India’s digital economy has grown at a pace that few analysts predicted even five years ago. With over 900 million internet users and a startup ecosystem that ranks among the world’s top three, the country has created fertile ground for a new kind of professional: the AI and digital marketing consultant. These are practitioners who occupy a space between technologist, business strategist, and educator, and their influence on how Indian companies grow is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.
This piece profiles six such individuals whose work, backgrounds, and areas of focus offer a window into where Indian digital marketing expertise currently stands and where it appears to be heading.
Pranav Jha
Director, AP Web World
Pranav Jha’s professional trajectory reflects a broader industry shift from traditional search engine optimization toward what practitioners are beginning to call Answer Engine Optimization, or AEO. As AI-powered search tools change the way users find information online, the strategies that once governed organic discoverability are being fundamentally rethought.
Jha operates at this intersection as a consultant and digital growth strategist. His work with AP Web World focuses on helping businesses adapt to an environment where AI systems, rather than keyword rankings alone, increasingly determine what content reaches users. Beyond his consulting practice, he has spoken at platforms such as TEDx and Josh Talks and co-hosts a podcast called The Yogesh and Pranav Show, where marketing and growth topics are discussed for a general professional audience. His dual role as practitioner and communicator places him among a cohort of consultants who treat public education as part of their professional contribution.
Tarun Kumar
Founder, Noastrix
The Direct-to-Consumer sector in India has grown considerably over the past several years, fuelled by improved logistics infrastructure, rising consumer confidence in online purchasing, and a wave of brand-building investment. Tarun Kumar’s work sits squarely within this context.
An alumni from the Indian School of Business and a former professional at Amazon, Kumar brings an analytics-heavy methodology to D2C growth consulting through his firm Noastrix. His approach draws on the kind of structured data analysis more commonly associated with large enterprise environments and applies it to the relatively younger D2C segment, where many brands are still building the operational and analytical foundations they need to scale. Kumar has also spoken at TEDx, and his background suggests a practitioner shaped as much by corporate systems thinking as by marketing craft.
DP Vishwakarma
Founder, KeywordsFly Technology Pvt Ltd
DP Vishwakarma’s career offers an instructive example of how technical training can translate into a marketing-focused entrepreneurial path. Educated as an engineer, he founded KeywordsFly Technology and has since developed a body of work that spans SEO, lead generation, and brand strategy, with a particular focus on India’s startup ecosystem.
He is the co-author of The Growth Hacking Book series, a set of texts that have been noted for their practical orientation toward early-stage businesses. He has also authored Career Crush, directed at professionals managing career transitions in a changing employment landscape. A record of contribution to the Golden Book of World Records suggests a reach that extends beyond conventional consulting circles. More recently, Vishwakarma’s work has moved toward AI-based SaaS development, reflecting a broader pattern among senior digital marketing practitioners who are beginning to build technology products from the frameworks they have developed through years of advisory work.
Santosh Yaduvanshi
Co-Founder, eCom Conversion
Among the consultants profiled here, Santosh Yaduvanshi’s work is perhaps the most operationally specific. As co-founder of eCom Conversion, he has worked with more than 300 Direct-to-Consumer brands over a career spanning more than ten years, with a focus on performance marketing and Google Ads strategy.
What distinguishes Yaduvanshi’s publicly articulated approach is its emphasis on profitability as a primary metric rather than reach or engagement. This framing is significant in the context of Indian D2C marketing, where many early-stage brands have historically prioritized customer acquisition volume over unit economics. A consultant who consistently centres profit margin in the performance marketing conversation occupies a position that is both commercially grounded and, for many growing businesses, corrective.
Sakshi Darpan
Founder, SackBerry
The question of how senior professionals build credibility and visibility in digital spaces has become a legitimate area of strategic focus for businesses, particularly in the B2B context. Sakshi Darpan’s work addresses this question through what is broadly referred to as personal branding, with a specific application to C-suite executives.
As founder of SackBerry, Darpan works with CXOs globally on thought leadership development, LinkedIn strategy, and B2B lead generation through social media channels. She is also a recognized LinkedIn influencer and has spoken at both TEDx and Josh Talks. Her work points to a broader recognition within corporate India that the professional profiles of organizational leaders carry measurable commercial value, and that managing those profiles strategically requires dedicated expertise.
Piyush Kukreja
Performance Marketing Consultant and Podcast Host
Piyush Kukreja’s profile is structured around a premise that distinguishes him from most practitioners in the performance marketing space: that competence in AI should not be the exclusive property of well-resourced companies or specialist teams.
He is the founder of two AI companies built around this conviction. The Only Workshop functions as the education arm of his work, training professionals, creators, students, and founders to produce business-ready AI creative without relying on external agencies or editors. Outprompt AI operates as the production arm, working with brands to build internal systems capable of generating AI-led advertising at scale. Both companies are run alongside his brother and co-founder, Aniket.
The training programmes he has developed have reached more than 5,000 participants to date. His client work includes AI training delivered to Cult.fit, widely identified as India’s largest fitness company, and to vCommission, one of Asia’s largest affiliate marketing networks. These engagements rest on a performance marketing foundation that gives his AI-focused work a commercial grounding: his agency portfolio is reported to exceed ten million dollars, and his consulting has engaged startups operating at eight and nine-figure revenues.
The dimension of Kukreja’s work that merits particular attention from an access standpoint is its stated orientation toward breadth rather than exclusivity. In his public articulation of his mission, he frames AI readiness not as an advantage to be cultivated among a select professional class but as a baseline capability that every Indian professional should have. In a field where high-quality AI education has historically concentrated among a narrow, metro-based, English-first demographic, the deliberate effort to build training for a wider base represents a meaningful point of departure from how this kind of knowledge has typically been distributed.
Patterns Worth Noting
Taken together, the profiles above reveal several trends worth examining from a research standpoint. First, there is a notable convergence between AI capability and marketing practice. Multiple consultants in this group are actively engaging with artificial intelligence not merely as a tool to describe but as a medium through which to build products, reshape strategy, and redefine service delivery.
Second, several of these practitioners have invested significantly in public education, through podcasts, books, and speaking platforms, suggesting that knowledge dissemination is increasingly considered part of the professional role rather than a peripheral activity. Third, the D2C segment appears as a recurring focus, reflecting its status as one of the highest-growth areas within Indian commerce and one that generates sustained demand for specialized growth expertise.
Whether these individuals are best understood as consultants, educators, or entrepreneurs may be a less useful question than what their collective work reveals about the state of digital marketing expertise in India at this particular moment.
The future of digital marketing belongs to businesses that embrace AI-driven strategies and data-backed decision-making. As customer expectations evolve and competition intensifies, working with an experienced AI and digital marketing consultant can provide the expertise needed to increase brand visibility, improve customer engagement, and maximize return on investment.
The consultants featured in this list bring diverse skills in AI implementation, SEO, performance marketing, content strategy, marketing automation, Digital branding, and business growth. Before selecting a consultant, evaluate their industry experience, portfolio, client testimonials, service offerings, and approach to solving business challenges.
By choosing the right AI and digital marketing consultant, businesses can not only adapt to the rapidly changing digital landscape but also build a strong foundation for long-term success in 2026 and beyond.
