Adhvith Dhuddu, Founder, AliveNow Inc.

“Social Media- the new wave”

Social media is fast over running more traditional forms of advertising and is also inspiring some people in the process. Adhvith Dhuddu ranks among the inspired and believes that social media is the avant-garde and heralds a deeper and wider reach to the masses. His tryst with social media has solidified in his entrepreneurial venture called “AliveNow Inc.”

Adhvith told us more about his venture and elaborated on the advantages of Social media saying “AliveNow is a full service social media management firm. Our unique service offerings combined with unprecedented and world class social media analytics reports puts us on a pedestal in the social media space in India. With a focus on integrating a company’s on-ground strategy with their social media strategy, we strive to optimize an organization’s social media spend.”

“To be very honest with you, social media touches millions of people and its reach is only going to expand in the coming years. So any company which sells a product or a service, more in the B-to-C segment can leverage social media in many ways. Companies in the B-to-B segment can use social media for PR, branding and marketing/advertising.

Like how the newspaper, radio, TV and then internet revolutionized advertising, marketing and branding, social media is poised to do the same. It’s drastically altered the advertising, marketing and branding landscape, and companies need to adopt fast.

Adhvith and AliveNow are banking on some crucial distinguishing factors to separate them from the herd. He says “There are a few USP’s of our service offerings. While many companies offer social media management or online reputation management as a service, our clients enjoy a wider range of services. Our comprehensive solutions include social media management, SMS services, complete e-mail management and e-mail marketing solutions, comprehensive social media analytics reports and a strategy to integrate the on-ground strategy with the social media strategy.”

“To the best of my knowledge I am not aware of any company offering this combination of services to their client. Although there maybe standalone companies doing each of what I mentioned, no one does all this together. This is a huge advantage to our clients because we become their one-stop shop for all these things.”

His company will soon be seeing a lot of activity if all goes well. Adhvith reveals “We have a lot of plans to scale up. In a few months we will be releasing a robust and comprehensive social media analytics software that allows marketing, branding and ad managers to measure and analyze their social media spend. With consolidated reporting for all social media spaces in one place, managers will finally be able to access all analytics from one source.”

“We currently supply static reports, and soon managers will have access to dynamic reports, the ability to compare, contrast and measure. With this new service offering, we expect to sign up many clients in India and abroad.”

Adhvith confesses to being in the entrepreneurial arena to make money but uses it more as a yardstick than anything else. He explains his motivations as an entrepreneur saying “Very simple: to make lots of money. I idolize Robert Kiyosaki and in his famous book Cash flow Quadrant, he explains how if you are in a job, irrespective of your talent, efforts and commitment, your income is fixed, but when you run a business, you are measuring your success every month, every quarter and every year. Being an entrepreneur is like incorporating the continuous improvement process for me as an individual and the organization.”

Adhvith may be the harbinger of Social Media but convincing others and changing old thoughts has not been easy. He spoke on the reluctance of some saying “Social media is new in India, and the challenge so far has been to convince marketing and branding managers about the current and future potential of social media as a branding, advertising and marketing channel. Unfortunately there are more managers who want to stick to the traditional ways of advertising, branding and communicating. I honestly feel bad for them because one day they will realize the tremendous and unprecedented potential of social media and come back to us.”“Some of the unique advantages of social media as a channel are so lucid to me: the ability to engage a potential customer, the ability to get instant feedback about your service or product, the ability to target certain demographics with extremely high accuracy, the ability to communicate to potential customers on a regular basis at an extremely low cost, and so much more. But I find it hard to understand why managers can’t see this.”

“A standard reason I get is that “real India” is not on social media. I think that’s just giving reasons because the 200-300 million Indians who are on the internet and who are on social media are the people who are spenders and consumers, not the so called “real India.” I agree that traditional marketing techniques must be leveraged to reach out to “real India” or rural India.”

If anyone thinks that Adhvith might buckle under all the pressure, think again, he firmly denies any thoughts of relinquishing the field saying “NEVER. I know for a fact that entrepreneurship is the right path for me. If it’s not this venture, then it’s something else. But the thought of finding a regular job has not and will not cross my mind.”

Adhvith has only just begun his journey as an entrepreneur and offered his recently gained insights on how to go about the initial foray saying “NEVER wait for the “right moment” or the “right time” to embark on your entrepreneurial venture, if you do, then the right time will never come. ALWAYS take advice from people who are at a financial and social level that you aspire to be at, not your friends, relatives or professors. Take advice from other successful entrepreneurs; always keep reading books about entrepreneurship and business because learning is a never ending process, or an engineering way to put it is life is a continuous improvement process.”