From one ₹8,000 retainer to a ₹5,00,000 monthly book

01

Situation

March 2019: a two-person studio with no agency experience in the room and one client at ₹8,000 a month. I joined as its growth marketing manager, which at that size meant every client-facing job there was.

The split held for six years. I owned growth, delivery, creative and every client relationship, front of house; Nikith, the tech lead, owned engineering and the backend. Anything on this page with a client’s name on it came through my side of that line.

02

Action

By December 2019 the book was ₹40,000 a month, still two people. Post-COVID the accounts arrived — Isuzu, Le Grapes, Namma Power Run, clinics, restaurants — and the book moved ₹75,000, then ₹1,00,000, then ₹3,70,000–5,00,000 a month at peak in 2024. Throughout I was senior designer and client strategist at once: I designed, and I owned the client relationships personally.

For ten months in 2023 I took a full-time role at DayOne Tech Solutions — see Entry 04 — and came back the same year as Product Manager for client projects: eleven websites shipped from scope to launch, N-Smart V1 for a US utility in four months, Nivid Technologies’ site and LinkedIn brand build, and product on the agency’s own AI platform. The growth book stayed with me; 2024 was its peak.

03

The decision

In 2020, every instinct in the market said clients would pause and we should let them. I took the opposite view: if our clients went dark they would lose the ground they had bought, and we would lose them permanently. So we serviced the entire book at roughly half rate and argued them into staying online. We ended 2020 having lost margin and zero clients — and that intact base is precisely what let the book grow tenfold by 2024.

04

How it ended

In 2025 the studio consolidated on purpose: fewer accounts, a team of four plus freelancers, a ₹1,50,000 monthly book at much better margin and delivery quality. Growing the top line was never the hard part. Choosing what to stop doing was.

Later that year I left to go independent. The studio is still running — clients served, team in place — and the product work I had started there, ELTH, came with me. I am not fitting a job around it; the consulting winds down when the right role starts.

Across the whole run the studio delivered more than 10,000 tasks for 72 brands and agencies — packaging, campaign creative, branding, websites, photography and short-form content. Nine accounts was the peak concurrent load; 72 is the number of brands that have actually been through the door.

05

In pictures

06

Results & what it taught me

Nandini (KMF) · Government of Karnataka · Renault Goa · ITC Grand Chola · Heritage Foods · Isuzu · Sangeeta Mobiles × Redmi · Solace Life Clinic · Swaasthya Fitness & Physiotherapy · Vera Fitness · Le Grapes Restobar · Annapoorna Naati Kitchen · Panthers Cricket Academy · Good MD Foundation · and 48 more

Accounts