One of the crown jewels of southern cinema, Mohanlal is an inspiration to many. Interestingly, he was the inspiration behind digital marketing and consulting business, Saltmangotree, which was founded by four entrepreneurs. The name has its origin from a Malayalam movie where the veteran actor Mohanlal himself gives birth to one of the epic moments in Malayalam film industry with the birth of the term ‘Saltmangotree’.

This fitted in with the startup’s values. Salt stands for ‘the essentials’, Mango for ‘the sweetness’ and Tree for ‘the network’. “The idea had taken life individually for all of us during our early days but it all came to life in October 2010 when we four decided to start it together,” says Andrine Mendez, one of the founders. So, did this help the company;s identity? “Being in an advertising industry the naming counts a lot and the name has helped us cut through the clutter in many ways,” asserts Mendez.

Saltmangotree works with the organisations and brands to help them with their online marketing and provides companies with digital campaigns, social media and viral campaigns. Three out of the four founders are engineers by education but marketing has been their passion. Andrine Mendez, after his engineer stint spent some time with Indiavision and a marketing company he started before founding Saltmangotree. Hiran Venugopal, after his engineering was active in the ‘free’ software space. Arun J Prasad, after his engineering, was worked with IT organisations and wanted to start up a business of his own and he met the gang. Sunil Raj, the only MBA graduate spent some time with Dhathri Group and Havells before joining the group.

Need for the business

The digital marketing market size in India is estimated to touch close to Rs 2,000 crore by 2013 from Rs 1,400 crore in 2011, according to industry watchers. Areas like online retail, ticketing and branding of FMCG products are moving online, and the market is witnessing an explosion of sorts.

With Internet increasingly going mainstream, advertisement agencies like WPP, which owns Ogilvy, had set up Neo@Ogilvy. Other agencies similarly have arms that cater to digital marketing. Like in the real world, the Internet has seen a whole bunch of startup digital marketing firms mushrooming like Saltmangotree.

Initial Challenges

Saltmangotree is going along with the logic that as Internet gets all pervasive; every brand needs an agency to help them reach out to their customers through online channels. “Digital media will play a much larger role in communication and marketing and will be inevitable in all sectors,” says Mendez. This has helped the company bag clients like Kerala based Dhathri Group, an Ayurveda products maker, ABAD hotels and resorts and some others.

As is the case with most startups, resources and manpower were huge challenges in the beginning. “Finding talent, paying them for their work and having very less of an eco-system that can co-support also been an issue, because it’s not that everyone around you faces similar problems,” says Mendez. Then there was the challenge of getting customers.

“For us, being in digital advertising, being in Kochi and still being able to pull out is quite a thing because there are lot of companies who have been there for years,” says a proud Mendez.

The company banks on its creativity as its stronghold and according to Mendez it has helped produce unique content communication strategies and techniques unlike its competitors. We believe that every organisation or brand has its own story and our job is to communicate and initiate interactions in a most creative manner, according to Mendez. “Digital or social media is highly dependent on the quality and approach towards the creation of content and that is one area which we have mastered. The company is playing on its strength of being fleet footed (due to its startup nature) and not weighed down by legacy processes,” he says.

Funding

At this point Saltmangotree is internally funded but moving forward with its scale up plans, the company is in talks to raise capital/money to expand. “We are scaling up our business model from just being a service based company to creating products and other services which will help us spread our wings in the area of interactive advertising / branding,” adds Mendez.

Learnings

“Our journey so far has given us more than what any academics could give, be that managing a creative team, HR team or acquiring clients in new demographics,” he says.

Future Plans

As a part of its expansion plans, Salmangotree plans to double its headcount in the cities where it is present. Further, it plans to go beyond India and acquire businesses, according to founder Mendez. The journey has just begun.

> venkatesh.ganesh@thehindu.co.in

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