I am Ayush Shukla - Founder of Finnet Media and host of ‘Restless’. If you are a brand that wants to collaborate or is looking to work with us - reach out to me at ayush@finnetmedia.com 

Before I share more details, here’s my story: 
Growing up, I've seen the power of the internet and how it can change everything. 
Post my Economics Grad in 2020, I tried freelancing in various startups, failed in e-commerce & tried my hands on my biggest fear a ‘full-time job’. 
But something felt missing—I soon found the answer when I was infected with COVID-19.
I have been into content creation since 2019 & since then, I've made over 100+ videos for my 300k+ followers across all my social media. I went full-time when I realized just how much I loved content & marketing. 
I have had the honour of hosting Anupam Mittal, Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Aman Gupta, Anupam Kher, and many more on my podcast Restless. 
Soon after leaving my job, I started building Finnet Media in May'21 an influencer marketing and creative consultancy, where we work towards building strong relationships between brands, creators, and consumers. 
We exclusively manage over 50+ of your favourite creators, including India’s top names like Sharan Hegde, Anushka, and many others. 
We have worked with brands like HDFC, POCO, boAt.300+ brands in the short span of our existence.
We help with 
1. Influencer marketing from brief, creator discovery, creatives, to execution. (Influencer & Performance marketing) 
2. We produce videos & creatives for brands.
3. We write content for their CXOs and help them establish their personal brand on LinkedIn and Instagram. (SMM) 

Some brownie points for credibility: 
- Red Carpet at Cannes’24 
- LinkedIn Top Voice in 2022 & 2024
- BW Disrupt 30 under 30, 2023
- Impact Top 30 under 30, 2023
- Culture Brand Ambassador by the Minister of Culture, GoI, 2022
- Awarded Best Use of Influencer Marketing 2023 - by Afaqs 
- Won Best Use of Influencer Marketing 2023 (multichannel) - by Afaqs 

Being in the creative space, we know what it takes to deliver high ROI, find the right talent, and craft a brand strategy.
We have aced content on a personal & professional level. 
What we offer is backed by proof of work and a high-trust ecosystem. 
If you are a brand/creator looking for growth, I can help you:
✅ Helping you grow using influencer & SMM marketing with a check on investment and pricing 
✅ Find the right balance between product, targeting, and creatives.
✅ Establish the 0-2 journey of your content and production teams.
You can contact me here: [ayush@finnetmedia.com]/drop me a DM.

Ayush Shukla

The biggest THREAT to Zakir Khan's career is familiarity & that's exactly why he EXITED till 2030 🚨

He announced it as a health break & yes, health matters. Obviously.

But zoom out.

Zakir did 5 specials in 8 years. 
Sold out Madison Square Garden, ran Farzi Mushaira, created Chacha Vidhayak Hain Humare, toured non-stop. 

He even admitted performing sick for a year because he loved the stage too much.

This is someone who understands something most creators don't:

Overexposure kills your edge.

The smartest artists don't wait for the audience to get bored. 
They leave while the hunger is still alive. 👀

(Unlike most of us who keep posting till even our mom stops liking the post😂)

We've seen this play out time & time again:
↳ Shah Rukh Khan vanished post-2018 when his films flopped. Came back with Pathaan & suddenly owned Bollywood again.

↳ Imran Khan disappeared at his peak. Years later, an entire generation started begging for his return.

↳ Ranbir Kapoor has ZERO social media presence. Calls it "extra headache." His films are events, not just box office releases.

Because scarcity compounds respect.

Health is part of it, sure 8 years of grinding breaks anyone.

But announcing "until 2030"? That's not a doctor's prescription. That's refusing to return until the hunger does.

Most artists stay until people stop caring.

Zakir left before we got the chance.

& when he returns, we'll fight for tickets instead of just buying them🎟️

Founder of Finnet Media, making creators & creatives work for your brand | Recognized as BW and Impact 30 under 30

EMoMee, a kids’ YouTube channel raised ₹2 crore on Shark Tank India & most creators still think “more views” is the strategy. (cute)

Just an FYI: Emomee raised money for repeat behaviour.

