What 5 Years Taught Us About Running a Performance Marketing Agency in Bangalore

Five years in, the thing we would tell any founder shortlisting a performance marketing agency in Bangalore is that the question is not who has the best deck. It is who owns the work, who is accountable for revenue rather than reach, and who will still be on your account in month 6. Here is how we learned to answer those 3 questions, and why we would want you to ask them of us.

"We did not plan to start an agency. It kind of happened to us." That is how Raveen Anand opens Episode 1 of our DAM Turns 5 series, and it is accurate. But the useful part of that story is not how we started, it is what the first year forced us to decide, because those decisions are what separate agencies that compound results from agencies that simply stay busy.

We started because we had already been the client

Karthik Raju and Raveen, the 2 of us who started this company, were batchmates at Babson College in the US, and then we went in completely different directions. Karthik stayed in the US doing healthcare consulting, and ran businesses in real estate and healthcare. Raveen moved back to India, joined a boutique consulting firm, then went on to run growth for startups in the children's food and education spaces, because she wanted to be inside a business rather than advising one from the outside.

While running his own companies, Karthik noticed something that had nothing to do with big brands. Traditional businesses, with manufacturing being the clearest example, were not using paid media well at all. So he started helping a few family members and friends with their ads, with nothing formal about it, to see whether he could make it work. It worked well enough that he called Raveen and said there was a business in this, he just needed help structuring it. That call is where the 2 of us started working together again.

The reason we actually started was not that the market needed another agency, because it did not. We started because we had both sat on the client side, and the pattern was always the same. Services were fragmented across 4 different vendors who did not talk to each other, and the monthly report led with impressions, reach and engagement, none of which a founder can take to a board meeting. We wrote more about that gap in our comparison of Bangalore agencies by revenue accountability.

That whole stretch, from the phone call to the first client, is what Episode 1 of DAM Turns 5 covers. You can watch the episode on LinkedIn.

Why we put everything in-house, and what it buys you

The first structural decision we made was to build media buying, performance creative and analytics in-house rather than stitching them across vendors.

That was never about control for its own sake, it was about the speed of the feedback loop. When the people writing the ad, buying the media and reading the numbers sit in the same room, a test that fails on Monday is rebuilt by Tuesday. When those 3 functions sit in 3 different companies, the same loop takes 3 weeks, and in paid media a 3 week loop is the difference between finding what works and running out of budget while you look for it.

It also changes what you can promise. Because creative, media and measurement answer to the same people, we can map revenue targets and unit economics before the first rupee is deployed rather than reverse-engineering a story at the end of the month. That is also why conversion rate optimisation and SEO and AEO sit on the same brief rather than running in sequence behind the ads.

Ask any agency this directly. Who writes the creative, who buys the media, who owns the tracking setup, and how long does one complete test take from idea to result. If the answer involves more than one company, the honest number is usually weeks.

Our first client signed when we had nothing to show them

No case studies. No track record. Nothing to point at. Our first client took the bet anyway, which still feels slightly mad looking back, and the only things we had to offer were conviction and a commitment to be accountable for the outcome rather than for the activity.

That shaped how we pitch to this day. We would rather tell a founder what we think is actually wrong with their funnel than walk in with a deck of other people's results, because a deck like that is easy to assemble and tells them very little about what working together would be like. If you are earlier in the process, our framework for getting started with performance marketing covers what to fix before you hire anyone at all.

If you want the 90 second version of that first year instead, the reel is on Instagram.

One relationship became 6 industries

We never set out to be a hospitality agency. An early client owned a well known property in Lonavala, they knew us from Babson, and we walked in with more confidence than experience. That pressure forced us to build reporting, an escalation matrix and pre-launch checks in month 2 rather than eventually. It turned into a 4 year relationship that is still going, and hospitality became a core industry because one relationship, handled honestly, opened a door.

That is the pattern that built the rest of the company. Today we work across residential real estate, travel and hospitality, education and sports, B2B, luxury e-commerce and healthcare, and each one needed a different diagnosis rather than a repurposed playbook.

A real estate buyer decides over weeks across site visits, WhatsApp and search, which is why we measure cost per site visit rather than cost per lead. A hospitality property lives and dies by the off-season. A premium patisserie needs acquisition that holds its margin as spend scales. A manufacturer's buyers are procurement heads who are searching, not scrolling. Treating those as the same problem is how budgets get wasted.

Two founders, two jobs, unchanged in 5 years

The honest reason this did not fall apart in year one is that the 2 of us are wired differently. Karthik takes the big picture, which means tech, sales, growth and partnerships. Raveen takes execution, creative, and building the team and the culture. We did not divide it by title, we divided it by what each of us is genuinely better at, and 5 years later that split has not changed.

It matters more to a client than it sounds. In a lot of agencies the person who sells you the engagement is not the person who runs it, and you usually discover that in month 2 when the senior strategist from the pitch has been replaced by someone 3 years junior. Our split is permanent and visible from the outside, so you know who you are dealing with and when.

Raveen wrote up her own side of that split here, which is worth reading if you are about to divide roles with a co-founder.

The 4 questions we would want you to ask us

If you are evaluating a performance marketing agency in Bangalore right now, these are the questions we would want on your list, for us and for everyone else you are considering.

1. Who actually does the work, in-house or outsourced, and how long does one complete test cycle take from idea to result.

2. What does the agency report on every month, and can each number be traced back to revenue rather than impressions or reach. The pricing model matters here too, because retainer, percentage of spend and pay per lead each shift the risk somewhere different.

3. Who runs your account after the pitch, and is that the same person who pitched it.

4. What has the agency said no to recently, because an agency that has never turned work down has not yet had to choose between its own revenue and a client's results.

We have been on the receiving end of all 4 of those answers as clients ourselves, which is the entire reason the company exists in the shape it does. And if the honest answer is that you are big enough to bring this in-house, we have written about where that line actually sits as well.

Frequently asked questions

What should a founder look for in a performance marketing agency in Bangalore?

Look at what the agency owns rather than what it lists. Whether media buying, creative and analytics sit in-house, whether reporting ties back to revenue, and whether the person who pitched will run the account. Those 3 answers tell you more than any credentials deck.

Does it matter whether an agency keeps media buying and creative in-house?

It matters for speed. Split those functions across vendors and a single test cycle stretches from days into weeks, which limits how much you can learn inside a given budget.

How is a performance marketing agency different from a general digital marketing agency?

A performance marketing company is accountable for a commercial outcome such as qualified leads, bookings or revenue. A general digital agency is usually accountable for delivering activity, like posts published or campaigns run. The distinction shows up in what each one puts in its monthly report.

Does industry experience actually matter when choosing an agency?

It matters more than most credentials. A hospitality campaign fails on seasonality, a real estate campaign fails between the lead and the site visit, and a B2B campaign fails across a 12 month cycle. An agency that has only solved one of those will apply that playbook to all 3.