Cut complexity
What it means
Strip away the noise: the vanity metrics, the dashboards nobody reads, the twelve priorities that are really none.
What you get
A single view of where your growth actually comes from and where it leaks.
Growth advisory for consumer brands
Cut complexity.Create clarity.Accelerate growth.
Has your brand hit a plateau? Let's find the next curve.
Ads cost more every quarter. Customers buy once and disappear. Marketplaces and your own site pull in different directions. I help consumer brands find where growth is leaking and fix what matters first, with the discipline of someone who has run growth for businesses with millions of customers.
20+ yearsRunning growth in markets where the competitor is one tap away
~30%Lower broadband acquisition cost at Airtel, 2024–26
~900KMore customers kept a year by fixing churn at Airtel, 2025–26
₹24 croreIncremental revenue from existing customers at Vodafone, 2017–18, proven against control groups
Results from my operating career at Airtel and Vodafone, not Sankaram client results.
Where growth gets stuck
The first ₹50 crore came from a great product. The next ₹50 crore won't.
Every consumer brand grows in an S-curve. A slow start, a fast climb, then a flattening. At the plateau, the playbook that got you here stops working. You spend more and get less. Your team works harder and the numbers don't move. That isn't a failure. It's a stage, and it needs a different kind of thinking.
Six signs you've reached it
01
Your CAC keeps climbing.Meta and Google cost more every quarter, and nobody can tell you which rupee actually pays back.
02
Customers buy once and vanish.Your repeat rate hasn't moved in a year, and your CRM is a monthly discount blast.
03
Your channels compete with each other.Marketplace prices undercut your own site. Quick commerce eats into D2C. Offline is an experiment nobody owns.
04
Growth is bought, not earned.Take discounts away and sales fall. Your margin is funding your growth.
05
Launches start strong and stall.New products and new cities get a big opening and no second act.
06
You're still doing the CMO's job.Every growth decision comes back to you, because there's no system to make it without you.
If three or more of these sound familiar, you're at the plateau. The good news: it's the most fixable stage of all.
How I see your business
One growth system, not twelve separate problems.
Acquisition, churn, repeat purchase, pricing, AOV, lifetime value, channels, stores, new markets. Most brands treat these as separate projects owned by separate people. They aren't. Pull one lever and three others move. I look at the whole system first, then pick the few moves that matter most.
Create clarity
What it means
Decide where to invest, what to price, which customers matter most and which channels deserve the next rupee.
What you get
Three priority bets, each with a number, an owner and a deadline.
Accelerate growth
What it means
Put the plan to work, measure it honestly and keep what works.
What you get
A weekly growth rhythm your team can run without you in every meeting.
What I do
Five areas. One question: what will actually move your numbers?
Growth strategy and investment
Questions I answer
Where should the next ₹1 crore of marketing go? Which categories, cities and customers deserve more, and which deserve less? Is your pricing helping or hurting margin?
You walk away with
an investment plan by channel and market, pricing guardrails, and an operating plan your team can run.
Brand and proposition
Questions I answer
Why should anyone choose you over the brand next to you on the shelf or the screen? Is your message landing with the customers who are worth the most?
You walk away with
a sharp proposition, tested with real customers, and a message every channel tells the same way.
The customer engine
Questions I answer
What does a customer really cost you, and when do they pay back? Why do first-time buyers not return? Which customers should get which offer, and when?
You walk away with
CAC and payback by channel, a repeat-purchase and win-back programme, and segments built on behaviour, not demographics.
Go-to-market and channels
Questions I answer
How should D2C, marketplaces, quick commerce and offline work together instead of against each other? Which cities next, and in what order? Are your stores selling or just standing?
You walk away with
a channel strategy with clear roles and price rules, a city expansion sequence, and store economics that add up.
New launches
Questions I answer
Is this product or market worth launching? How do you give it a second act after the opening spike?
You walk away with
a launch plan with clear go and stop signals, so new bets earn their place or end early.
Practical AI across all five.Not AI for its own sake. Using prediction to decide who to target, what to offer and when, so the right message reaches the right customer at the right moment.
How I work
Start with three weeks of clarity. Stay for the momentum.
Every engagement starts with a free 30-minute call. No pitch. If there's a fit, most founders begin with the Growth Diagnostic. Some then ask me to stay and run the plan.
