An exclusive interview with Ayushi Arora Gulyani, CEO & Founder, Media Corridors

 

An exclusive interview with Ayushi Arora Gulyani, CEO & Founder, Media Corridors 

A firm believer of, ‘You ought to be very clear about the roadmap because the struggles come when the steps are not aligned with what you want,’ is a prodigious woman entrepreneur - Ayushi Arora Gulyani, Director & Founder of Media Corridors, a Marketing & Branding Agency aimed at making brands build an exemplary image in front of their target audience through engaging brand stories and creatives.

She also coaches young media students in building a career as a communications’ professional through her guest lectures at colleges and has also held Public Relations seminars for startups at co-working spaces such as WeWork and 2499 offices.

Ayushi, completed her schooling from one of India’s best boarding schools, All Saints’ College, Nainital. She pursued her further studies in English Hons and later specialized in International Journalism along with New Media from IIJNM, Bangalore. She started her career as a Journalist with Times Group in Bangalore, India. Her love for writing and unwrapping unheard stories through well-articulated articles started here. To explore the realms of marketing and brand building in the media landscape, she moved on to becoming a Communication Professional and worked with various PR and Marketing agencies. Being an enthusiastic learner, she actively took part in startup meets, marketing conclaves and gathered some brilliant network of renowned marketing professionals and CEOs. Having gained six years of good working experience, it was about time for her to follow her dream of setting up a marketing PR venture of her own. She has now been running it successfully for over 5 years and scaled her team across geographies in Bangalore, Ahmedabad and Delhi/NCR.

When not at work, you can find the workaholic Ayushi spending time with her family, devouring history/ mythology glossaries, scouting art shops, attending theatre shows or water painting landscapes and seascapes.

 Tell us a little about your organization and your organization’s journey so far.

Media Corridors is a communications agency started in 2015 and offers Public Relations, Online Reputation Management and Influencer Marketing services. Headquartered in New Delhi with an in-house team of 18 members, team associates in Mumbai and Bangalore, the company has a diverse portfolio of clients that works across industries such as IT, e-commerce, Finance, Energy, Real Estate, Healthcare, Agritech, Education, Lifestyle, Hospitality, Consumer Goods and Consumer Electronics’ companies.

What challenges/obstacles did you face in your journey so far?

I started my career as a Journalist and with time matured as a communications professional. Been in the media industry now for about 13 years and have had a massive learning curve as a leader myself. What started as a dream for me, matured into a team’s vision over the years - to help brands and individuals with their communications strategy. In the day-to-day hustle of making Media Corridors succeed with its mission of making brands tell their stories bigger and better than every before, being determined as an entrepreneur myself and never giving up on this dream business was the biggest challenge.

Determination is a quality that makes you continue trying to do or achieve something that is difficult. I had to believe in myself and not others, and at one point I even had no support, but I was still firm on my decisions. The day I stopped listening to negativity from many people I found out that I was skilful, talented, and was doing things in the right manner, which was why I succeeded, not mere luck. When many doors closed many others opened, and it felt like God himself was by my side. I think looking for more solutions and less problems, and staying positive and happy, helped me overcome my roadblocks. Ultimately, we always must help ourselves as someone won’t always rescue us, and not giving up easily always helped me.

What makes your company so special and how is Media Corridors poised to grow?

The PR  industry is evolving as a major marketing trend of the 21st century intensified by digitization and rapid internet penetration. Contributing to this flourishing domain significantly, Media Corridors has emerged as one of the most dependable, trustworthy, and ethical PR agencies across India.

With a vision of clients creating meaningful relationships with their audience and building better brands through connected PR experiences, Media Corridors is striving hard to be known for its disciplined approach toward providing the highest value of satisfaction to every client.

In fact, people who were very traditional marketers once have also realized the potential of opting for PR, reaching out to more people by creating a pan-India presence through venturing the International market as well will be our upcoming goal.

We are abreast with international trends, and how they are working. Upgrading ourselves with content, Ideas, storylines, and many more USPs essential for Public Relations, we are gearing up to meet the standards of the international market as well.”

Why did you choose entrepreneurship over a job?

I chose entrepreneurship because I wanted to make an impact. I have always been intrigued by entrepreneurship. It’s incredible how you build something from the scratch and scale it. Not everyone can do it. It takes a lot of courage, planning, perseverance, hard work, and teamwork, combined with good strategy & execution skills.

About choosing entrepreneurship over the job I would like to sum up with the popular quote of Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs perhaps summed this idea up best when he said:

Entrepreneurs don’t just want to change their lives -- they want to change the world.

I think being an entrepreneur is great because the possibilities are endless. You can be as creative and innovative as you want to be, and the results are the most rewarding.

What’s your background?

I have started my career as a Journalist with Times Group in Bangalore, India. My love for writing and unwrapping unheard stories through well-articulated articles started here. Later, I switched to Public Relations with Lowe Lintas’ LinOp in the same city to explore the realms of marketing and brand building in the media landscape. Switched to Delhi as new place of residence in 2013, secured a job with Network 18 as a City Food Editor with BURRP.com and thoroughly enjoyed working towards marketing and editorial responsibilities in the hospitality industry. The company got acquired by Reliance soon after and I decided to explore my entrepreneurial wings. Started with networking, met peers at events, got the opportunity to work on some corporate portfolios and with time had a diverse sector client portfolio from auto, and technology, to healthcare, lifestyle, real estate and more. I started to find a neat balance in my writing and communications skills and glad PR as a career happened. 

In your opinion what are the keys to success?

The number one lesson I’ve learned in my lifetime is that nothing beats hard work. Hard work outweighs talent and intelligence and is necessary if you want to succeed. This not only means working hard when things are going well but working harder when things are not. It means taking calculated risks and sticking to them, no matter how challenging they are. This is very important to keep in mind as an entrepreneur. No business is perfect, and just like people, they too have their faults, no matter how successful or unsuccessful they may be. Recognizing and accepting these faults as an entrepreneur, facing reality and doing your best to work around these faults is the best way to move forward and the secret to success. With time, I’ve learnt of the importance of adaptability too. How adaptable a business is defining its ability to stay afloat in the future.

What are the business mantras you have embraced to grow as an entrepreneur?

We feel that “Content & Storyline are the king and queen” of Public Relation & we like to stay ahead in that game! I believe that client satisfaction is the prime objective and keep that balance is our MANTRA.

What is that one strategy that you believe has helped you grow as an entrepreneur?

My persistence was one of the key factors that helped my company to grow. I was always on my toes, looking for new ideas and ways to position my business. Moreover, I am a firm believer that growth is largely related to client satisfaction, and so I do everything in my power to make sure they are satisfied with my work. Over time, I have learned that the best way for sustainable growth and success of any relevant strategy is to focus continuously on client problem-solving or feedback and improving the service to them and their successful experience with what you offer them. This builds continuous consumption, trust, value and growth, and is what I have implemented in my company.

What advice would you give to someone starting out as an aspiring entrepreneur?

Every single person I know who is successful at what they do is successful because they love doing it. Anything can be done, as long as you truly believe it. We led with our conviction rather than rational because rational said it was impossible. Find something you love and do it better than everyone else. Failure is a stepping stone to greatness, and we all fail. You will only be criticized by someone who is doing less, so always remember that. Successful people do not put others down.

During this COVID-19 crisis, what are the measures you have undertaken to continue your business without disruption?

The best measures we took is to give work from home and closed deals virtually, without much disruption and we went all digital during this COVID-19 crisis. Every aspect of the business is online and tech-enabled to ensure automation as much as possible to maintain the required social distance.