17 year old Entrepreneur Bhavesh Daryani, on his ad-tech agency, ApeForest

“We use the power of new technology mediums(web and mobile) to help your business get more customers and help you create more value for them.” - Bhavesh tells us more in a conversation.

Tell us about ApeForest.

ApeForest is a full service marketing agency, so we literally do everything from direct response to product launches, licensing, strategic partnerships, public relations, product placements, digital media buying - you name it! Think of us like your marketing department (just that we are not in your office).

How are you different from other players in the market?

Unlike most of the other agencies, we sell our own products as well. Most of our operations are strategic in nature and we prioritize partnerships and help companies create new products in a joint venture. Also, we have our own frameworks that we follow for all our campaigns and launches which helps us get more effective results. In the past 6 months alone, we have made our clients earn over $150,000 via e-mail marketing through these frameworks.

What is the story behind Ape Forest?

The biggest problem my brother and I faced with our early ventures was marketing; we realized that it does no one any good(and the value is not actually created) unless the product is marketed/sold. Being introverts, we did a rather terrible job with the marketing side of things; so after going through mid life crisis of sorts and endless hours of self education, we figured the business/marketing side of things. After our personal projects started doing well, we got requests from other companies to help them and that is when we realised the amount of scope and value we can create for other companies.

Tell us about your background.

I’m a student of commerce and just completed my 12th standard from HR College of Commerce and Economics(Mumbai). I also am an alumni of Bombay Scottish School.

Let us know about the tie-ups that you have.

We work with numerous partners in our industry and have a network which consists of 40 of the top web magazines. There surely is acceptance of our concept in the market because most of our present clients have come through word of mouth, we have become the biggest agency in the web development/design niche.

Where do you see your start up five years from now?

In 5 years from now, I aspire to see 1 million active businesses running their marketing campaigns via our platform.

What is your revenue model? Have you been funded?

We have an agency model wherein we get monthly retainers + % of the extra profits we generate. We haven’t been funded.

As an entrepreneur, what are your joys? What are the challenges?

The good part about running your own company is that there is no ceiling to the amount of value you can provide. So that makes it really exciting since there is no limit to the creative success one can achieve. The experience of being an entrepreneur and running your own business completely changes ones mindset(in a very good way). In terms of challenges, a day feels too short to complete the amount of things I have running in my mind. With the amount of activity and campaigns running at any point of time, things can get a little overwhelming. Being 17 is a challenge all by itself - dividing time between studies, friends, sports and work is an herculean task!

How big is your team? Are you looking at hiring?

The company was founded by my brother and me. There are 7 of us working full time. We also work with many contractors/agencies/marketing departments(depending on the project). Yes, we are looking at hiring. Anyone interested can email me at [email protected] and introduce themselves.

Let us know about your expansion plans.

There are a lot of web apps we use internally(that help us execute campaigns effectively and automate the marketing process). So what we are trying to do is to launch these products to public so more people can get value out of them. We are also in parallel working on expanding into various different verticals.

Anything else you want to tell us?

We have a total of 94 clients in our network(these are different publishers and advertisers we work with) 90% of our clients are from the US. Remaining 10% from the rest of the world. Our most used service is managing product launches.

Do check out http://www.apeforest.com/ for more details.