Launching the Startup India Action plan, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had indicated that the government wants to play the supporting role and that of an enabler for Startups & SMEs. The resolution is laudable and the Budget 2016-17 looks to provide some essential strides around the ease of doing business. However, certain in-house affairs remain as a stumbling block for the entrepreneurs and start-ups to emerge and thrive. In the initial days of business, most of the entrepreneurs are focused on the aspects such as technology and engineering, building the product and sales & business development, while they fail to sense the importance of marketing. Multiple factors contribute to the founder’s lack of focus on marketing function of the organisation - lack of knowledge, time and bandwidth are some of them.

To fill in this gap and provide ‘Marketing as a Service’ to Startups and SMEs, Kaushal Veluri started Kanso Consulting LLP in 2015, leveraging his 20+ years of progressive experience working in multiple MNCs in Sales, Marketing and Partner Development. Kanso Consulting acts as the Virtual CMO for its clients by meeting end-to-end

needs of the Marketing function, and thus freeing up the founder’s bandwidth to help them concentrate on other functions for organizational growth. The growth-centric approach of the company recognizes the fact that Marketing is not a standalone function, but a synchronized one which needs to work hand-in-hand with sales, engineering and product functions simultaneously, to formulating an effective marketing strategy.

The growth-centric approach of Kanso recognizes the fact that Marketing is not a standalone function, but a synchronized one

The Simplicity

The B2B industry background of the management acts as a cornerstone in designing surprisingly simple strategies,as the name ‘Kanso’ suggests (means simplicity in Japanese).The company proposes the consulting services in two phases – COGS (Customer understanding, Objective setting, Gap analysis, & State of business) & REM (Recommend & Execution). Kanso initiates its proceedings by understanding the client's business thoroughly, post which it sets the objectives of marketing by considering all the internal & external business aspects, and concludes the first stage with the execution gaps & SWOT analysis to find the right direction for marketing.

The second phase hosts the recommendation of formulated strategies to the client and

eventually the execution process which includes content, design & logo creation, social media campaigning and much more. Post the execution, Kanso believes in seeking constant feedback to gauge the effectiveness of the tactics and if needed make necessary changes to ensure success.. This process oriented approach has helped the organization in acquiring a number of customers across diverse industry verticals. One such client is Insta Safe Technologies, for whom Kanso manages the entire marketing function as an outsourced entity, right from content writing and designing the website, brochures, whitepapers and videos to drafting the strategic marketing plan for the year and executing on it. “For another client in the field of lead generation, we did a business development project and helped them to reach out to 100 plus clients which got them business from 15 customers,” asserts Kaushal. No wonder the client retention rates for Kanso are exceptional.

Strides Forward

Kanso believes that its customers need the best-in-class support and has hence built an effective ecosystem of creative, design and event management agencies that form the execution backbone. Knowing the importance of digital marketing for start-ups and SMEs, Kanso Consulting has recently started its digital practice encompassing email marketing and social media management among other things. Kanso Consulting’s mission is to make marketing simple for entrepreneurs and free up their bandwidth to focus on other aspects of their organizational growth.