Globally, kids content already runs the creator economy.
Cocomelon - Nursery Rhymes ~200M subscribers.
Vlad & Niki ~149M.
Kids Diana Shows ~138M.

This pattern has stayed consistent for years.

Kids content follows a different law: Audiences grow out but demand doesn’t.

And the buyer isn’t the child, it’s the parents who don’t optimise for price but for trust.

That’s why serious kids channels don’t stay channels.

They become characters, then products & then daily rituals inside homes.

& the Sharks, they bet on IP that compounds.

(Yes, IP. Not “engagement rate”)

Bcs attention gets you noticed, distribution gets you funded but ownership is what lets you survive.

Most creators are still renting reach, only a few are owning worlds.

That’s the separation & that’s where the next decade is headed.

Everyone saw Deepinder Goyal’s RESIGNATION but that’s not why this moment ACTUALLY matters🚨

This is a founder calling time on himself.

Zomato was built on instinct.
Eternal is now a listed company - one controversy, and the ripple hits shareholders.

Deepinder says that he wants to work on some other passion and that there’s no fixed job for a CEO anymore.

And in his letter yesterday, he wrote: I’ve spent 18 years building this company.

He even acknowledged his personal brand now affects Zomato & Eternal as public entities.

That level of self-awareness is rare in founders who’ve actually won!!

& he created ~$20B in public market value - basically, a generational builder choosing not to overstay.

Most founders stay in the chair and tell themselves “I’ll figure it out.”

(The company usually pays tuition for that confidence 🙂)

DP didn’t wait for the company to force the change.
He moved BEFORE it hurt.

Bcs he understood that if you love the company enough,
you step aside when it needs a different version of leadership.

Won’t call it resignation but evolution :)

Also, congratulations Albinder Dhindsa on becoming the CEO of Eternal now🙌🏻

This is the only celebrity brand where the product gets more attention than the face, and it sold 1,000,000 bottles in 4 months.

Here’s how..

Sanjay Dutt launched The Glenwalk in June 2023 with a founder’s clarity. Whisky fit him, not as a meme, but as a persona. 

A legacy actor with a lived-in presence is entering a category where authenticity performs better than advertising.

So instead of lending his face, he lent his intent. If we look at the numbers, here is what happened: 1,000,000 bottles sold between April–August 2025 (a 5× jump vs. last year)

- ₹240 crore revenue target for this fiscal

- 10+ global whisky awards already in the bag

- Distribution across 15 Indian states + 4 international markets

Expanding next into the US, Hong Kong, and more

Now that’s a builder’s trajectory.

Because somewhere along the way, actors realised what founders always knew: Owning the brand beats endorsing the brand. Dutt’s journey makes that obvious.

Celebrity can give you attention, but scaling a brand requires trust built on consistency.

He always focused on the essential things: from launch → scale → expand → improve.

This is what “celebrity to owner” looks like in real life.

So tell me, which celebrity today is actually building a brand, not just putting their face on one?

Mumbai, I’m building a production team & starting with the hardest seat to fill 

I’m looking for a Head of Production who doesn’t just talk visual storytelling but can actually hold a camera, set a light, direct a frame, and then cut it together.

Because at Finnet Media, production is the engine.

The role looks like this:
• Turning brand briefs into shoot-ready ideas
• Running sets without chaos
• Making creators feel confident on camera
• Owning pre → shoot → post → delivery
• Keeping quality high when timelines get tight

This is for someone who has 5+ years of hands-on production experience, has shot and edited real brand + creator content, and can lead crews, not just review decks

If building a production machine from scratch excites you: 
📩 careers@finnetmedia.com

First Zakir and now Arijit… retiring was DEFINITELY not on my 2026 bingo card!! 🫣

Arijit Singh, the voice that defined a generation, just said goodbye to playback singing.

