Leaders

In life, perspective can make all the difference. Be it luck, success, failure, or struggle, everything eventually boils down to how one chooses to perceive each of them. Bestowed with the attribute to put a positive spin on even the toughest life situations is Swati M Sharma, a marketer extraordinaire and a judicious entrepreneur. Co-founder & VP of Rolling Horizons and an outcome-focused, value creation oriented marketing firm, Swati believes that entrepreneurship is a long and winding journey that throws many surprises along the way. Having converted the toughest disappointments into opportunities to learn and grow, Swati has succeeded in making a mark for herself in the highly competitive marketing industry.

Armed with a commerce degree from the prestigious Ness Wadia College, Pune, and a Master’s degree in Marketing & Communication, Swati brings to the table over 15 years of experience of working with top agencies and corporates across India, Australia, and Singapore. In a detailed interview with the CEO Insights team, Swati gives us an account of her extensive professional journey and the hidden power of a positive perspective in life.

What Is Your Take On Entrepreneurship? What Are Some Of The Most Impactful Business And Life Lessons That Your Professional Journey Has Taught You?

Entrepreneurship is a long journey and sometimes it might take years to build something meaningful and valuable. I believe one should enjoy the journey and focus on making positive differences along the way.

Before founding Rolling Horizons, I dabbled in multiple things, as an employee, and as a consultant, which taught me that viewing success and failure through a binary lens is wrong since each of those experiences teaches us valuable life lessons.

“While most entrepreneurs struggle to gain clients initially, rolling horizons had onboarded clients even before it was incorporated”

Back in 2016, a friend had approached me to create an event on the lines of IPL. I worked hard to create a buzz and gain sponsorships. On receiving the first sponsorship cheque, the entire team was ecstatic! However, demonetization was soon announced and all our sponsors backed out. This experience taught me that no matter how good your business proposition and plans are there are always going to be factors that cannot be predicted and will be beyond your control. The current COVID crisis is another such situation that has been challenging as well as a learning experience for us all.

Take Us Through The Foundation Story Of Rolling Horizons. What Inspired You To Venture Into The Rather Populous ‘Digital Marketing’ Space? What Are Some Of The Major Challenges That You Face As An Entrepreneur?

Inspiration is deeply personal; it derives from what one holds the most important and what gets you excited each day. Digital Marketing is a services domain and extremely competitive, but what drives me is the opportunity to meet and work with aspirational and passionate people.

I have always had the desire to create something of my own. Circa 2019, I received a call from Nikhil Thosar, a senior ex-colleague about a digital marketing project engagement with a company he is a board member of. During one of our discussions over coffee, he casually mentioned about starting a company focused on sales and marketing. Those coffee conversations soon turned into planning sessions and before we even knew it, we were selecting the name for this new joint venture. The foundation of Rolling Horizons has been the beginning of my entrepreneurial journey where I have the opportunity to create something meaningful and in the process make a difference. It has since been over a year and the journey has brought with its successes, unpredicted misses, and tremendous learning.

While most entrepreneurs struggle to gain clients initially, Rolling Horizons had onboarded clients even before it was incorporated. We, however, focus on a certain persona of prospects. Lack of participation, inability to look at a larger picture, rigid mindset and unjust push on price has seen us shaking hands and leave the table in several client engagements.

Give Us An Insight Into The Strategies And Philosophies That Guide Rolling Horizons’ Approach To Working On Projects And Client Engagement.

Living up to our tag line, “Cocreating Successes”, which is also our engagement philosophy, Rolling Horizons works ‘with’ clients and not ‘for’ them. Instead of having a siloed and commoditized approach, we strive to be an extended team of problem solvers. While digital marketing is a significant part of our engagements, our value proposition is much larger. All our engagements are discovery and consulting-led, meaning, we understand the objectives and asis, before making any proposition and commitment.

Backed by more than 25 years of global sales, marketing, sales enablement, and services delivery experience, our leadership team has created and managed businesses with multi-milliondollar revenues, across fortune, listed corporations, and start-ups. This experience empowers us to add value and drive positive outcomes across business stages or needs - launch, acceleration, and/or transformation. We proactively engage with multiple stakeholders (teams) at client organizations to drive improvements and transformation across the value chain.

How Do You Stay Abreast Of Industry Trends? What Would Your Advice Be To Budding Marketers And Entrepreneurs?

I devote ample time speaking to students, friends or ex-colleagues who are looking for advice on digital marketing which helps me stay updated on new use cases. I also follow various blogs such as HubSpot, Moz, Marketing Land, Neil Patel, Women on Business, Small Business Trends, Seth’s Blog, Gary Vaynerchuk’s Blog, The Entrepreneurial Mind, Under 30 CEO, and Startup Digest among others to stay abreast with industry trends. Reading books and articles of influencers on marketing strategies is also part of my self-learning. I periodically acquire new skills through online courses as well.

Advancement in Mobility, Data Analytics, AI, Automation, Voice Search, etc.will create a new normal and we must not lose sight of these when it comes to (digital) marketing. Also, outcomedriven engagements are already being seen in certain marketing services and this model may be adopted across more services. It is also important to network within the entrepreneur community and create a peer group that can understand your struggles and adds to your think tank.

Swati M Sharma, Co-Founder & VP, Rolling Horizons

A marketer extraordinaire, Swati brings to the table 15 years of solid industry experience spread across agencies and corporates from India, Australia, and Singapore. Leveraging her vast experience along with a commerce degree from the prestigious Ness Wadia College, Pune a Master’s degree in Marketing & Communication, this go-getter is striving hard to make Rolling Horizons clients’ first choice in terms of digital marketing.