Kushal Sanghvi turns entrepreneur with Vitamin T venture

After essaying the roles of publisher, client, and agency head, and with over 20 years of experience in the media space, Kushal Sanghvi has now rolled out his own venture – Vitamin T.

A large part of Sanghvi’s innings has been with new media and technology. He sees new media as an integral part of brand expansion. He has worked with companies like Reliance Group, Fremantle Media, Havas Media, The Times of India Group, and Concept Group.

When asked what prompted him to come up with a start-up venture at this point in time, Sanghvi replied, “I just thought perhaps it was time to turn an entrepreneur and what better time than when digital is growing at its fastest now. Having been in the digital space since 1996, it has been a long journey and I have seen a lot happen in this space.”

Speaking about his new entity, Sanghvi said, “Vitamin T is a digital agency with core services like creative, website design, content creation and marketing, social media, technology, media planning and buying, mobile marketing, performance marketing, affiliate, search, designing apps and products, etc., to offer.”

Elaborating on the letter ‘T’, Sanghvi explained, “The T symbolises our philosophy of working with our brand marketers and associates offering Transparency, building Trust, through Tools, using right Techniques, always being ahead of the curve in terms of Technology and offering solutions for Today and will do for Tomorrow. This will all be possible through Teamwork and working closely to the Targets that we set collectively.”

“For brands today, it is becoming increasingly important to be friends with their consumers and in this ever changing competitive environment it becomes difficult for even leader brands to maintain these friendships, and thus we think we it is important to fodder vitamins into our brand partners so that they are always ahead of the curve, and what we seek to do is to make brands and consumers enjoy together in the process,” Sanghvi added.

When questioned how challenging it has been for him to come up with a start-up in a market that is witnessing diminishing funds for new ventures, Sanghvi said, “I must confess that leaving a plush high profile job with a large corporate is never easy, but then again it’s about passion and just believing in what you want to do, starting out and just wanting to make that happen and hopefully together we will do so.”

With offices in Mumbai and Delhi to start with, Sanghvi has partnered with Pradipto Basu, his former boss and ex-CEO, Yahoo for the venture. Commenting on his partnership with Basu, Sanghvi said, “We have been putting together a marketing services company with a focus on digital, media, content, experiential marketing and more. We’ve started out and have made some success with few brands/ clients. He was my boss and mentor 19 years ago in 1996 and it is amazing to have him as a close friend and now a business partner.”

Basu comes with over 30 years of corporate, brand, digital experience and has worked with various companies like Citibank and Yahoo, to name a few. He has also been an investment banker. In the last many years he has been a leading producer of advertising content/ ad commercials for some of the largest brands in India and the world over and has worked with a series of directors across the world, and has been doing the same along with his wife Tanushree Basu, who has worked with leading advertising agencies in the past like Saatchi & Saatchi and Ambience, to name a few.

While sharing a brief rundown of his professional career before coming up with Vitamin T, the digital evangelist said, “It’s been a little over four months that I moved on from Reliance, where I was leading digital marketing for the overall Reliance group and had also set up their digital agency, World Wide Open (WWO), and was Founder and CEO there.”

He added, “It's definitely been a great journey working for over 20 years, mainly in digital and with many leaders, building great brands too in this media/ advertising journey. It has been a new ride as owner/ co-founder/ partner, where we have various plans and have putting a lot of thought too.”

Sanghvi considers the inception of Rediff.com as a founder member his most poignant creation and a tipping point in his career graph.