[100 Emerging Women Leaders] How digital marketing entrepreneur, SaaS innovator, biker boss Ambika Sharma does it all

Meet the multifaceted Ambika Sharma who runs Pulp Strategy—an award-winning integrated marketing consultancy agency. 

Attesting to her entrepreneurial spirit is Instappy, a B2B (business-to-business) ‘mobility-enablement’ platform under the brand of Pulp Strategy. The trend-setting innovator is also an avid biker.  

But how did a science student—who went on to study Shakespeare—take the entrepreneurial plunge?

“After my 12th class, my parents advised me to take up a part-time job while preparing for competitive entrance examinations,” recalls Ambika, who hails from a family of army veterans. 

At that time, her father’s friend used to work with Mudra Communications. After interning there for three months, she decided to pursue advertising for a living. “I still had to follow my parents' directive; I studied software programming, but later, I went on to do my English Honours, and after that pursued a degree in Mass Communication,” she shares. 

The fresh college graduate got the idea to begin an integrated digital marketing company at a time when it was still a new concept. Thus, in 2011, she founded Pulp Strategy and began scaling rapidly as a digital marketing consulting agency.

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The branding firm started by consolidating the shared computing retail space in 30 cities and launched an augmented reality app in 2012.

It consolidated more than 3,000 premier campuses for an intellect-based youth marketing initiative in 2012, and also launched its own studio for animation and video content for the web in 2013. Pulp Strategy gained further traction in 2013 with the launch of near-field communication (NFC) based solutions for their digital services, such as business intelligence (BI), Object-Relational Mapping (ORM), and analytic capabilities.

In 2015, Ambika entered the world of fast-growing mobile marketing with Instappy. A business-to-business, software-as-a-service (SaaS) product platform, the company says it allows easy customisation, reduces go-to-market time, and updates tech for high-quality apps that include custom APIs (application programme interface) and advanced features, at a fraction of the usual cost. Instappy helps to build mobile apps in about 100 languages globally.

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Why HerStory felt there was a need for a Womankind of 100 Women Leaders

One of the largest challenges of running an independent agency is dealing with scepticism if your agency is not part of a large group. 

The larger problem, of course, lies in running an organisation and a business as a woman. “I'm sure in any country, including India, it takes a little bit more convincing (if you are a woman); you need to be a little bit more vocal and flamboyant about what you're doing,” asserts Ambika.  

Advising future women leaders, she says, “I would say be very strong physically and mentally if you are doing what you like, and what you believe in, you should not care about what other people think. And, work really hard,” she says.