You need three Bs to become an entrepreneur.
Balls. (We grew up with them!)
Bucks. (We had this covered too, thanks to Vivek Suchanti)
Believers. (People who are willing to give you a chance).
Had we not found these 3 believers, Scarecrow may have never existed.
These three amazing gentlemen took a leap of faith and resisted all sorts of corporate pressure to hand over their brand – Religare Macquarie to us.
Their names?
Vikas Agnihotri – Operating Partner, Softbank
Pradeep Natarajan – Head of Retail Assets, IDFC First Bank.
Sujith Narayan – Founder of Epifi
How it happened
The three of us, Raghu Bhat, Manish Bhatt and Joy Sengupta used to handle Aegon Religare in Contract Advertising.
We had done a campaign – KILB (Kam Insurance Lene ki Beemari) featuring Irfan Khan that turned out to be a blockbuster.
Based on this, we had a reputation within the Religare Group.
We got to know that there was to be a pitch for Religare Macquarie, the Private Wealth arm of the Religare Group, soon.
We took a calculated gamble.
We quit our jobs and pitched as ‘RMJ’ – Based on the first letter of our names.
And for the pitch, we carried visiting cards that mentioned ‘Cafe Coffee Day, Vile Parle’ as the office address!
It worked!
We were awarded the business despite the presence of a few big agencies at the pitch.
Well, that’s how the journey started.