We help businesses get found. First by Google. Now by AI.

In my words

How a scooter accident got me into search, and what I learned along the way.

1. 01 · 2005

   The accident that started everything

   Back then I wasn't thinking about marketing at all. I was studying for a B.Tech in biotechnology at Rai University, and I was completely obsessed with mushrooms. I had just come back from a research internship in Solan, and I was travelling to the Hulimavu horticulture centre in Bangalore to keep learning.

   On the way back, I came off my scooter and landed hard on my left knee. The doctors were clear: three months of rest, maybe four, until it healed. For someone who could never sit still, that sounded like a punishment.

   I read books. I kept up my research. But my mind kept asking, "What else can I do with this time?"

   What I learned

   “The setback that stops your body can be the thing that frees your mind. Some of the best turns in my life started as bad news.”

2. 02 · 2005

   Three magic words

   One evening I typed three words into a search box: "make money online". I wanted to earn something while I was stuck at home, so I went all the way down that rabbit hole.

   I found out that sites like Associated Content and EzineArticles paid people to write. I started writing about meditation, a subject I loved. Every article that got published paid me around $3.46. It doesn't sound like much, but I opened a PayPal account just to receive it, and I still remember how excited I was.

   Then I discovered the part that changed my life. Beyond the fee, these sites paid a bonus for impressions. The more people saw my articles, the more I earned. So I started learning how to make articles show up in search. That was my first lesson in SEO, and I was hooked.

   What I learned

   “Start small, but start. That first $3.46 taught me more than any classroom: people pay for value, and attention follows usefulness.”

3. 03 · 2006

   "wealthyminds" and the Link Wheel

   By 2006 I realised I could earn far more than $3.46 an article by building small affiliate websites. In those days it was relatively easy to rank on Google, even for big niches like weight loss and health, and my sites ranked well.

   Friends started asking for help, so I built websites and microsites for them too, with hosting and affiliate links. Then I created a concept I called the Link Wheel and started selling link-building and article-writing services on forums like Warrior Forum, Digital Point and SitePoint. There were no Facebook groups back then. Forums were the whole internet for people like us, and my username, wealthyminds, became quite well known.

   The best thing I got from those forums wasn't money. It was friends. Many of the people I met then are still my friends today.

   What I learned

   “Every business I've built has really been built on relationships. The money comes and goes. The friends stay.”

4. 04 · June 2009

   WebNamaste, in a one-bedroom house

   By 2009 my freelance and affiliate work was earning two to three times my salary. So I quit my full-time job and started WebNamaste in June 2009, in a small one-bedroom house I rented in JP Nagar, Bangalore.

   My first three team members were two close friends who believed in what I was trying to do, and my sister. We did SEO for clients in Canada, Ohio in the USA, Malaysia, Vietnam and Singapore.

   More than clients, they were friends. And that's how I still work today.

   What I learned

   “I treat my clients as friends, because they are. When you care about someone's business like it's a friend's, you do your best work without being asked.”

5. 05 · 2010s

   Inbound, HubSpot and the world

   Around this time I came across the inbound marketing ideas of Dharmesh Shah, co-founder of HubSpot, and they changed how I saw marketing completely. Instead of chasing people, you attract them by being genuinely helpful. We went deep into that world and became India's first HubSpot Gold Partner.

   Through more friendships and partnerships, we specialised in marketing automation and mastered tools like Infusionsoft, ActiveCampaign and ClickFunnels. I started travelling to the major marketing events in the US to learn from the best.

   Rotary opened even more doors. I was a Rotary Foundation Group Study Exchange participant and represented India at Rotary clubs in Mississippi and Louisiana. Seeing how people lived and did business on the other side of the world gave me a global outlook I still rely on.

   Somewhere in all of this, I also built systems and teams that let the company run while I travelled. I visited 30 countries before I turned 30. My most treasured memory is my 30th birthday, 27 October 2015, watching Yanni perform at the Pyramids of Giza with my friends in Egypt.

   What I learned

   “Build systems and a team you trust, and your business stops being a cage. Freedom is something you design, not something you wait for.”

6. 06 · 2015

   The hardest year

   The very next month, I married Kirthi. Dozens of friends flew in from their home countries to bless us.

   Then, right after the wedding, we lost a major client who was going through personal difficulties. The timing couldn't have been worse. We had just opened three new offices and hired 36 new people.

   I didn't let a single person go. I took loans and borrowed from family and friends to keep the company running and keep everyone paid. It wasn't something I'd wish on anyone, let alone a newlywed. I was exhausted, mentally and physically, and I didn't know how to balance a struggling company with a new marriage.

   Kirthi started coming to the office to help me. Slowly, we rebuilt the revenue. We built products, explored new directions, and took a more complete approach to helping small business owners with marketing automation, funnels and SEO.

   What I learned

   “When things fall apart, look after your people first. The team you protect in the storm is the team that rebuilds with you.”

7. 07 · 2020

   COVID, a book and a doctorate

   Then COVID hit, and it felt like starting over again. Every one of our clients cancelled their contract, and we had to give up our office spaces at a loss.

   I took a few months off to think. In that quiet, I wrote a book, Fire Your Agency. Being a published author had been a dream for years, and it's now on Amazon.

   I also started my Doctor of Business Administration at the Swiss School of Business and Management in Geneva. By 2021 it was clear to me that AI was about to boom, so I specialised in AI-leveraged business models. My thesis looked at how startups can build AI into every level of the organisation, and especially how customer behaviour changes once AI is part of how people decide. It gave me insight, and access to people and places, I could never have reached otherwise.

   Around the same time we went deep into GoHighLevel and built GHL Elite, the largest independent marketplace for GoHighLevel funnel templates. It brought in over $150,000 in template sales, and every dollar of it came from organic SEO. No ads. Just people finding us on Google.

   During those same years we applied for Canada's Start-up Visa. It took far longer than we expected, with COVID, wars, the Afghanistan crisis and refugee programmes all slowing things down. There was a lot of moving to Canada, coming back, moving again and coming back again. It was tiring. But today our family are permanent residents of Canada.

   What I learned

   “A crisis strips away what isn't working. Use the pause to learn something the future will need.”

8. 08 · 2025

   My kids at my graduation

   I finished my doctorate in 2025. Usually parents go to their children's graduation. At mine, it was the other way round: Kirthi and our two children, Aryan and Anjali, came to watch me graduate. I'll never forget it.

   That same year, everything came full circle. The thing I fell in love with in 2005, helping people get found, became urgent again. Only now the one doing the finding is AI. So we went back to our roots and put all of WebNamaste's focus on AI search.

   What I learned

   “It's never too late to become a student again. The things you learn later in life often matter the most.”

9. 09 · Today

   What stayed constant

   Over the years I've hired more than 300 people at WebNamaste, as full-time staff, consultants and interns. Today Praveena Manoj runs our operations as Chief of Operations, and Haris Karat leads our creative work as Creative Head.

   Right now I'm building a mastermind called Four Vacations a Year. It helps agency owners build the teams, systems and strategies that let them take four vacations a year with their families, without checking WhatsApp 46 times a day. Everything I teach there comes from experience, including every hard lesson in this story.

   I've lost money in this game, more than once. But I've gained far more than I've lost, mostly in friendships. My team's work has kept me going through every storm. And watching clients, who are also my friends, grow in front of my eyes is still the best part of what I do.

   What I learned

   “Success isn't how much you make. It's who is still standing next to you, and who you helped grow along the way.”