Gaurav PandeyCo-founder of Contentory Published On: Monday, September 21, 2015 Views 2781

"When in doubt, just do it." It contains life.

Gaurav is a serial entrepreneur who has founded three companies. He is one of those people who are always ready to connect with investors, entrepreneurs, customers, potential business partners, people willing to join him or someone who is interested to share thoughts & ideas over a cup of tea. Right from the start when he launched Compose corp. he has always been highly energetic person. While it is said that overtime enthusiasm level of entrepreneur fades, the story was entirely different in the case of Gaurav.

After compose he went on to his second company called Goodbells.com. It was an online store where users could buy Indian ethnic clothing. After the success of his second startup, he focused on his third stint at entrepreneurship with Contentory.in. It is an online agency, which creates wonderful content for its clients to keep their audience, glued, and spread their story. Within a short span of few months, they have garnered several key contacts in the industry and set a buzz around them.

Please provide a brief overview of your product/ service.

@Contentory we love designing wonderful & sticky content for clients to keep their customers glued.

We are an Online MarCom Company from Pune, and experimenting with cross industry practices of traditional MarCom industry into digital marketing to reinvent the way businesses use digital marketing platform to connect consumers & build brands.

What inspired you to build the above product/ service?

Online marketing is getting boring. Very. Despite of the facts that businesses are increasing their digital marketing budget YoY, still the practices for connecting, reaching & retaining consumers are stone aged practices. I mean you still get requests like Can you do my SEO for peanuts?

The idea behind setting up Contentory was crystal clear. Content (don’t read article, please..), has always has been the base of marketing & communicating online. And there has been wonderful work around blogging & articles for years, but excuse me.. are we stupid enough to try to expect our online consumers to read? only? why?

That’s where the idea clicked that possibly we should reinvent inside-the-box by reinventing the way we approach Contenting. So we @ Contentory design interesting stories (campaign ideas) for brands to connect with their customers, and use various online marketing channels to distribute & redistribute our brand recall.

So excuse me.. We are not an SEO agency. lol… we build solid & sustainable businesses for our clients.

What is your life mantra?

When in doubt, just do it.

Doubts create indecision, indecision reduces your time inventory, and you go mentally paralyzed. I have strong faith on identifying a worst case scenario in any situation, and just jump-all-in. But, beware its risky. Very risky.

What was the most challenging part of your journey till now?

Moments of self doubt, every time. Expecting outsider help to even snail. As they said, this is only you who is holding yourself back.

How did you overcome those challenges?

I’ll give you an example of my gym. I used to left 40KG Squat, and was trying to go till 55 KG. I failed 2 attempts with support. Third time, on a monday evening (i was preparing myself entire sunday for this), I went to pull 55 KG Squat, without any support (still protected for worst case scenario), and I lifted. I lasted only 5 reps, but I did.

Jumping-all-in has worked for me, always, and still does.

Share some details about the investments that you have been able to fetch for the business till now.

It’s entire bootstrapped.

Clients money is the best money.

How do you protect yourself from the problem of Brain Drain?

We are very small 6 people team overall scatter in 2 offices, and have not seen attrition yet, but my previous experience says everyone should grow with company. If this is only you who looks like the smartest guy in room, if this is only you who get the speaking, if it only you who is able to buy Latest Version Black Eco Sport haha.. then you are making yourself attrition compatible.

According to you, what are the three qualities an individual must have to achieve success?

Success is a state of mind. What we all, and specially we entrepreneurs must try to achieve is focus, peace at mind, and to be able to reach our potential. That’s long lasting.

I’ll recommend a book for everyone struggling to make it big, called “Better Under Pressure by Justin Menkes”

Which online tools/ services/ apps do you use the most and would like to recommend as well?

Nothing special.

I am fan of Calendar on my mobile to keep me on toe.
Then basecamp for project management, we are now exploring Slack as well.
I use a simple MS Word based document to keep note of all my pending duties (out of basecamp)

Share any one habit which you think makes you more productive.

I love running, and yoga both. So it keep my tummy in control and mind at free.

Share any one habit which you wish to change in yourself.

Over-thinking or, Over-detailing. Sometime it goes counter productive.

Answer in less than 50 words

One tip to success:

Fear-Free, Proactive, and Money-fullness.

One mistake you believe every individual must avoid:

Self-doubt. It just kills your caliber.

One most important lesson that you have learnt till now:

Understood the “time-economy”.

What are your plans for next 3 years?

We are growing very aggressively being less then a year old startup. So we are in plans increase our in-house team size by max. 30-40 people in next 15-18 months, and want to acquire some 10-15 big notable accounts.

We are working on a product as well, which will be revealed at an appropriate time to market.

If you get a chance to start your career again what would you do differently this time?

I have no regrets of starting the way I did, however next time, I may want to work for some 10 years initially in a job, to give my parents materialistic & social satisfaction which they expect from their kids. I guess i jumped into entrepreneurship too quickly for them.

What are your top three getaway destinations?