A Mumbai Agency Built on Retainers, Moment Marketing, and Zero Funding
Two founders launched Dad of Ad during the 2020 pandemic peak, grew it to 12 retainer clients and $12,820 per month, and learned hard lessons about pitching without contracts.
Rumit Kadakia & Shamreen Kadar
Co-founder · X
Part of Agencies that scaled
Business snapshot
Monthly revenue
≈₹12.2 lakh/mo
$12,820/mo · reported Aug 2022
- Business model
- Agency or productized service
- Started
- Apr 2020
- Team
- 2 founders + 35 staff
- Based in
- Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
- Monthly revenue
- $12,820
- Annual revenue
- $1,53,840
- Retainer clients
- 12
- Employees
- 35
Tools
- Hootsuite
- Freepik
- Grammarly
- Copyscape
- Creator Studio
- Zoho
Founder-reported figures, not independently verified. ₹ amounts use the ECB reference rate rate of Oct 2026 (₹94.82/$).
Who built it, and what they built
Rumit Kadakia and Shamreen Kadar run a Mumbai-based shop that handles social media marketing, SEO, and performance campaigns for brands trying to reach wider digital audiences. The agency works with clients across the globe and employs 35 people.
Rumit trained as a computer science engineer and spent four years in copywriting and marketing. Shamreen brought a graphic design background with roughly four years of experience. They met at a party thrown by a mutual friend and decided to start something together.
Where the idea came from
The idea came together over drinks at that party. Both founders worked in adjacent fields and saw gaps in how agencies handled social media. They bought a domain name shortly after and began researching the market.
They launched in April 2020, when COVID-19 forced most businesses online. Neither had run an agency before, but they believed young people could build something through planning and execution. The early months involved mistakes and daily learning.
How they launched and got first customers
The agency began by handling design work for friends and family who ran small businesses. It took two to three months to land the first retainer client, an IT contractual staffing partner that had zero digital presence and relied on offline marketing.
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