After Losing ₹1.5 Cr In Year One, This Startup Founder Bounced Back & Built ‘Brandola’ Into A ₹15 Cr Annual Revenue Offline Branding Biz

Every Indian startup story begins with an inflection point, but few start with as much financial and emotional risk as Brandola’s.

Founded by Madangopal Gounder, a Mumbai-born entrepreneur from a lower-middle-class family, Brandola today stands as a fast-growing Mumbai startup in the offline branding and marketing solutions market.

Its journey, however, was anything but linear as Madangopal’s early life was shaped by constraint and perseverance.

His father began as a blue-collar worker before becoming a civil contractor, instilling in Madangopal a deep respect for hard work and discipline.

After completing his schooling, Madangopal enrolled in a B.Com programme at a college in Mumbai in 2005, juggling education with survival.

“I attended college during the day and worked nights as a designer, just to support my family and keep learning. Those nights spent designing business cards and promotional material at an international design agency became my first real exposure to branding,” recalls Madangopal Gounder.

Over time, he transitioned from design to operations, spending over a decade gaining expertise in printing, fabrication, logistics, and client management. That operational grounding would later become Brandola’s biggest advantage.

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Spotting the Big Gap in Offline Branding Space:

By mid-2023, Madangopal had spent nearly 14 years inside the offline retail branding ecosystem. And what he saw disturbed him!

Design agencies were charging premium prices while compromising on materials, timelines, and accountability, and relying too heavily on third-party vendors without adequately assessing their capabilities, which led to inconsistent outcomes.

"After spending years on the ground, I saw how often great ideas failed because execution, accountability, and ownership were missing. The industry had a credibility problem. Most agencies overpromised and underdelivered—especially when it came to matching 3D designs with actual execution. That’s why from day one, I wanted Brandola to be different,"says Madangopal Gounder, now the founder & MD of Brandola, during an exclusive interview with Startup Pedia.

Clients were shown impressive visuals, but production teams failed to replicate them on the ground, eroding trust.

The imperative to fill the gap between promise and performance became the foundation of Brandola.

In October 2023, Madangopal quit his well-paying job. Two months later, in December 2023, he formally launched Brandola Marketing Solutions Pvt. Ltd., betting everything on a design-to-installation model that prioritised execution excellence.

Initial Momentum & Then the Recovery from a Setback:

Brandola began with a modest initial investment of mere ₹25 lakhs, entirely from Madangopal’s personal savings accumulated over the years.

The first order arrived in January 2024, and within three months, the company had generated ₹30 lakhs in revenue from a single client—despite not having its own printing setup.

“In the very beginning, all our production was outsourced to third-party vendors. For that time, it was a risky, but necessary strategy,”Madangopal explains to Startup Pedia.

At the same time, Madangopal was setting up Brandola’s in-house printing setup, which finally became operational in March 2024.

This marked a turning point, giving the Mumbai-based company tighter control over production, quality, timelines, and cost efficiency benefits.

Like many early-stage and first-generation entrepreneurs, Madangopal Gounder wore every hat imaginable—sales, operations, finance, HR, and client servicing.

Just as Brandola seemed to be stabilising, November 2024 delivered a brutal blow.

A series of poor hiring decisions, combined with a few supply chain issues, resulted in losses of nearly ₹1.5 crore. For a young bootstrapped startup and its founder, the damage was existential and totally real.

“During that challenging time, there were days when it felt like everything we had built could collapse overnight. Yet, we chose resilience over retreat,”Madangopal says.

Madangopal restructured teams, tightened processes, and personally motivated employees to stay the course. He told his team that it was just a phase—not the end.

By the close of that financial year, Brandola had bounced back, recovering the losses and restoring its financial stability.

The episode became a defining lesson in entrepreneurial ethos, talent selection, and execution rigour.

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Building a Trusted Offline Branding Partner: The Role of Teams & Tech

Today, Brandola employs over 85 employees across its office, factory workers, and field staff.

