Azaz Motiwala, Founder, IKON Marketing Consultants

Yourstory caught up with Azaz for a tête-à-tête and he had this to say-

“IKON Marketing Consultants is a leading Marketing Consulting company in India assisting Indian and Foreign companies with expert advice and solutions on various areas of marketing covering marketing strategy and planning, market auditing,

 market research, international marketing, branding, sales strategy, internet marketing. Since 2001, we have served numerous companies from a wide variety of Industries, successfully completed more than 200 consulting assignments.”

“Our expert team consists of highly qualified and experienced marketing professionals performing on each consultancy project with focus and dedication, delivering perfect solution and results within a timeline.”

“Any business facing problems in marketing can benefit by us. We deliver cost effective expert advices and solution on various areas of marketing which gives client a competitive advantage with sustainable business growth.”

They have a range of services that can make your company’s hard work that much more effective. They offer:

-Various marketing solutions under one roof

-Network and representative partners in various foreign countries

-Cost effective as operating under lower overheads

-Vast industry experience and expertise

Azaz says “Our business model is simple. Client pays us professional fees based on assignments and/or our regular involvement in marketing support.”

We asked Azaz about future plans and we were pleasantly surprised. As the saying goes do today what you shall do tomorrow, so have they. Azaz reports “We have already scaled up our business by launching a new concept of marketing audit in India which helps clients to know the current situation of their business and marketing strategy. Further we have planned to start a branch office in Germany to serve clients from European countries.”

On the personal front Azaz reveals that entrepreneurship was always on his mind. He spoke about his leanings saying “It was my overall goal to be a successful entrepreneur since college days and after completing my study and joining my first job, I felt that I could grow much better rather than stick to 9 to 5 job.”

An innovative thinker Azaz relates how he dealt with a problem early on in his career as an entrepreneur. He says “In the beginning, we were focusing on local SMEs but due to lack of their understanding on strategic marketing and marketing consulting practice, we were not getting enough clients as per our business model. Then we implemented a strategy to educate them first, ignited their need of our marketing expertise which gave us the expected results. Further we had started targeting Indian corporate and foreign companies in 2006 which also gave us good no. of clientele.”

Started with Rs 50000/- only IKON Marketing Consultants has not done badly for itself at all. In fact on reading his story one can almost see a pattern of self fulfillment. Azaz was kind enough to describe his initial start in detail, he said “It was the era of entry of the internet in India when I thought of starting my own consulting practice and I realized the potential of the internet for doing business and that’s how I started my 1st service of International Marketing. I was visiting manufacturing companies based at Rajkot which wanted to export their products and establish an international market and at the end of the 1st year I succeeded in signing one client for my international marketing service. Initial disappointments couldn’t break me as I was had faith in my offering. There lay vast potential for the international marketing service because Rajkot is a manufacturing hub for various industrial supply items.”

“In the 2nd year, hired an office and started to work on other marketing consulting practices focusing on other clients and later on purchased my own office and officially established IKON marketing consultants. It was a one man show for the initial 3 years and afterwards I hired dedicated employees. Since 2007 we started to receive regular consulting assignments from foreign clients for the Indian market and international market. After that there was no looking back for IKON. At present IKON has many foreign corporates in its client portfolio and the portfolio bouquet is getting bigger in size year by year. At present there are 5 dedicated employees working full time for IKON among them 4 are in India and 1 is in USA representing IKON. During the journey of these 8 years IKON was successful in establishing an international network of partners and representatives in USA, Europe, and Middle East countries. The recession has not impacted us much rather it was seen as an opportunity by IKON and we were successful in signing the new foreign clients for its marketing consultancy services.”

From amongst all his numerous milestones Azaz cherishes but a few, he says “Our first biggest achievement was in 2007 when we got an assignment from corporate foreign clients which gave us enough revenue and reorganization in International markets. We have also been selected in Expert team of world's top B2B portal Alibaba.com where we had delivered 4 online seminars where more than 15000 companies from different countries participated which has gave us recognition on an International platform. Our client’s satisfaction is the most valuable recognition we had received so far and are receiving.” 

A stoic tempered man he knew well the pitfalls of his trade and was well prepared to face them so any thoughts of quitting were far from being entertained. “No. as I knew that ups and downs are a part and parcel of any business. My confidence in my expertise and offering but more importantly the support of family members, friends and employees helped me to enjoy my rollercoaster ride of entrepreneurship.” saidAzaz

He is eyeing a European and Middle Eastern client base for his company by 2010 says “In addition to our regular practice areas, we have also set a target of adding more than 50 assignments in our portfolio for recently launched marketing audit consulting practice.” 

Azaz parted with a few words on the recent economic times and how it relates to an emerging entrepreneur. He advises them saying “Keep your patience and stick to your overall business goal. Do not get depressed by the present global recession. Implement status quo strategy instead of growth in recession. Next economic boom will give you faster growth than expected. Do not try to be an expert in all business processes. Hire an expert for specialized tasks and/or when you face difficulties.”

We are sure that Azaz and IKON will make a difference to many companies and we wish them success in doing so.