to retail to real-estate to classifieds) that it seemed like the perfect opportunity to recreate some of them in the Indian context. Plus the lure of coming back to India. After coming back, I realized that my expertise in taking a business model online, but don’t have the domain expertise in most of these domains. Thus came OMLogic, an online marketing company which helps these domain experts go Online.

Q2. What do you think is the value of online marketing for startups and small businesses?

Huge, I don’t think businesses can ignore online at all.

Let’s say, Vivek, that you just started a business. You start by making a really great website. And then? Who knows about your website or your business? Heck, do your would-be customers even know that you exist?

At any given minute, there will be zillions searches online, millions of users roaming the virtual space & tons of web pages. How will your customer find you in all this? OMLogic leverages OM to make your business e-visible. We mark the target, (map the destination) chalk out the track and employ the RIGHT vehicle.

Also, people spend more time online now versus the Television. So, the entire brand engagement has to move from print and TV to online, which is what OMLogic helps businesses achieve with our Social Media services.

Q3. Talking about the targeted audience of your venture, what market size you are targeting?

When we started out, we got a lot of SMBs are our clients. And we served them well; given that we were SMB ourselves, who else would understand their needs as well as we did? As the business expanded, we have become a trusted authority in our domain, and have a fully defined implementation process in place. Once we got our delivery bandwidth broad enough, we were able to approach big enterprises and multinational corporations. Today we have a healthy mix of SMBs and big giant brands in our client kitty.

Q4. What is your business strategy and how has been the response to it so far?

There are 2 kinds of companies in the online marketing domain at this point.

Service companies, where the strength is technology and developing reach to the client. This is where companies who started as web-development companies or SEO companies and are now expanding would fit in. They Creative companies, which is where media companies who started as print would fit in. These companies know how to engage customers very well and build good content and creatives.

We are one of the only companies in India which does both (and does both very well). To say differently, we are the only TRUE marketing company in the online world.

Structuring something as unstructured as social media in a fully process oriented approach while maintaining the creating edge is what we do best.

Q5. What type of services do you provide?

We are a comprehensive online marketing services company, we are ‘Social Search’ experts.

We do everything to market a client’s business online. Starting from Search Engine Optimization so that prospective customers can find you, to paid adverts on the internet.

Our prime offering, though, is Social Media Marketing. We are the pioneers in Social Media Marketing in India and are easily one of the Top 5 SMM players in the country.

We are the only company in India that can boast of Social Media successes beyond developing good Facebook communities (of course we have the Facebook communities to show as well)

Q6. How do you attract your clients; I mean what is the USP of your venture?

Customer focus and deep-rooted business consulting experience and expertise. We don’t go to a client and tell him what we will do; rather, we go and tell them what they will get in their business. This is second only to the customer focus and enthusiasm we have for our customers. The feedback I most cherish from a client was when I went for a 3 hour pitch and after I left the client told a common connection that for the amount of energy they showed, this company must be giving Glucon-D to their employees everyday.. For us, it was really our passion for the busines that we demonstrated.

Q7. What you feel is the value of innovation in your venture?

Structuring something as unstructured as social media in a fully process oriented approach while maintaining the creating edge. One of the primary concerns in the social media industry is resources or the lack of them. Through our innovative approach to social media execution we have broken down the resource requirements into specific skill-sets which are easy to get and provides us enough scalability in the business, while making us affordable (of course affordability have different meaning for different companies).. 🙂

Q8. What is the scope of expansion and what is your vision about it?

We have slowly but surely become one of the best social media execution companies in India. Our companies marketing policy is we love to stay under the radar so the big players never get scared of us and the small players consider us their friends. So, I am glad you haven’t heard much of us. We like it that way.

2-3 years ago, leveraging Online Marketing for your business was an option, today it is a mandate, a must-have for every business, big or small. That is how indispensable Online Marketing has become.

Our vision is to become the go-to social search company Globally and we are quickly exploring partnerships associated with them. Bringing Gillian on the board of advisors (founder & president of SEOMoz) is a part of this strategy.

Q9. How you liked the journey till now as an entrepreneur, being able to start an online business?

It has been a fascinating journey so far, full of ups and downs. For me personally, the change to being an entrepreneur came with multiple other changes. Moving back to India, living with parents, etc. I have thoroughly enjoyed every bit of it.

Q10. Any advice for future entrepreneurs from your personal and professional experience?

Entrepreneurship, definitely not for the weak hearted. 🙂

TEAM, TEAM and TEAM.. Work with the right kind of people.

Here is my #1 advice for success: Do not, and I really mean do not, hire larger than life high performers in your team. They are usually unstable; they usually bring the morale of the team down; they usually won’t last long. Hire good, stable, confident employees who want to make something of them and are willing to go the distance with you. I am not suggesting by any means to lower your criterion for evaluating people; rather, evaluate the person’s stability. Those who aim higher than where you are will not last. We have made our set of mistakes at OMLogic in our first incarnation and have almost resulted in bringing us down.