Step 1 · The Growth Diagnostic
For founders who know something's off but can't pin down what.| Week | What I do | What I need from you |
|---|---|---|
| Week 1: Look | Go through 12 months of sales, spend, marketplace and customer data. Talk to your team. Buy from you as a customer would. | Data access and 45 minutes with each of 3–4 team leads |
| Week 2: Find | Work out CAC and payback by channel, repeat behaviour by cohort, margin by order and the channel conflicts. Call five of your recent customers. | Permission to call five customers |
| Week 3: Decide | Pick the three bets that will move growth most, and build the 90-day plan to deliver them. | 90 minutes with your leadership team for the readout |
What you get at the end
- A diagnostic report with the numbers behind every finding
- Your growth leaks, ranked by size
- Three priority bets, each with a target, an owner and a deadline
- A 90-day plan your team can start on Monday
- A live readout with you and your leadership team
Step 2 · Fractional Growth Head
For founders who want the plan run, not just written.| Period | Focus |
|---|---|
| Days 1–30 | Set up the weekly growth review. Fix the measurement. Launch the first of the three bets. |
| Days 31–60 | Scale what's working, stop what isn't. Build the retention and win-back engine. Get agencies working to outcomes. |
| Days 61–90 | Make it stick: a growth rhythm your team runs on its own. Help hire the full-time growth or marketing leader if you need one. |
What you get: senior growth leadership in the room every week, at a fraction of a full-time CMO's cost, and a team that's stronger when I leave than when I arrived.
Not sure which fits? Start with the problem, not the format.
Talk it throughBuilt for founders who are past the first curve.
This is for you if
- You run a D2C or consumer brand doing roughly ₹20–500 crore
- Growth has slowed, or is getting more expensive every quarter
- You want decisions backed by numbers, not another agency deck
- You're willing to share your data and act on what it says
Also a good fit: fintech, OTT and subscription businesses, retail chains, and consumer service companies facing the same growth questions.
This probably isn't for you if
- You're pre-revenue and still finding product-market fit
- You're looking for someone to run your ads or post on social media
- You want a report to file away rather than a plan to act on
What changes when we work together
- You know exactly where your growth comes from and where it leaks
- Your marketing money goes where it pays back, and you can prove it
- Customers come back more often, so each one is worth more
- Your channels work as one business, not four
- Growth decisions get made every week without waiting for you
Why Sankaram
| An agency | A big consulting firm | Sankaram | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paid for | Activity: campaigns, posts, spend managed | Analysis: decks and frameworks | Outcomes: the numbers that move |
| Who does the work | Account managers | Junior analysts | Me, personally |
| Experience | Running campaigns | Advising operators | Being the operator, for 20+ years |
| Scope | One channel | The whole business, slowly | The growth system, in weeks |
| Cost | Monthly retainer plus media | Out of reach for most growth-stage brands | A fixed-scope diagnostic, then an optional fractional role |
An agency
- Paid for
- Activity: campaigns, posts, spend managed
- Who does the work
- Account managers
- Experience
- Running campaigns
- Scope
- One channel
- Cost
- Monthly retainer plus media
A big consulting firm
- Paid for
- Analysis: decks and frameworks
- Who does the work
- Junior analysts
- Experience
- Advising operators
- Scope
- The whole business, slowly
- Cost
- Out of reach for most growth-stage brands
Sankaram
- Paid for
- Outcomes: the numbers that move
- Who does the work
- Me, personally
- Experience
- Being the operator, for 20+ years
- Scope
- The growth system, in weeks
- Cost
- A fixed-scope diagnostic, then an optional fractional role
Before Sankaram
The same problems you face, solved for millions of customers.
Sankaram is new. My experience isn't. These are results from my operating career at Airtel and Vodafone, not Sankaram client work. Each one is a problem your brand faces today, at a bigger scale.
Rising acquisition cost
What happened
I cut the cost of acquiring each broadband customer by ~30%, from about ₹1,700 to ₹1,200, on 10–12K new customers a month (Airtel, 2024–26). The field force moved to high-opportunity markets, weak teams were cut, and incentives were rebuilt.
For your brand
CAC usually falls fastest by moving spend to where it already works, not by finding a new channel.
Customers who leave
What happened
I helped keep ~900K more customers a year on a base of 15M (Airtel, 2025–26). 80% of the problem was traced to about 100 of 352 small markets, then fixed at the source.
For your brand
Churn is rarely spread evenly. Find the few cohorts or products causing most of it.
Getting more from customers you already have
What happened
I built a customer value programme that delivered ₹24 crore of incremental revenue in a year, proven against control groups (Vodafone, 2017–18).
For your brand
Your existing customers are your cheapest growth. Most brands barely market to them.
Repeat purchase and renewals
What happened
I lifted on-time renewals 2 points across 19M customers by timing reminders and offers to when customers actually had money (Airtel, 2025–26).
For your brand
The right message at the wrong moment is wasted. Timing is a lever.
Higher value per customer
What happened
I grew revenue per customer about 10–12% a year by finding high-value customers and selling them content-led bundles (Airtel, 2022–26).
