Prabandhan 2016 organized Pragyan, the guest lecture series of IME
Department, IIT Kanpur. The series was kick-started by Mr. Sheraz Saeed,
Founder of Websters. Websters is a Dubai based social media company started in
2011 and specialized in web designing and digital marketing. It is a part of
SoftAge Information Technology Ltd.
Mr. Saeed gave a seminar on “Start ups and Digital Marketing”. Giving a
brief overview about himself Mr. Saeed mentioned how during his final year at
BITS Pilani, Dubai campus he saw a requirement for web services in the Dubai market
and from initially beginning as a freelancer he founded Websters, which offers a
range of dedicated social media services along with
other digital assistance in web development, app development,
social media management, analytics, digital marketing etc.
Mr Saeed engaged the audience by probing about some start-up ideas. To
the passionate budding entrepreneurs who had such ideas and the audience in
general, he gave an interesting trivia, of discussing an idea with a group of
friends on whom you could rely on for feedback before converting it into a
business plan. He also encouraged some of the students to proceed with their
ideas and work towards bringing it to the light of the day. Further he advised those
keen to have their start-ups to always keep founders with different skill sets
and at the same time have an eagle’s view of the entire initiative.
Dwelling further on the topic of start-ups, he mentioned an exorbitant
number of start-ups do not recognize ‘need’ and sweat relentlessly on solving a
problem that does not exist. He also cited this as being one of the reasons
behind the failure of many start-ups after a small stint. Mr. Saeed also
emphasized on the pioneer versus follower strategy in marketing, by providing
an example from the e-commerce sector in Dubai. The small and new entrants learned
from the mistakes of giant players like Cobone and Groupon and differentiated
themselves to become stiff competitors. Thus it is important to push forward
the right and required needs into the market.
Moving onto the topic of digital marketing, which also happens to be
Mr. Saeed’s area of expertise, evident from his clientele of big names like Zee,
Dubai government etc, he shared with us exciting examples where digital
marketing was instrumental in garnering millions of eyeballs. He gave examples
like the post of one of the Zomato’s co-founder, Oreo’s post after a few seconds
of power cut at Super Bowl XLVII etc. Mr Saeed also insisted on not entirely
focusing on search engine optimization, but evaluating the investment in paid
apps and likes , and also imperative is the creativity in digital marketing,
thinking different and utilizing unseen opportunities to stay ahead in game.
The session was a lesson on introspection before jumping on the start-up
bandwagon and how digital marketing is changing the marketing landscape with
its vitality felt in the sustenance of any company worth its salt.
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