You’re reading an eChai Interview, an insightful and candid conversation with Entrepreneurs — a publication of eChai Ventures.

eChai with Jignesh Gohel, Founder & CEO, OLBUZ Consulting

Our today's guest for eChai with An Entrepreneur is Jignesh Gohel, Founder & CEO, OLBUZ Consulting - an emerging digital marketing agency in India which helps small, medium and large enterprises to promote their brands online. Being a Google Adwords partner, OLBUZ offers customized Google shopping and Google Adwords solutions for all types of businesses.

Jignesh Gohel is an Entrepreneur, Digital Marketing Consultant and Google Adwords Certified Professional. He is having over 9+ years of experience working as a Digital Marketing Consultant with small, medium and large businesses to promote their brands and product online.

Here is the insightful and candid conversation with Jignesh. Join the conversation to ask any specific questions to Jignesh.

Early Years : When did it first strike you to begin this venture and why? Your Eureka Moment (the moment you decided to be an entrepreneur).

I have started my career in online marketing field on 2006 and it was biggest coincidence of my life. Being a computer engineer with first class marks from Sardar Patel University, I also dreamed for lucrative job as a software developer. During campus interview, I got an opportunity to work in this field which i accepted just to start my professional career. This was the turning point of my career from where I learned a lot about opportunities in online businesses and started dreaming to have my own venture. It took 7 long years to left my full time job to start my venture OLBUZ!

Business Venture : What is your business model and what problems does it solve? What are market opportunities? How is it different from your competitors? How do you generate revenues ?

I am into online marketing industry since last 9 years and have worked with almost all industries/size of the businesses. OLBUZ’s business model is very clear, we focuses on 3 main pillar of any online business which are; Design, Development and Marketing. We are Google Adwords Certified partner agency and this is where we are different from our competitors.

Sales : How did you make your first sale and how much time it took you from starting up to closing the first sale ? How long is your sales cycle ?

Over 90% of our business is generated from referral like other IT companies, friends, well wisher like you and networking. You must be surprised to know that we never hired any sales or business development team so far.

Company Culture : What kind of culture exists in your organization? How did you establish this tone and why did you institute this particular type of culture?

As I said earlier, we are a small startup with small team which is growing steadily. OLBUZ company culture is very friendly where there is no strict working hours policy. We work in free environment where everyone has right to share their own views.

Partnerships : What are your views about finding the right Co-Founder ? How did you find your business partner? According to you who is the ideal business partner?

Having a right Co-founder for any startup can be biggest asset as you can easily distribute and manage work. Being a single founder, I understand this very well as it is challenging to manage all these single-handedly. After recent joining of my younger brother Nitin, the process is getting easier than ever.

According to me, the ideal partner for any business is; who share the same dream and has passion to achieve it without worrying about circumstances. It happens that we may get failure sometime or may have different opinion too. But the respect towards each other may lead them towards success.

Hiring - How did you hire your first employee ? And in general what's your hiring policy ? How important have good employees been to your success?

I am very lucky in this case as it is very difficult to hire first few employees for any startup. Niraj who studied with my brother was the first person who joined OLBUZ as a trainee and currently playing one of the most important roles in OLBUZ family. Our hiring policy is very simple in which I give more weight on individual’s self learning approach against qualification.

Employees play a very crucial role towards the growth of any business and for me, they are biggest asset of my startup. Without their support and hard work, I could never grow steadily.

Learning : How did you handle your disappointments and failures?

Disappointment and failure is the part of an entrepreneur journey which always teachers us important learning lessons in our professional and personal life. It is always difficult to tackle it but my approach is to take a learning lesson from it that reflects on the future decision I make for OLBUZ.

Vision: What's your vision for your venture. What do you want to accomplish in your life ? What are your future aspirations?

My vision is to develop a web product that can help people in their daily life. Currently we are working on one of such product that will be launched in near future. My goal towards life is very simple! “Peace of mind”. This will be always reflecting on our work culture. We never ever promise to our client and we are very transparent in terms of our services.

Work-Life Balance : How do you find a balance between work family and social life?

Managing work-life balance is very crucial part of entrepreneur’s life and I am lucky in this case as my family is always supportive.

Risks : Which was the boldest decision you ever made to have this venture work?

To leave my full time job!

Here are some of the amazing photos from his entrepreneurial journey.