Leaders

Establishing and growing a startup in today’s competitive world is tough. Increasingly, firms seek the help of digital strategists and marketing experts to champion their products and achieve company growth. Sensing an opportunity to help firms scale their organizations digitally, Jasmine Batra started her digital growth agency, Arrow Digital Marketing, in 2007. Since then, Arrow Digital has become a digital marketing leader in Melbourne, managing over $10 million in advertising across 40+ industries, including AGL, Telstra and the Queensland Government. Arrow has also won multiple Australian business awards, including the Semrush Search Awards three years in a row. In an exclusive interview with Women Entrepreneur, Jasmine shares her educational journey across the globe, launching Arrow Digital and harnessing emerging technologies to create business growth, and her focus on mentorship and supporting tech startups and women in business.

Shed some light on your early educational journey and the prior industry experience in advertising, marketing, and project management that you bring to the table.

During my B. Com (Hons.) from Lucknow University, I was also completing my Honors in Systems at the National Institute of Information Technologies (NIIT). In my final year, I discovered management consulting and began a program at the Institute of Chartered Management Accountants. However, I soon realized that I'm more of a people person, so I went on to complete an MBA in Marketing from Lucknow University, where I hold the Governor's Medal in Academic Excellence. After my MBA, I got picked as part of a campus placement by an ad agency in New Delhi. I worked there for some time before joining a financial services e-learning company headquartered in LA as a project manager for their development center in New Delhi. There I managed a team across multiple departments.

Tell us about the foundation journey of Arrow Digital. What was the underlying idea behind creating a digital marketing agency?

We started Arrow Digital Marketing to provide digital marketing solutions and growth strategies to entrepreneurs, startups, and family run businesses. One of the driving factors in setting Arrow up was utilizing my previous advertising experience to create on-point messaging to target audiences and customers and tap into digital tools to bring it all to life.

We started Arrow in 2007, three years after I arrived in Australia. As a new organization, we got some early success when establishing a business was all about marketing, and digital technology and strategies were in their early stages. What was fascinating for me was leveraging advancing technology to help organizations grow. Being a new company, Google only had a handful of agencies with Premier Partner status, and we were one of them. We had access to some of the most disruptive and innovative digital solutions to help our clients, and being able to propel their growth by these means meant our early success.

What are the various roles & responsibilities that you currently shoulder at Arrow Digital? How do you foresee the digital marketing landscape evolving in the near future?

I wear many hats. I was once involved in almost every client and project stage, from client pitches to setting up ads and dashboards. That’s changed a bit now while I focus more of my time on providing mindful mentorship to women in tech and spearheading capital raising initiatives for entrepreneurs while running incubator programs in partnership with my business network. We now have a diverse and truly global team of experts as part of the Arrow team who manage a lot of the day-to-day client work, and I am involved in certain projects and winning new clients—anywhere an experienced leader is required. I am the go-to person for the 3 Ms: marketing, money and mindset!

While there has always been consistent growth in the digital marketing sector, it didn’t truly skyrocket until the pandemic. This is thanks to many bricks and mortar businesses needing to embrace the digital landscape in order to survive.

The pandemic has shown everyone a way to reach a much bigger global market through digitalization. However, the sudden shift has also resulted in more competition, requiring digital agencies to have a strong value proposition to attract more clients and ultimately succeed.

What are some of the major milestones you have achieved so far in your professional journey?

Initially, we set up our agency to assist clients with their search, social and digital strategies. Now our business offerings have evolved significantly. Presently, we offer a more inclusive, well-rounded service. Setting up our global team of experts across multiple disciplines over the past year to deliver a total marketing solution to our clients has been another notable achievement.

A huge milestone for Arrow has been launching a series of training sessions and workshops for entrepreneurs looking to grow their businesses. These sessions have been received incredibly well and cemented our authority as a digital marketing leader by bringing value to the business community.

We are also proud of our client success stories, where some businesses are now recognized internationally, others have been acquired, and so on. We consider these stories fantastic achievements also.

What advice would you give to young women and girls who aspire to become business leaders and entrepreneurs in the future?

The advice I would like to give to young women and budding entrepreneurs is to delve deeper into themselves and find out the skillsets they are naturally good at. Starting and building an enterprise requires a lot of hard work, commitment, and consistency, so do the inner work to stay on course. Finding success is not an overnight thing. Find out what gives you joy and stick to it. Fusion of passion, profit and purpose is always a good recipe, in fact, it’s key to success.

Jasmine Batra, Director, Arrow Digital

Jasmine Batra is an entrepreneur, speaker, businesswoman and educator powered by learning and innovation. She founded the award-winning digital growth agency Arrow Digital Marketing in 2007 and leads multiple other initiatives to educate and empower business leaders and entrepreneurs. She is a mentor for various federal, state & university programs including the current AusIndustry-backed Big LEAP Incubator for commercialization in international markets with a focus on India.