In this VIP Case Study, we feature our agency’s client, Vivek Mashrani – a stock market investing expert, successful digital coach, author of the bestseller You Can Compound, and founder of TechnoFunda Investing.
Vivek and his team provide Indian stock market investors (and aspiring investors) with training, tools, and resources to help them compound their investments and achieve long-term success – and they are really good at what they do!
From our first-hand experience working with Vivek, we can tell you that he is a human MACHINE when it comes to solving problems, increasing efficiency with automation, and helping his students achieve results.
Today, Vivek is a successful millionaire, but how did it all start for him? How did he go from being employed to building a successful company and helping thousands of people achieve results?
And the best part: how did he do it within 3 short years?
We asked Vivek a series of questions about the marketing strategies he implemented in his entrepreneurial journey, and we shared his insightful responses to each of our questions in the following sections of this exclusive VIP Case Study.
Let’s dive in, get inspired, and learn from Vivek’s experience. Remember, just one actionable idea can transform your business and life, regardless of whether you are already successful or just getting started.
– Team Vavoza
How did you earn your initial full-time income as an entrepreneur?
I am into stock market investing coaching, and I am also a stock market investment advisor.
I started my entrepreneurial journey during COVID in March 2020 (I was doing it side by side with my job in investment banking in HSBC), and I have been earning a full-time income as an entrepreneur since March 2021.
We provide research recommendations to people who want to know which stocks to invest in and how to take their investment journey forward. We also coach people who want to learn how to build their portfolios using different strategies.
Initially, we were doing more direct selling, as in, there was no funnel or concept of giving free value; we were just directly asking people to take our services.
We tried selling directly on different platforms – offline, online, and through different mediums (like Twitter and YouTube), but only a very, very small percentage of people converted.
Now, we were seeing some success with smaller-ticket items (around $30), but we were not able to get breakthroughs with higher-ticket offers, and that was a struggling period.
We did not even have a system for delivering our products; we were giving people access to them on Google Drive.
When somebody wanted our services, we gave them our bank account number to send funds. After that, they emailed us, and we granted them access on Google Drive (of course, some people would get access and share the link with others for free).
So, that is basically how we got started.
– Vivek Mashrani
What marketing strategies took you to a six-figure annual income as an entrepreneur?
When we initially started, there were a lot of manual things there, and we realized that if we wanted to scale, we could not rely on a method that is not recurring in nature, meaning when sales are not happening again and again in a predictable way.
So, we realized that we needed to build some kind of automation. That is where my previous experience from HSBC (where I did a bit of coding and automation) helped.
Of course, I picked up a lot of these skills by learning from many mentors on the digital side of things – and that is where things slowly started changing.
We set up our Learning Management System (LMS), research portal, and automation in terms of Know Your Customer (KYC). We also got a sales funnel and a value stack so that people could realize the value of our offer.
Earlier, it was like, “Hey, if you want to learn, this is the link, and these are the things we are going to cover.” So, we created a bundle and made it much more detailed – explaining each course, what each course covers, and the entire value stack.
The value stack really helped; it allowed us to charge more for the same kind of products that we were selling earlier. That was another advantage.
A sales funnel definitely helped, too. We started bringing customers into the education side where they learn, and only when they feel they need research services do they upgrade to our higher-ticket offer. That way, we created a really good filtration process.
Apart from that, we also launched affiliate programs and experimented with many other strategies.
We refined some tactics and strategies that were not working earlier and automated a lot of things. We understood the power of WhatsApp marketing, paid traffic, and automation. That completely changed the game, and because of that, we could scale much faster in a predictable way.
On the front end, I’m like an influencer in my niche. I’ve been actively promoting myself as a personal brand on Twitter and YouTube – these two mediums are where we get leads.
As a starting point, we give people a low-ticket (less than $100) digital product where they learn about investing. If they are happy with that, they upgrade to a higher-ticket product. We also cross-sell them research services as well as the fintech solutions that we have.
Because of that, we were able to retain and grow our customers and achieve a six-figure annual income.
– Vivek Mashrani
What marketing strategies made you a millionaire?
As we went forward, we built the team we have now and different teams to take care of things.
Of course, we have ad agencies. We have Vavoza as our key partner. Thanks to Vavoza, we have been able to capture leads through YouTube, and the team helped us enormously to get the right kind of audience into our funnel.
Apart from paid traffic, where they are doing remarketing and reaching out to the right audience and targeting the right people, we are also generating organic traffic.