Every heartbreak, late-night drive, or moments you couldn't put into words - Arijit had a song for it :)

So could this mean independent albums? Live performances on his own terms? Personal projects outside the film fraternity? 🤨

Maybe. Maybe not.

But one thing is certain - an era has come to a close!

& bud did that one thing he is best at - made his fans cry one last time ✨

This company was born after its founding family LOST their cattle business to disease & today it’s a 800 crore food brand

When I sat down with Indraneel Chitale, I expected a food story, but I heard a founder obsessed with one terrifying question: What happens when trust breaks at scale?

Back then, Chitale Bandhu’s bakarwadi was handmade.
Taste depended on human hands.

And one bad week had already shown him how fragile that was.

So he decided: If he ever built again, taste would never be left to chance.

He rebuilt the company around systems, data, and automation.

Today, their Ranje facility produces ~17,000 kilos of bakarwadi every day & every batch is logged, variation is tracked, and every error is killed before it reaches the customer.

The taste you try in Pune is the taste someone gets in Chennai, and the same product sits on shelves in Toronto.

Most consumer founders think distribution is the hardest part.

Chitale learned something different:
Distribution becomes easy when trust is engineered first.

& that is the real moat in the Indian consumer.

🎙️ I’ve shared the full conversation on the podcast (link in comments).

If you’re building in FMCG, this will change how you think.

People leave careers like consulting and IB for marketing, thinking they'll get a better work-life balance. LOL😂😂

There's a notion that marketing folks work less. I say, just look at Zomato's team.

If you don't live under a rock, you know how cool their campaigns are. Marketing companies swear by their name. Industry folks dissect every tweet, every billboard, every notification.

But behind all of this is a team that works countless hours and gives their 200% to make it happen. I've met people from the inside. Here's what they don't show you:

1. Work-life balance is mostly a myth: 10-12 hours? Try 24/7. If a trend breaks at 11 pm or a match turns dramatic, creatives are expected to go live instantly. Moment marketing doesn’t wait for personal plans.

2. Microscopic scrutiny, all the time: Every word, colour, emoji and pixel is reviewed. Feedback loops are tight, opinions are many, and creative decisions are constantly second-guessed.

3. Relentless A/B testing: Copywriters don’t write one line. They write hundreds of variants just to chase a 0.3–0.5% CTR lift. Creativity lives by dashboards.

4. Permanent war-room mode: High visibility means high risk. A harmless joke can spiral into backlash. Teams stay on 24/7 alert to pull, clarify, apologise, or pivot in minutes.

5. Constant context switching: One person isn’t just a “Twitter copywriter”. They’re writing memes for X, visuals for Instagram, and measured posts for LinkedIn, sometimes in the same hour.

6. Heavy ops layered onto creativity: Influencer coordination, compliance checks, approvals, brand policing, much of it handled in-house, adding operational load to already stretched teams.

And this is just the surface.

The reality: marketing isn’t an “easy” career. It’s not posting memes from a beanbag.

It’s a high-stakes, metric-obsessed, always-on content engine where “going viral” is the expectation, and burnout is the quiet cost of staying relevant.

Marketing at this level isn’t “easy”. It’s just made to look easy.

And if you still feel the opposite, that’s probably the biggest compliment you can give to a marketing team.

Thoughts?

A 14-year-old left school, travelled 2,500 km alone, and risked his life to become an influencer & this is CRAZY!! 🫣

This isn’t a one-off story.
It’s what happens when an entire generation is raised inside dopamine machines.

The uncomfortable data nobody puts in motivational reels:

↳ 37% of Indian kids say they want to become influencers.
↳ India already has 83,000+ creators under the age of 16 on Instagram (growing 41% every year)
↳ Among Gen Z, 83% already identify as content creators.

Of course they do.
They grow up watching 19-year-olds buy cars, travel the world, and call it “content”.

The algorithm only shows the highlight reel.
Never the 5-year grind before anything works.

MrBeast uploaded from 2012 until roughly early 2017 before anything worked. CarryMinati spent his teenage life creating with no certainty, no safety net, and no guarantees. 

