The Inception of Inception: Run Up & Take Off

“I get by with a little help…”

So .. we picked a name, predictably enough inspired by a movie we loved that year. Inception – where the line, “An Idea is like a Virus”, infected-inspired me. I was not 100% sure what all my services would be within marketing – so I broadly added Business Services to the organisation name. I wanted a logo and a business card and professional email: the whole works.

—> My husband helped book the domain. He booked it for 10 years.“If you’re thinking anything less, I won’t take you seriously”, he said. Thanks to the movie the only extension available was .net.in! 

—> The whole cloud thing was new to me. I was from the world of enterprise-paid software and an IT help-desk I could use 24/7. But with my husband’s help, I got Gmail business suite set up. Those were early days , which means Inception is still on a forever free plan upto 50 users (yes yes, read this and burn green!)

—-> My father-in-law designed our original logo (which we still use but in a new colour palette). My first business card was designed by a guy at a Photocopy/DTS shop on TTK Road, where I also got my first 50 cards printed. 

—> My father and husband agreed to be partners in my new firm and contributed Rs.50,000 each along with me. 

—-> Within first 30 days, I had 4 paying clients, two interns. I was already plotting how to find a tiny office that was within 500 metres of my home coz I didn’t want interns coming in to see my messy mama self, managing home + one year old baby!

—> After first 3 months, I was walking around with undeposited cheques from my first 2 clients. My father connected me to our auditor firm, run by his close friend and I soon had a partnership deed and bank account in hand.

—-> In 6 months, I went back to the auditor to apply for a Service Tax registration (remember life before GST?). I was told I would not need it until I hit INR 10 lakh revenue and there we were at that milestone within 5-6 months of starting off.

“We will, we will rock you… “

As a Management Grad, I had the academic foundation for being a marketer but never worked in a full time marketing role such as brand or product management. I was part of many marketing initiatives during my banking stint. & considered very good with communication. But to be a marketer full-time? It was equal parts exhilarating and terrifying. 

My two consulting projects gave me some confidence. By combining aptitude, learning and research with an appreciation for the business side of things, I could deliver value to those who hired Inception. Of course, our first 5 clients hired us, primarily because we were smart, intelligent, sincere and brought a strong work ethic, enthusiasm and delivery capability to the table. Most loved that we had sales experience and customer service orientation. There was always excitement about trying new things, new ideas, figuring stuff out. I behaved as if I was actually joining a client’s business rather than being hired as an outsourced marketing team. We made no bones of actually falling in love with our clients’ products, services or ideas. I channeled my previous negative experiences with opaque vendors into creating a transparent way of pricing and invoicing that gave clients visibility into what they were paying for. These set the tone for the early value system that we embraced (Integrity, Involvement and Innovation). 

We worked with different specialists early on, from design to coding to printers and event managers, making it clear that it was collaboration and not competition that would make us all deliver our collective best to the client. It was also a phase of huge learning for me. Not only about being an entrepreneur grappling with how to price for services or how to balance business development efforts with operations focus. I don’t remember having a normal work day. It was 50% learning and 50% doing and there was no switch on or switch off. I was reading, talking to people, building excel sheets with marketing numbers, writing copy, ideating campaigns, talking to designers or collaborators on behalf of clients, representing client business in various outsourced avatars, making lots of presentations. Brushing up on marketing frameworks, exploring Facebook pages, test driving Shopify and WordPress, figuring out Mailchimp – in all, understanding what new age marketing was all about. I had leapt off Philip Kotler books to Seth Godin and Hubspot’s Inbound. Social media was a new emergent phenomenon and not enough businesses understood what to make of it. Online marketing was an area hitherto unexplored for many growing businesses. We had our foot in the door and things swung right open thereafter. 

“Do you want to build a snowman…?”

After the initial couple of months, it was never just me. I had a band of crazies with me, each from different background but crazy about marketing and being in a start-up, boutique firm. Looking back, I don’t think we even used the term ‘marketer’ until several years into our existence. It wasn’t the lingo used in Chennai back then. We balked if anyone mentioned the word agency or vendor. No one came from an ad agency background!

The period of October 2010 to June 2011 – was the run up to the actual Inception of Inception. Even now, when someone comments on the Anniversary of Inception, I find it hard to put that date down to a single day. 

“We are the champions… “

To me, Inception may have been an idea that I had. But it isn’t really just “mine” in the way some business owners think of their business. Inception has been incredibly fortunate to attract an impressive set of people to take on leadership roles. 

• One of the earliest team members, Mala, who behaved like a Partner from day 1, was the second partner at the firm. She co-scripted years 1 to 5 and was personally responsible for taking Inception to Gurgaon, NCR in 2014. 
• At a crucial juncture for Inception and me, personally, I was lucky that my bestie, an incredibly sharp marketer, Aarthi, chose to come onboard, invest and blend Inception into her professional journey from Jan 2016. 
• Anusha and Kriti, (some of my favourite people on this planet), came in Jan 2012, Dec 2014 respectively taking a leap of faith with a tiny but promising startup firm. Now Centre-Head Partners, they continue to lead the charge in Chennai & Gurgaon respectively. 

In my mind, Inception didn’t just begin the day I signed the first partnership deed. It didn’t start off when I opened the bank account. It truly began having a life of its own, when our earliest team members chose to join the tribe of marketers wearing the Inception badge. It began when business owners trusted us with their marketing and we were able to make a difference to them. I can’t only measure Inception’s success in money or numbers. To me, the biggest success of Inception is the small but exceptional group of people who have chosen to make it a part of their life.