For your brand
AOV grows when the offer fits the customer, not when the discount gets bigger.
Stores that sell
What happened
I more than doubled company-owned stores from 40 to 90+, widened each store's range from one product line to three, and doubled acquisitions per store (Airtel, 2022–26).
For your brand
Offline only works when the store's economics and the staff's incentives are designed together.
Expanding into new markets
What happened
I quadrupled the addressable broadband market from 500K to 2M homes, ranking markets with internal data and audience signals (Airtel, FY24–26).
For your brand
The next city should be chosen by data, not by where the founder has friends.
Brand that moves numbers
What happened
a Bengali-first 5G campaign, built from customer research and tested creative routes, lifted brand consideration 5 points (Airtel, 2025).
For your brand
Speaking your customer's language, literally, still beats a bigger budget.
Viewpoints
How I think about growth.
Most growth problems aren't strategy problems. They're joins.
Why the fix is usually between teams, not inside them.
ReadYour cheapest growth is the customer you already have
What a ₹24 crore programme taught me about existing customers.
ReadBefore you cut CAC, find out where it already works
Why the fastest savings come from moving spend, not finding new channels.
Read
I find where your growth is leaking and fix what matters first
Sankaram: crossing over into a new phase. Moving a brand off its plateau and onto the next growth curve
Who you'll work with
An operator, not an adviser.
I've spent 20+ years running growth for consumer businesses in markets of 70 to 240 million people, at Airtel, Vodafone Idea, Vodafone, Tata Docomo and Idea Cellular. Markets where the competitor is one tap away and the customer decides again every month.
I started in sales, then moved through product, customer value management and brand before running marketing. Most recently I headed marketing operations for Airtel in West Bengal and Kolkata, a business with 23M+ customers, as growth partner to the business unit CEO. I sat on the operating plan, decided where the money went, set prices and propositions, then worked with field teams, distributors and store staff until the plan survived the market.
That last part is what I bring to Sankaram. Plenty of people can write a growth plan. Fewer have made one work on a Saturday afternoon in a store that isn't selling.
I started Sankaram because consumer brands at the plateau face exactly the problems I've spent my career on, without the time or budget to hire someone like me full time.
— Mihir Singh, Founder
Credentials
- Airtel · Marketing Operations Head, West Bengal & Kolkata · 2022–26
- Vodafone Idea · Marketing Head, Uttar Pradesh & Uttarakhand · 2018–22
- Vodafone · Data & VAS Head, CVM Head, Marketing Head · 2014–18
- Tata Docomo, Idea Cellular, Tata Indicom, Cyber Media, India Today · 2002–14
- PG Programme in AI for Leaders · Great Lakes Institute of Management
- MA Economics · University of Pune
Recognition
- Most Innovative Product, Voice & Data, 2019
- Best Marketing Team Award, Vodafone, 2017–18
Questions founders ask
Before you get in touch.
Your experience is in telecom. Does it apply to a D2C brand?
The category is different. The problems aren't. Rising acquisition cost, customers who leave, repeat purchase, pricing, channel conflict, store economics: telecom faces every one of them, at a scale of millions of customers a month, with a competitor one tap away. The discipline transfers. I learn your category fast, and you bring the product knowledge.
How is this different from hiring an agency?
An agency runs channels. I decide what the channels should be doing, and hold them to it. Many founders keep their agencies. They just get more from them.
Who will I actually work with?
Me, personally. As Sankaram grows, I may bring in specialist partners for specific pieces of work. If I do, I'll tell you upfront.
Will we need to share data?
Yes. Sales, marketing spend, marketplace and customer data for the last 12 months. I sign a confidentiality agreement before you share anything.
How much of the founder's time does it take?
About 2–3 hours across the Growth Diagnostic, plus the final readout. The fractional role needs a weekly 60-minute growth review.
What does it cost?
The Growth Diagnostic is a fixed fee agreed upfront, based on the size of your business. The fractional role is a fixed monthly fee. I'll share exact numbers on our first call.
What if we only need help with one thing, like retention?
That works. I'll still look at the whole system briefly, because retention problems often start in acquisition, but the work can focus on one area.
Where do you work?
Wherever your business is. Most of the work happens over video calls, so location is never a constraint. In-person sessions, such as the kick-off when we start working together, are agreed as part of the engagement.
What happens on the free call?
You tell me what's going on. I ask questions, tell you honestly what I'd look at first, and whether I think I can help. No pitch, no deck.
Start a conversation
What's holding your growth back?
Tell me in a few lines. I read every message myself and reply within 24 hours with an honest next step.
Available 9 am to 8 pm IST.