For every one of them, millions never break through.

India has 4–8 million creators today, only 12–13% earn more than ₹50,000/month.
Top 1% capture almost all the revenue. YouTube in India pays ₹0.40–₹3 per 1,000 views.

Romantic, right? 🙂

And in 2024 alone, 200,000+ creators quit due to burnout and low pay.

This rarely trends.
The Lamborghini thumbnails do.

& look, don't get me wrong, I love the creator economy. I build in it. I benefit from it.
But a generation believing education is optional if the algorithm loves you is a DANGEROUS trade.

Not every early start is ambition, some are warning signs 🫠

And this one should make us pause.

If you are shitting on gig apps but underpaying your own housemaid, you are the problem

India says it wants opportunity. But the moment someone builds scale & wins visibly, the conversation changes.

We stop asking how value was created and start asking how to morally dismantle it.
The gig economy debate shows this clearly.

It’s easy to tweet about “worker exploitation” while enjoying midnight deliveries, cheap convenience & flexible pricing, all paid for by a system you don’t want to examine too closely.

The truth is simpler and less ideological. The gig economy exists because market forces demand it. Speed, flexibility, variable demand & cost sensitivity.

No one designed this as a social experiment. It emerged because it works.

These platforms create income opportunities at a massive scale for people who would otherwise have fewer options, less mobility & far less leverage in the traditional job market.

Are these perfect jobs? No.
But dismantling them does not magically create better ones.

What actually happens is predictable:

- Jobs disappear
- Demand collapses
- Prices rise

And the 1st people to lose income are the very workers we claim to be protecting.

This isn’t about choosing sides between founders and riders, but about understanding that markets don’t respond to outrage.

- They respond to incentives
- Hold companies accountable
- Push for better systems
- Demand continuous improvement

But pretending that platforms like Zomato are “breaking the economy” by responding to market realities is intellectual laziness.

Deepinder backing his model isn’t arrogance. It’s clarity.

Large systems don’t get better by apologising for existing, but they improve by staying viable, scalable & open to pressure that actually understands how markets work.

Progress doesn’t come from moral grandstanding, but from facing reality head-on.


P.S: The Raj Shamani podcast was shot over 20 days ago and was uploaded now (because timing was right). So no, not everything is PR washing machine  ;)

Image Credit: Raj Kunkolienkarr

Nobody in an Indian household wants to start this sentence: “What happens if I’m not around?”

So we do the Indian workaround.

Someone suggests life insurance, the premium seems affordable, fill out forms, and end conversations quickly 📄

Because staying in it is emotionally exhausting.

Over time, life insurance in India has taken on side-quests:
Returns, bonuses, add-ons, cashback, and wealth creation 💸

Because protection now has to compete for attention.
Because pure protection is a hard sell in a culture that avoids talking about loss.

But when one product is asked to solve fear, guilt, returns, and planning, clarity dies first.

I was reminded of this when I saw an Acko Life Insurance print ad today.

They have built it with just a blunt idea: If you’re not here, your family should be financially protected 🛡️
That’s the whole job.

But the idea of saying less, promising less is a category decision.

And it’s RARE!!

Because in products built around emotional avoidance, simplicity is respected.

In the end, your family won’t remember how cleverly a policy was sold.
They’ll only know whether it adequately covered ⏳

A new Indian founder category got a name & it explains a LOT of what’s happening right now.

Peyush Bansal to Aadit Palicha - different companies, industries but the same underlying pattern.

They left India to study, absorbed global operating playbooks & then came back to build here.

(Not for patriotism, but for arbitrage 😌)

Because India today has:
• cheap digital distribution
• massive consumer demand
• improving capital access
• hungry talent

So when globally-trained operators return, execution becomes unfairly strong.

Saw that someone on Twitter called this archetype “BARBIES”

Founders who did their Bachelors Abroad and Returned to Build in the Indian Ecosystem.

Cute name, serious signal.