In under two years, the company has served more than 26 clients, including Zepto, L'Oreal, Mamaearth, Foxtale, Bioderma, Birla Opus, Bayer, Axis Mutual Funds, IIFL, and Kenvue.

Many of these clients continue to work with Brandola, treating it as an extension of their internal marketing teams.

“At Brandola, the culture we are building is deeply shaped by my own journey in the offline branding industry. We believe in execution first - where every team member takes responsibility from design intent to final delivery. If something goes wrong, we fix it together; if something goes right, the credit is shared. Hence, the biggest credit goes to our team and people. From my wife Jyothi, who stood by me when I chose entrepreneurship, to my brother Arun leading sales, and the key members of our leadership team like Jashvi Shah and Kishor Salunkhe, Brandola is truly a collective effort,” Madangopal comments on his startup’s culture.

Brandola specialises in turnkey retail execution solutions like visual merchandising, in-store branding, POSM, signage, and fulfilment and logistics.

Brandola’s 15,000 square feet state-of-the-art manufacturing plant in Vasai enables tighter quality control, while its in-house teams handle engineering, fabrication, logistics, and installation across India.

However, a key differentiator for Brandola lies in its AI-powered tech platform.

Its proprietary software enables real-time tracking, transparent reporting, and provides daily project updates to clients—from site recce to installation and invoicing.

The platform currently supports offline branding deployments across 700 tier-1 to tier-3 cities in India.

“Our customer journey is built around solving real pain points. We begin with market research and data-driven insights to ensure every POSM design is practical and production-ready. In essence, we’ve created a process-driven, learning-focused organization where mistakes aren’t hidden—they’re used to make our systems stronger. Technology, data, and transparency help us scale, but it’s our people and cultural mindset that truly define Brandola,”Madangopal explains.

The startup also conducts planogram-based audits and post-installation maintenance, ensuring long-term visibility and brand compliance.

From fulfilling 20 lakh+ gifting kits for the quick-commerce platform Zepto to partnering with top beauty and FMCG brands like CeraVe, La Roche-Posay, Mamaearth, and Wow Momo on their offline trade expansion, Brandola has demonstrated scalability with speed—even deploying projects within 48 hours.

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The Road Ahead: Finances, Funding, and Future

Today, Brandola remains a profitable, bootstrapped startup. In FY 2024–2025, it recorded an annual revenue of ₹15 crores. For FY 2025–2026, the target stands at ₹28 crores.

While external investor funding has never been raised, Madangopal is now open to strategic investments to support expansion and further enhance Brandola’s manufacturing, operational, and technological capabilities.

In September this year, the company received the “Offline Marketing Agency Disrupting the Industry in 2025” award from Entrepreneur Outlook—a recognition of its growing influence within the retail branding and POSM industry.

Looking ahead, Brandola’s vision is ambitious and awe-inspiring.

“Our long-term vision is to become India’s largest offline branding aggregator and the execution partner of choice for both global and Indian brands. However, over the next three years, Brandola aims to achieve a valuation of ₹250 crores, driven by strong growth across our two verticals: Brandola, our POSM business, and DarkSync, our quick-commerce infrastructure. Above everything else, Brandola looks forward to strengthening the trust that our clients place in us and the trust we build within our team. We aim to create a company people are proud to work for, and one that brands can rely on as a long-term execution partner,” Madangopal Gounder concludes by reemphasising the sheer scale of the task ahead.

The Mumbai-based startup is on track to further enhance its AI-driven project management platform and to adopt sustainable, modular POSM solutions that reduce waste and carbon footprint.

Ultimately, Madangopal and his team aspire to make the Brandola name synonymous with smart yet scalable offline retail branding and visibility.

As the outdoor advertising and branding market in India is projected to reach US$ 2.22 billion by 2033, Brandola’s journey reflects the resilience, discipline, and technology-led operational depth increasingly defining the Indian startup ecosystem.

From losing ₹1.5 crore in the year one to building an ₹15 crore annual turnover enterprise, Madangopal Gounder’s story is about continuous learning, pure grit, and executional brilliance.

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