In terms of getting leads from organic traffic, the specific strategy that has worked is creating a lead magnet for each of our YouTube videos. We give some kind of free gift in all our YouTube videos, and we create a lead magnet so that we get traffic to our funnel from each video.
We have also been able to get a lot of people inside our funnel through word-of-mouth marketing and our partner program, where our customers get commissions. We were able to reach many more people because of our existing customers who got great results with us – they’ve been our messengers.
Apart from that, I’ve been tapping into multiple channels. We tied up with multiple media channels, and I am an empaneled guest speaker on many of the prominent national channels. That has given me a lot of visibility, and I’ve acted as a personal brand for my company.
– Vivek Mashrani
What strategies did you focus on in 2023, and what are you focusing on in 2024?
In 2023, we prominently deepened our research services. We got our research license, and we built a very structured platform around it called Dhruva.
Our collaborative platform is built around three angles: 1) focusing on community, 2) focusing on community-generated content, and 3) gamifying the entire process so that this entire loop gets accelerated.
We have been going deep inside, building the product for our research and community clients, where we are able to gamify things. Dhruva members are able to research stocks effectively, give their presentations, and share a lot of content with us – and that content becomes really valuable to attract new customers.
That one strategy has been helping us; we have been able to attract more than 2,000 high-ticket customers in just one year because of it.
In 2024, our focus is wider. We are focusing more on organic traffic and trying to tap into the existing traffic of other influencers.
So, we have started a newsletter, we are more active on YouTube, and we are tapping into some of the other influencers where we can go on to do our podcast. Also, we are launching a new book, which will act like a lead magnet.
Currently, we have three different verticals:
One is fintech, where we provide screening services – it is a vertical SaaS-based business for stock investing. Second is edtech, where we offer digital courses. Third is more around research services, where we are a registered research provider with the regulator and provide stock market research.
– Vivek Mashrani
What advice would you give to someone who is just getting started as an entrepreneur?
- I come from a corporate background and have become an entrepreneur. From my understanding and experience so far, the first important principle is that becoming an entrepreneur is not a defined role.
Be ready to do the smallest of things, from answering a customer support ticket to sales, operations, and everything.
I have learned sales, marketing, operations, how to deal with customers, how to deal with technology – all these different things. I’ve designed my own automation, workflows, and so on and so forth.
You need to have a basic understanding of all areas of your business. Sometimes, if your employee is not available, you need to get into their shoes and do the firefighting as well.
So, the first thing is to be open to rolling up your sleeves and working in any of the areas wherever the challenge is coming. - Second, keep it simple. What has worked for me is simplicity. We have not complicated our business, and that is why we have been able to scale efficiently.
That is a very essential element – if we do hundreds of things, then scaling becomes really tough. It also creates confusion in the minds of customers.
We have just two sales points: one is low-ticket, and the second is high-ticket. Everything else is cross-selling in a very small way. - My third advice is to be open to learning and collaborating. There is nothing like competition, actually. I do an event every single year with 20 of my competitors, where I get them as speakers, and we get our audience to listen to them.
It gives confidence to our audience that what we are doing is at par with or even better than the industry and what other people are doing.
Even if something new is shared there, or something at which somebody is better, we get a lot of accolades in terms of customers understanding the big picture, and we also get to learn from that.
There is no competition. As such, you can learn and collaborate. You grow with your competition as well, and sometimes, by tapping into competition, you get more ideas. - The fourth point is to be an action-taker. It’s all about execution. Fail forward! You can test a lot of things – some things will fail and not work out. Go back to the drawing board and assess what went wrong.
If needed, change the course, but at least don’t stop yourself from trying.
We test a lot of things; some fail and some work. Ultimately, when something clicks or works, we can take it to a whole new level. - Finally, get started as early as possible because it’s about compounding, right? Like stock market investments, the business also compounds. The faster you start and the faster you fail, the faster you can grow in your journey.
– Vivek Mashrani
Closing Remarks
Vivek Mashrani is an impressive entrepreneur, and knowing him, we can confidently say that he is just getting started on his epic journey.
He is a true visionary with massive goals, and we are extremely fortunate to have him in our corner at Vavoza as our valued client, partner, and friend.
Our top takeaway from Vivek’s experience is that you can accomplish a lot in a relatively short period of time if you constantly learn valuable skills, execute your ideas, overcome obstacles, collaborate and delegate, and add more value to your target audience and existing customers.
We hope you got many golden nuggets from this VIP Case Study featuring Vivek!
– Team Vavoza