For 2 decades, India exported talent & now it’s importing trained builders back.

And that’s why this startup wave feels different from 2015.
Less “idea energy”.
More systems energy.

Once you see this pattern,
Indian startup success stops feeling accidental.

It starts feeling inevitable.

PS: Image credit goes to anmol maini

I worked for 10+ hours everyday but still barely achieved anything.

I was learning constantly, ticking tasks, staying occupied. While everything looked fine from the outside, something still felt off. 

So I started asking harder questions: Am I actually getting better... or am I just being comfortable?

That shift changed how I approached tech learning and career prep. I stopped chasing volume and started choosing effort that stretched me, even when progress felt slow and invisible.

Kotak’s #HauslaHaiTohHoJayega captured that exact feeling for me.

Hausla is the courage to course-correct, to choose depth over ease when no one is watching.

If you’re in that phase, trust the discomfort.
It’s usually pointing you in the right direction.

Kedar Ravangave Rohit Bhasin Kotak Mahindra Bank

#ad
#KotakMahindraBank #HauslaHaiTohHoJayega #CareerGrowth #SkillBuilding #MindsetShift

When you’re an influencer known for transparency, how do you build a transparent brand? 

That’s the tightrope Revant Himatsingka (Food Pharmer) walks. This is a guy whose entire identity is built on calling out ingredients, exposing labels, and teaching India how to read labels. 

So when he decided to build Only What's Needed, there were only two outcomes. Either the brand matched his values, or his own audience would call him out.

And honestly, watching OWN evolve these last months has been the cleanest case study of what transparency actually looks like when you’re the one creating the product. 

Because it’s easy to react to bad labels but much harder to build one you’re willing to be judged by.

Here’s what OWN got right: 

* They lowered prices publicly and explained the math.
 
* They let the community shape flavours. Not vanity polls but real product decisions driven by comments and data.

* They opened their progress to the public. Every board meeting, every fallback, every mistake is shared on YouTube at the end of the month. 

* They put front-of-pack labels. A QR code for vernacular languages. A full cost and profit breakdown on the website. 

All in all, Revant didn’t switch tones when he launched a company. He built a brand that behaves exactly like the content he creates: factual, simple, measurable, accountable. 

Most influencer brands chase aesthetics. OWN chases alignment.

And that’s why this playbook is worth studying.

PS: This is one of the first pictures we took together 🙂

A man who never spoke on camera just made $975 million & that should TERRIFY every creator 🚨

Khaby Lame went from being laid off from a factory job in 2020 → started posting silent reaction videos → became the most followed creator on TikTok → now tied to a deal valued just shy of $1B 💰

The deal includes an AI digital twin of Khaby. His face, gestures, expressions, and reaction style - now generate shopping content 24/7, across languages, without him being ever present.

This moment will mark the NEW AGE of influencer marketing 🚨

& what’s replacing it is far more serious: identity as infrastructure.

Brands are no longer renting attention. They are acquiring programmable distribution systems built on trust, familiarity, and conversion history.

Once a creator’s face, voice, and behaviour can be replicated by machines, content stops being the asset.
Ownership becomes the asset.

This is also why personality rights are suddenly becoming non negotiable, and why moves like Raj Shamani securing his rights are not creator flexes but business decisions.

Bcs when machines outperform humans, contracts decide who gets paid.

And everyone is talking about the tech but the real leverage is - who owns the digital self when partnerships end.

Who owns the digital persona if partnerships end, who governs how it evolves, who is liable when it goes off brand, and who cashes in when the machine outperforms the human.

Perhaps maybe the creator economy is now about owning yourself before someone else does 🤷🏻‍♂️

I once wasted 4 hours sorting PDFs and felt embarrassed by how much time it took.

PDFs are essential to our work. Decks, briefs, contracts - everything lives there.

But when you run a team of 40+ content creators and 35+ team members, PDF management turns into an operational cost.

Time goes into finding the latest file.
Mental space goes into remembering what changed.
Team bandwidth goes into realigning people who should already be aligned.

