“Success doesn’t solely depend on a third-party agency, the amount of investment, or even how great the product is. The common trait among successful founders is the ability to stick with their vision through challenges.”
Founder of Adbuffs, Ramasish Bhowmik, talks about his journey co-founding Adbuffs.
With an MBA in Marketing from IISWBM, CU, Ramasish began his professional career at Nielsen IQ, where he worked for 2 years. After serving clients Emami, ITC, and HUL, he left his job to work as a freelancer specialising in Meta Ads.
Headquartered in Kolkata and co-founded in 2019, Adbuffs was started with the vision of becoming the most sought-after performance marketing partner for D2C brands in India. As Ramasish says.
“Our vision statement from day one was very clear. We believe that if Adbuffs can’t do it, no one can.”
A performance marketing agency, Adbuffs specialises in Meta, Google, Amazon, and marketing for D2C brands. They also have a team of 130 skilled individuals, and an in-house creative and content production team, unlike the majority of the agencies in India. Ramasish also reveals,
“We are a Meta Tier One agency in India, handling a quarterly spend of around USD 5 million on Meta alone. My role here involves managing people, processes, finance, sales, and administration operations.”
Entrepreneurial Spirit
Ramasish had always wanted to do something of his own ever since his college days. He says that even though others may have believed his passion for a ‘passing fad,’ it had always been there.
Ramasish’s first trial in entrepreneurship was with an indoor plant business, which ultimately failed due to a lack of knowledge and heavy investments. With the rise of digital marketing agencies in 2015-16, he wanted to try something in that space with the hopes of starting his own e-commerce brand someday. He shares,
“While freelancing, I discovered that I really enjoyed the work, and I met my co-founder, who had also left his job at Cognizant to freelance. That’s when we decided to start Adbuffs as an agency. We also noticed that in India there was a significant gap on the creative side of performance marketing. Most agencies were focused solely on dashboard techniques on platforms like Meta and Google, but very few paid attention to creating better creatives, developing compelling offers, or formulating effective pricing strategies.”
Adbuffs began with the hopes of addressing the existing gaps in the market. Today, they handle everything, from digital marketing for real estate brands, and coaching businesses, to wildlife photographers. However, their major focus remains on e-commerce for D2C brands.
The Competitive Edge
The team at Adbuffs have a unique approach that sets them apart from other agencies in India. Rather than focusing on Dashboards, they take a more holistic and growth-oriented approach to improve the ROIs of the clients.
The approach often requires them to dig deep into the pricing strategies, website features, marketing offers, and even content creation for platforms like Instagram. He asserts,
“That’s why we have an in-house content production team, which is our primary differentiator. We also built an internal reporting tool entirely in-house. It not only shows key metrics like ups and downs but also uses AI to provide insider details about your overall business performance.”
Troubled Waters
One of the significant challenges they often faced was in terms of hiring. Initially, a lot of hiring mistakes were made by focusing more on capabilities than intent.
Over the years, Ramasish has learned that hiring for intent is more crucial even if the candidates do not fit the box. As a result, with time the hiring process eventually got longer and mandatory tests were included which would test candidates on attributes like intent, proactiveness, and the ability to tackle real-life scenarios.
Secondly, a game-changer for us was introducing KPIs and OKRs to measure team success. When our team was small, there were no clear targets. By implementing OKRs last year, we created a transparent yardstick for progress, which has helped with appraisals and promotions.
The other challenge they faced was letting go of candidates who were not adding value to the company. Ramasish adds,
“This required a lot of mental strength and objective assessment. With guidance from industry mentors and feedback from big clients, we decided to use KPIs as the primary measure for whether someone should stay. We now avoid making purely emotional decisions when it comes to hiring or firing.”
Celebrating Feats
There have been several feats along the way. They were recognised as India’s fastest-growing digital agency by The Agency Reporter and received four awards at AdGully’s CMO Charcha Kolkata and . They have also conducted masterclasses on creatives and data analytics, at Shivir held by Shiprocket in Delhi.
Ramasish shares the success story of one of their flagship clients – ThriveCo, one which Adbuffs onboarded in 2021, helping scale its business from the ground up. They did this with only 12 people on the team when they started.
“We also were super happy to see one of our very old clients “Shyle” in the silver jewellery space to get featured and invested in, at the famous Shark Tank India”
They also partnered with Rage Coffee for three years from 2020 and later in 2022 they received an investment from Virat Kohli. They are also working with one of India’s biggest personal care brands, Sanfe, managing Meta spends of close to ₹2–3 crore per month.
Future Looks Bright
In the next few years down the line, Ramasish wants to reach an annual revenue of ₹50 crore from ₹24–25 crore. They are also looking forward to diversifying and mastering the art of attribution and data analysis for performance marketing due to the existing gap in the market. He further adds,
“We want to teach both our clients and our team to interpret data effectively, which will be a major leap forward.”
The other plans include developing a SaaS tool to address channel-level issues, departmental overviews, and P&L analysis. He discloses that they would like to scale X even more, an in-house content production team that they launched two years back. The plan is to build a network of creators who can support D2C brands not only for ads but for all types of content production.
With plans to take Adbuffs to the next level, Ramasish signs off by saying,
“Over the past 10 years, we’ve seen a decline in patience and perseverance compared to a decade ago, and that’s a major red flag. For anyone looking to build a business, being able to stay the course is crucial; it will give you an edge in becoming a better brand, a better business, and ultimately a leader.”
