“I believe that failing fast is essential. If you delay and try to avoid failure, you’re merely postponing the inevitable and extending your timeline for success. Embrace failure as a learning opportunity, as each failure is a step closer to success.”
In a conversation with Entrepreneurs Today, the founder of Adbuffs, Abhishek Maity, talks about his major takeaways from his journey and gives us a sneak peek into the digital advertising scene in India.
Coming from a non-marketing background, Abhishek actually pursued chemical engineering from Jadavpur University. His professional career began in 2010 when he joined Cognizant Technology Solutions, where he worked as a programmer. It was back in 2012 or 2013 that he began to entertain the idea of getting into startups. Looking back to before it all started, he reveals,
“I am from a small tier-three town called Midnapur. Before 2012, I had no idea there was something called an Internet business or similar opportunities. You could say I got bitten by the startup bug as it moved.”
While he finally started exploring different ideas for startups, it took him another 3 years to quit his job.
Abhishek quit his job back in 2015, six months into his marriage. While he acknowledges that the decision was risky, it gave him the opportunity to connect with people online and abroad to learn the ropes of internet business. It was a difficult time, as he says,
“I quickly realised that I wasn’t earning anything. To earn money, I figured the only way was to work for free for someone until I gained enough experience.”
Entrepreneurial Spirit
Soon enough, Abhishek began to understand that his options were beginning to narrow down. He looked for people who could mentor him by offering to work for free. He gained in-depth digital marketing experience by working on SEO, blogs, and content writing. He got his first paycheck in 2016 by working for one of his mentors on a contract basis. He adds,
“From November 2016 onward, everything changed. I quickly adopted the booming trends at that moment. As I was active in various entrepreneurship groups both in India and internationally, I discovered Facebook ads, Shopify, dropshipping, and other rapidly growing fields, all of which merged together in that period. I soon started closing clients. By November 2016, I had earned my first substantial income, and my earnings grew significantly thereafter.”
Abhishek met his co-founder, Ramashish, in 2017 when he was approached as a client. The two met when Ramashish was running his plant business, which ultimately failed due to the lack of knowledge and resources. However, the good that came out of it was that they started working together to understand more about the market dynamics and client acquisition.
About Adbuffs
Adbuffs began in 2019 as a two-person remote team and later expanded into a leading performance marketing and e-commerce partner in India with over 130 skilled individuals in its team. The founding of the company happened naturally due to the combined experiences of both founders.
As a performance marketing agency, Adbuffs’ specialisation lies in Meta, Google, Amazon, and retention marketing for D2C brands.
Today, as a Meta Tier One agency, they handle a quarterly spend of around INR 34 crore on Meta alone. As for the responsibilities, Abhishek handles the business growth side of things, which involves the entire performance marketing, from training the team in technical aspects to working on innovations and building new-age strategies.
The unique approach of focusing more on the holistic growth of a business to improve ROI, rather than just dashboards, gives them a competitive edge in the market. The differentiator also lies in having an in-house content production team and diving deep into the pricing strategies, website features, marketing offers, and even content creation for platforms like Instagram. They have also built an internal reporting tool entirely in-house that uses AI to provide insider details about the overall business performance of the clients.
Some of the key clients they worked with are GIVA, with whom they worked between 2019 and 2020, and they later processed over one crore per month. They also worked with Shyle for around 5 years on impressive strategies.
An 80-year heritage brand from Hyderabad, Adbuffs also boosted Kankatala’s online revenue to over one crore per month and supported their offline expansion to Delhi, Bangalore, and Mumbai through targeted digital strategies. They also worked with Sanfe, managing Meta spends of close to ₹2–3 crore per month. Some other clients include ThriveCo, Knya, Rage Coffee and My Muse.
Toil and Trouble
The journey of an entrepreneur is not easy, and Abhishek had to face numerous challenges along the way. One of the most crucial challenges was to keep up with the pace of the digital space. Abhishek explains,
“Digital is a very fast-moving space; if you step away for even seven to ten days, you’ll come back to find that everything has changed. You have to stay on top of the game. You have to stay sharp, active, and fully engaged. Maintaining this level of focus demands a healthy, balanced lifestyle, which, thankfully, I have been able to manage. I know many agency owners struggle with this.”
Another challenge he faced was retaining talent while having to manage other aspects, such as financial stability, company culture, skill development, and personal growth. He shares,
“You might be financially secure, but if your team lacks market exposure or continuous learning, they won’t stay motivated. You have to tackle all these angles simultaneously.”
Abhishek also believes that having a balance is crucial. He notes,
“For example, if you check our Instagram profile, you’ll see that the initial content was almost entirely created by our younger team members—about 95% of it was generated by the team members. We made sure that our approach covered four key pillars: finance, knowledge, culture, and exposure.”
Celebrating Feats
One of Abhishek’s major achievements has been to get the time freedom at Adbuffs, which allowed him room for radical thinking and innovation. This has also helped them get a competitive edge in performance marketing, technology, and automation by leveraging this newfound mental bandwidth.
Some of the other achievements include getting recognised as India’s fastest-growing digital agency by The Agency Reporter and receiving four awards at AdGully’s CMO Charcha Kolkata and AdGully’s Image X Delhi Chapters. They were also approached to conduct masterclasses on creatives and data analytics at Shivir, held by Shiprocket in Delhi.
Moving forward, some of their future plans include focusing more on revenue growth, innovation and data mastery. They also want to create a SaaS tool that would resolve channel-level issues, provide departmental overviews, and facilitate P&L analysis.
Other plans include expanding BuffX, the in-house content production team, to build a network of creators that supports D2C brands beyond ads.
The Takeaways
As Abhishek signs off, he asserts that it is crucial to make decisions quickly if you feel someone is not performing well despite providing them with all the necessary resources, culture, and support. Prolonging the problem only wastes time for everyone involved.
Lastly, he says,
“The key is to keep evolving, make swift decisions, and maintain a balanced approach to both business and personal life.”
