Hello! I am Sourav and I belong to the city of joy, Kolkata! Currently, I am settled in the Silicon Valley of India, Bengaluru and working as the Director, Digital Marketing for Wego.com.
Let’s start from the Beginning:
Let’s start from the beginning. I am born and brought up in a small town in the outskirt of Kolkata. I did my schooling in Ramkrishna Mission and studied there till my intermediate. With a decent score in both 10th and 12th, surprising everyone in my family and friend circle, I choose to go in the Commerce stream. And, that too, I choose “Marketing” as my Hons. Subject which was then in the year 2006 was still a very very new subject and very few colleges under the University of Calcutta were offering that particular course. “Marketing” as a subject was decently popular in the post-graduation level, but choosing that very subject in under-graduate level surprised many!
By the way - on a lighter note, back then, each and every Bengali in West Bengal used to call “Shopping” as “Marketing”!! “Pujor Marketing hoyegeche” was the most common question each Bengali person used to as the other before the Durga Puja season and the meaning of the phrase I quoted earlier is “Are you done with your Puja shopping?” Haha…
Time for Graduation:
So, I choose “Marketing” as the subject for my Hons. Paper and the bigger struggle was actually waiting for me. Before that, I must clarify as to why I choose “Marketing” as my Hons. Paper. Believe it or not, I had zero ideas about what is Marketing exactly is. Like every other Bengali, I too used to think that it is a synonym of Shopping! But when I got to know that one of my known people had also taken this subject, I felt interested and started reading about it. And, as obvious, when I got to know what exactly Marketing is, I decided this as my subject in under-graduation level and also decided that I will also go for my MBA in Marketing as well.
Go for Post-graduation Now:
I completed my graduation in 2009 and started preparing for the “Wild CAT”. With a not so decent percentile, I took admission in SSIM in Hyderabad to pursue my PGDM and moved from Kolkata to the Nizam’s city in April 2010.
My First Job:
PGDM got over in 2012 and I joined my first job in March 2012. And, this was the second time I took a decision purely based on my anticipation, knowing very little about the sector which was not even taught during my MBA days and that was “Digital Marketing”!!!
One of my super senior of college informed me about an opening in the Digital Marketing field. During that time, my college placements were going on and companies were coming with some standard pay-package offers. Knowing that I would get paid less if I join into that Digital Marketing company, I took the decision of accepting that offer. And today, I can very proudly say that the decision I took on 28th February 2012 was one of the best decision of my life.
So, on 7th March 2012, I joined my first company – NerElixir as SEM Analyst and later promoted to the Senior Analyst role. NetElixir is basically a Digital Marketing Agency based out of Princeton, New Jersey. The operations used o happened from the Hyderabad office. I worked in NetElixir for 3 years and 3 months and each and every day was a learning experience for me. As the role was purely into SEM, I learned all the basics and advanced topics of the search engine marketing here. Also, I was associated with two of the major clients of the company – American Express and then Lenovo! Apart from these two, there were many other clients from various sectors that I was a part of. To name a few – Eckler’s Automotive, Discount School Supplies, BeautyEncounter.com, Lydias Uniforms, GloSkinBeauty.com etc. Apart from there regular clients, I was also part of the Pre-sales audits for clients like – Nissan, ToysRUs, Gaiam and so on.
Time to move on:
I left NetElixir on 29th May 2015. Honestly, I don’t regret my decision of leaving NetElixir, but I was very very sad while leaving the company. Anything first is always emotional and so was NetElixir to me. And not only the company but the people around were also so close to me.
And not only I left the company, I also left the city as well and moved to Bangalore in June 2015. It was time to join my second company – element14. It is an APAC branch of 1939 established UK firm Premier Farnell which was acquired by Avnet in mid-2016.
element14 is into the electrical and electronic parts distribution business and my job was an in-house SEM Account Manager role and I was responsible for managing the SEM accounts for 7 APAC countries which were – India, Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam & South Korea. Later, I got promoted to the Senior Account Manager role and were also given responsibilities of 5 European countries as well.
My current role:
I left element14 and joined Wego.com in November 2016 as the Senior Digital Marketing Manager. My primary reason to join Wego was getting an opportunity to explore the other verticles of Digital Marketing as I was purely into SEM prior to this.
Here in Wego, I am responsible for every aspect of the Digital Marketing be it – SEO, SEM, Display & Remarketing, Paid & organic Social Media, CRM, Mobile App marketing, Video & Content marketing and Affiliate marketing. Digital Media planning, Online reputation management and the team management and mentoring are the additional responsibilities that I am currently handling.
Its been an awesome journey till now in Wego, both as an individual and as the company’s performance.
Why Blogging:
Being into the field of Digital Marketing, I always wanted to have a personal footprint on the digital space but never I got the enthusiasm to actually do so. It was my better half’s continuous push that made me finally join blogging, so all the credit goes to her for this.
Hope you get the content that you wanted to, on digital-sourav.blogspot.com and stick to this for all your digital marketing content related queries in the future. Feel free to contact me for anything!
