Vivek – The Paid Search Years

Vivek's foray into the world of paid search came in the form of an offshore project that Communicate 2 booked for a UK based company in 2004. What started as a small 12 people team for an offshore paid search project was to change the fortunes of Vivek and C2 forever. As this client worked for Expedia, Lastminute, Tesco and numerous other clients, Vivek and his team got a first taste of working for SEM companies.

Vivek learnt to work with Google API's and building next generation paid search applications. The C2 team was trained by the CEO and Vivek himself made trips to the UK to get a better understanding of the paid search business.

Today he can talk about Paid Search till the cows come home.

Once he got back, he decided to evaluate the core model of Communicate 2.

The original vision was always to help companies use technology for marketing effectiveness – but as internet evolved, banners failed to deliver marketing effectiveness. Vivek switched to Paid Search. 

He cites two reasons for the decision.

Firstly, Paid Search was the beginning of contextual marketing (Vivek predicts that it is only a matter of time before it enters the space of traditional advertising as well)

Secondly, this was the first time when any medium had to ability to serve ads exactly at the time when the user has expressed his desire. This was the only medium only charged you for performance. No other medium could make such a big promise.  

This medium effectively gave Vivek the arsenal to do what had originally made him start C2. To facilitate building of intellectual property and to allow building of products with hardly any chance of commoditization of the same.

The decade long experience in interactive marketing bore fruit. All the hours of training from the best in the world paid off.

C2 took to Paid Search as a fish takes to water

During the first four months itself, Vivek and his team at C2 had mopped up several big clients including, Unillever, Kingfisher Airlines, Indiatimes.com, Makemytrip.com, Young Buzz, Tony Robbins India, Goldratt Consulting and several clients in the UK.

Today Vivek is founder-CEO of one of the largest PPC companies in the country.

Vivek also helped established in2it in Bangladesh and has made innumerable trips to Bangladesh as a consultant to this entity.

Vivek is also a trained paragliding pilot. When he is not talking to clients, he lectures at various institutes including JBIMS,
S. P. Jain, Wellingkar, AICAR Business School, Dhaka University, Rotaract Circles and even the prestigious Adtech in San Fransisco.

He might be planning a trip to the moon, but we're sure he won't stop talking there either.