Five ingredients to make your startup a global success, by Arvinder Gujral of Twitter

When Arvinder Gujral of Twitter stepped on stage at the TechSparks 2014 grand finale, little did the audience know that the discussion on ‘Ingredients for global success’ can be so tasteful and delicious. Arvinder, who heads business development for the microblogging site in India and South East Asia, has been working for almost two decades in big companies as well as startups. Having seen both the sides of the picture and as a key member of Twitter during its journey to global success, he had a lot to share at TechSparks.

Arvinder candidly kicked off his session saying,

“I’m not an entrepreneur but I’ve been a part of many great companies, and some shady companies all over the world.”

Here are the ingredients for global success as shared by Arvinder which he fondly put in the umbrella of #Cooking-as-a-theme:

1. Sell yourself and be the brand

Founders reflect the company. One cannot deny the fact that experiences of what you’ve gone through becomes a major part of the brand you’ve founded. Eg. CEO of a startup called DollarShavedClub with no marketing budget crafted a brilliant video which got nearly 17 million hits on YouTube. Of course it took months of work and in the process, any word which didn’t added value was edited, but the CEO could do this because he was selling himself as the brand.

2. #Moments are 24*7

Learn to leverage in life with the moments around you. To put things in perspective, ~ 1 billion tweets are sent every 2 day which means the same numbers of opportunities are provided by twitter to engage with potential customers. With these moments all around, without meeting in person you’re able to exchange the information with mere #s.

3.      #RealTimeMarketing

New year, festivals, events, celebrations, awards and so much more takes place every other day. Sometimes these are planned, sometimes they just take over all internet discussions by surprise. If you can create a successful campaign around it, there’s nothing like it. Here’s one such example where Snickers leveraged on one of the FIFA world cup incident:

4.      #AudienceDelight

Do not miss on giving a great experience to your customers on social media. Sometimes, surprise them, but makes sure that they get an answer and an assurance to be heard always. Carlsberg once responded to a young lady’s tweet when she asked ‘whether to drink or not before catching the flight’. Carlsberg’s response was hilarious and responsible at the same time:

If you’re not the captain, we would say, “Go for it".

5. #BrandToBrand

Feel free to fool around a bit or share some light moments with your peers on social media. These gestures do a good job for your brand and puts up an image of a healthy competition of the industry. Here’s a great anecdote where KitKat was trolled by Oreo:

Create your own unique omelette and enjoy the #moment

Arvinder said rightly,

If all of you read the same books at the same time you’ll have the same doubts. You are here because you want to be your own slave and master.

Here is the list of top 30 technology companies that showcased at TechSparks. For complete Techsparks coverage, click on #tsparks