About
The long way
from Sattur
I grew up in Sattur, a small town in Virudhunagar district, Tamil Nadu, known for matchboxes and fountain-pen nibs. At 13, after my father's business collapsed, I dropped out of school and worked in his shop for nine years. Sixteen hours a day. Learning margins, persuasion, and how to read people before I knew those were marketing skills.
I completed my education through correspondence study at night.
In September 2007, I arrived in Chennai with ₹5,000 in savings and what my sister gave me from her first home-tuition earnings. Twenty-two interviews in twenty-five days. First job: Internet Marketing Executive. I scraped 200 emails a day.
Two people carried me through that period. Balaji Krishnamurthy, who believed in me before I gave him reason to, and Ashok Kumar Madesan, who shaped my work ethic in those early years. Everything since has stood on what they built.
I spent eleven years at Dot Com Infoway, rising to VP Marketing. In October 2021 I joined Kissflow as Senior Manager. Associate Marketing Director in 2023. Director of Marketing in January 2026.
"I'm soft-spoken by nature. Rarely the loudest voice in the room. Influence comes from consistency and trust, not volume."
I don't lecture. My sessions tend to run in the same order: humour, curiosity, framework, discussion, reflection, action. The meme contest at the top isn't a warm-up gimmick. It lowers the guard so people actually think before the hard part begins.
Being humorous is not the same as being funny. Humour is how I get a room to lean in. I'd rather run a conversation than deliver a presentation, and I'd rather someone leave seeing a problem differently than leave impressed with me.
Executive Programme in Marketing Management. Moving beyond execution into strategy, consumer behaviour, and marketing leadership.
Digital Transformation Fundamentals for Industry. A decade on, the focus widens from marketing to how AI and technology reshape whole businesses.
Building at the intersection, and teaching what proves useful along the way.
Beyond campaigns, I've introduced a set of recurring rituals for the Kissflow marketing team. Marketing Thinnai is the anchor, a quarterly, whole-team gathering named after the open-porch sitting space in Tamil homes, where the neighbourhood actually talks. Every Thinnai carries a Gratitude Wall, because no matter how fast we move, it's worth stopping to say thank you. Sometimes twice.
Marketing Sandhai, Tamil for marketplace, is where the team shows what they've actually shipped, not what they planned to. Marketing Expos turn the SEO, Paid, Content, PMM, Design and ABM teams into booths explaining their own craft, basically a Comic Con for marketers, minus the capes. Once a year we take strategy to a beach house, tug of war and biryani included.
I also facilitate group book readings for new joiners. My first pick was Leadership and Self-Deception. The Kissflow Leadership Program carries the same spirit through everything else I do there, a surfer for a logo, and one line for an ethos: fall, rise, surf again.
"Marketing is not just execution and numbers. It's community, shared energy, and the willingness to bring our whole selves to the work."
In July 2026, I sat down with Konsulteer Icons for their executive interview series. Asked about the sharpest problem I'm solving at Kissflow, my answer was blunt: earning a place in the buyer's consideration set before they've even heard of you, a challenge every India-built SaaS company knows firsthand.
"Execution without judgment is just noise. Know why you're doing something before deciding how to do it. The tools have changed dramatically. The principle hasn't."
My fix is the same one line: treat marketing as trust infrastructure, rather than campaign execution.
Read the full interview north_eastI used to sit uneasily with a line from The Dark Knight: "if you're good at something, never do it for free." Then I actually checked. It's not Bruce Wayne's line, it's the Joker's, delivered to a mob boss while pitching a kill for hire, and by the film's own logic he's the least money-motivated person in it.
What I actually do, without being asked: a 15 to 20 minute document when someone asks how I'd approach a problem, a 30 minute conversation when someone needs to talk something through, an introduction when I can't solve it myself but I know someone who can. I wouldn't mind being paid for any of it, but that's not why I do it.
The harder question I'm sitting with now is scale, going from a hundred people toward a lakh, using AI as leverage, without losing what makes the in-person work worth doing. Connection doesn't scale and I don't want it to, it runs on trust and judgment. Compression does, an asset built once keeps working without me in the room, and MPL is the proof of concept.
"Connection doesn't scale, and I don't want it to. Compression does."
A speaking invite, a question about ABM, or a conversation. I read every message.
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