This became clear during a delivery sprint where 3 teams worked off 3 different “final” versions of the same document.

All were correct, but none were usable.

That's why I was relieved when I came across Adobe Acrobat Studio.

It turned the document into an actual workspace - keeping feedback, changes, and decisions attached to the work.

We’ve kept it in place as the workload continues to grow.

If multiple PDFs also sit at the center of your workflow, try Adobe Acrobat to simplify workflow. 

#AdobePartner #AdobeAcrobat #paidcollab Adobe Acrobat

CARFAX

As a Data Mapper Intern at CARFAX, I collaborate with cross-functional teams to map and audit service and repair data, enhancing Vehicle History Report (VHR) accuracy. I leverage tools like Dash Cam, AWS, and JIRA to support Agile workflows, process optimization, and machine learning testing to improve data processing and decoding rates.

Data Quality Assurance

VARLab - Virtual and Augmented Reality Lab

• Collaborated with product management teams to develop user-centric learning simulations, serving as the voice of the user.
• Managed project tracking systems, ensuring seamless monitoring and issue resolution from planning to execution.
• Led the collection and documentation of requirements, improving project alignment by 30% and coordinating with stakeholders.

Project Assistant

Rocket Learning

• Spearheaded product experiments at India's largest not-for-profit ed-tech company, boosting user response rates by 66%.
• Developed backend features to enhance engagement among rural teachers.
• Led initiatives to increase educational interaction across 800 WhatsApp groups, resulting in an 11% boost in WAU and 22% increase in user activations.

Product Manager

AltXEd

• Directed the design of innovative learning experiences, increasing participant engagement and satisfaction by 20%.
• Developed and optimized business strategies for AltXEd’s digital marketing programs by analyzing market trends and stakeholder feedback.
• Collaborated with cross-functional teams to integrate real-world business scenarios into the curriculum, emphasizing critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

Business Analyst

TagMango

• Orchestrated recruitment, HR, and Operations processes, enhancing workflow efficiency and documentation at TagMango.
• Collaborated with founders on Series A fundraising, contributing to organizational strength growth by 30% in three months.
• Proactively recruited across multiple functions, increasing team strength and driving key initiatives.

Founder's Associate

GO MO Group AB

•Led a diverse team of 25 SEO analysts, overseeing global projects across various brands and improving project performance and efficiency.
• Coordinated with the Swedish team to define project roadmaps, successfully executing process development initiatives and achieving 60% of client KPIs.
• Created a comprehensive quality assurance methodology, improving delivery standards across 40% of projects.
• Recruited talent and planned for long-term growth, improving team capacity and workload management by 15%.

Management Associate

Management Trainee

AIESEC

AIESEC is the world's largest Youth-run organization with a network of 122 countries which focuses on leadership development. As the President of AIESEC in Pune:

• I led a team of 8 Vice Presidents, 30 Team Leaders, and 100+ volunteers to achieve 106% of targets and +45% of operational growth.
• Managed budget regulation, accountability, and transparency resulting in 94.41% budgeted income achievement.
• Represented AIESEC in Pune at global conferences with 120+ countries & territories.

CEO & President

Vice President Corporate Relations

Team Member

With over three years of experience in business analysis, project management, and product management, I bring a unique blend of analytical thinking and client-facing expertise. Throughout my career, I have successfully driven strategic initiatives, optimized processes, and enhanced user engagement across diverse industries.

In addition to my technical and operational background, I have developed strong skills in prospecting, lead generation, and relationship building through my experience in sales-driven roles. I excel at managing pipelines, crafting tailored value propositions, and collaborating with cross-functional teams to close deals and deliver business growth.

I thrive in dynamic, target-driven environments where I can combine my data-driven approach with proactive client engagement to solve problems and drive results. My strong communication skills, adaptability, and continuous learning mindset allow me to build meaningful connections and navigate complex challenges with ease.

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Ayush Shukla

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The Battle

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