College Friends Quit Jobs To Start Performance Marketing Agency With Zero Rupees – Have Scaled 15+ Shark Tank D2C Brands

Imagine starting something just when the world seems like it has stopped.

The despair, the doubt, the dark…

For Vishal Arolkar and Shivangi Parekh, however, this wasn't the case.

Despite the fact that they quit their secure jobs and started a performance marketing agency just at the cusp of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns in India.

“It was clear that the market was coming to a halt. Everyone was worried if businesses would ever bounce back to their pre-pandemic era. And most of all, everyone thought starting an agency that helps brands scale their e-commerce growth was an idea with terrible timing. But for some reason, we were very hopeful,” Vishal Arolkar, co-founder of Sqroot, tells Startup Pedia in an exclusive interview.

“We knew businesses would boom. And that's exactly what happened – there was a wave of D2C brands in 2020 that wanted to spend on their online sales. We banked on just that,” he adds.

Founded in 2019 and based in Mumbai, Sqroot is a Mumbai-based performance marketing agency that helps D2C brands scale their e-commerce presence and sales. It offers end-to-end e-commerce performance marketing, with a laser focus on user journey optimization.

In FY25, the agency clocked an annual revenue of Rs 5 crore.

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THE BACKGROUND

Hailing from Mumbai, Vishal Arolkar and Shivangi Parekh have been college friends since their time at K J Somaiya Institute of Management.

Eventually, they worked at various growth and performance marketing agencies for more than four and a half years.

“My strength was handling operations and client engagement. Vishal was terrific in growth and development. We decided to finally take the leap and start our own agency,” entrepreneur Shivangi Parekh tells Startup Pedia.

In late 2019, they set up Sqroot as a performance marketing agency, primarily for D2C brands.

“The thing with performance marketing agencies is that you need literally zero rupees to start them. Unless, of course, you're planning to have a large office space in the beginning. We didn't. We just started out with the focus on getting clients and then reinvesting revenue to grow,” Vishal says.

With very limited resources to spend on large-scale marketing, Vishal Arolkar and Shivangi Parekh decided to adopt the traditional way of advertising their digital agency.

They printed out a handful of pamphlets and would go out and distribute them to people. From events and trains to public markets, they reached out in every space they could.

“People think traditional ways of marketing are obsolete. I think not. We actually got our first couple of clients from the pamphlets,” startup founder Vishal laughs.

As per the founders, they chose the name “Sqroot” to amplify their offering and belief system of “Square Results, Root Costs.”

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SQROOT: HIGH-CONVERTING AD STRATEGY EVERY SINGLE TIME

Today, Sqroot has become one of India's leading AI-enabled performance marketing agencies that has expertise in helping D2C brands grow sustainably on online and e-commerce channels like Google, Meta, Amazon, Blinkit, etc.

“Since the beginning, we distinguished ourselves from other agencies by being very clear: we are not just going to focus on metrics like impressions and clicks. While getting a lot of clicks feels nice, the real game is whether those clicks convert into sales. That's where Sqroot comes in,” entrepreneur Vishal Arolkar says.

Acting as a reliable growth partner for D2C brands across categories like health, wellness, skincare, jewellery, food, and fashion, Sqroot integrates itself in the customer journey of each brand it onboards.

This means, the performance marketing agency ensures that each step of the user journey (from the first impression to the post-purchase experience) is highly optimized.

According to the founders, Sqroot offers services that include, but are not limited to:

• Strategizing and running Google, Meta, Amazon, and Blinkit advertisements.
• Scaling ad spend while maintaining and increasing the ROAS (Return on Ad Spend), and reducing CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) over time.
• Optimizing landing pages
• Strategizing ad creatives
• Building high-converting checkout flows
• Improving metrics like prepaid order ratio, RTO (Return-to-Origin), and LTV (Lifetime Value).

In a nutshell, Sqroot offers full-funnel campaign management, helping D2C brands tailor their ad creatives and strategy according to whichever stage (discovery, consideration, and decision) their potential customers are in.

“Net ROAS and profitability is what we have our laser focus on. We don't think ads begin and end at just clicks,” startup founder Shivangi Parekh shares.

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GROWTH

To date, Sqroot, as an AI-enabled performance marketing agency, has worked with more than 350 brands in the markets of skincare, jewellery, food, wellness, health, and fashion.

“More than 90% of our clients have been in the D2C realm,” Vishal affirms.

Shivangi Parekh’s and Vishal Arolkar’s portfolio consists of D2C brands like The Face Shop, Belif (a Korean beauty brand owned by L.G), and Paws India (a pet food brand featured in Shark Tank India).

For a specific D2C brand in the Bike Accessories category, Sqroot scaled its ad campaigns to a ROAS of an astounding 14X.

“Another achievement that comes to mind is when we were collaborating with a skincare brand. Somehow, previous agencies they had worked with weren't able to deliver results. So instead of jumping straight into running ads for them, exhausting their budget, and blindly hoping for a win, we analyzed their creatives thoroughly. Discovered that their hero products weren't really their hero products,” startup founder Vishal shares with Startup Pedia.

“We cracked their positioning from the beginning, got fresh creatives made, and then ran multiple iterations. Finally, they had a ROAS that went up to even 6X. It might look small on the surface, but when you meet a brand owner who is truly struggling, you want to actually help them get sales. Here, vanity metrics like clicks and impressions are close to nothing,” Shivangi says.

The AI-enabled performance marketing agency has seen steady growth in its revenue. Sqroot clocked Rs 50 lakh in FY21, Rs 1.2 crore in FY22, Rs 2 crore in FY23, and Rs 2.9 crore in FY24.

The founders closed FY25 at Rs 5 crore.

With currently 50 active customers, Sqroot has a team size of 20 and an office space in Phoenix Market City, Mumbai.

“Sqroot has and always will stand for one thing: solving the hard problems. D2C is a space that will only continue to grow and we want to be part of a lot of growth stories. Especially the ones that are stuck thinking performance marketing doesn't work. Come to us and let us flip that picture for you,” Vishal Arolkar signs off.

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