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Journey From IT to Digital Marketer to Entrepreneur

Picture of Girish Pai

Girish Pai

13+ years

Picture of Growth Marketer

Growth Marketer

Combyn

Picture of Growth Hacker, Founder & CEO

Growth Hacker, Founder & CEO

Growth Falcons

As documented by, Girish Pai

My story is similar to a lot of IT professionals who changed their journey midway through in search for something more. While I started in the IT industry, I knew I wanted to do so much more, and digital marketing definitely seemed to call me with arms wide open. 

The more I learned about about digital marketing, the more I loved it. Before I knew it I was picking up as many courses on digital marketing as possible and eventually finally shifting my career goals to include digital marketing. Here’s a look at my professional  journey.

Background

An IIM Kozhikode graduate, I spent 13 years in the IT and telecom industry, lending my expertise to global business development and product management before realizing my passion for digital marketing and growth hacking.

Learning Journey

I started my digital marketing career by venturing into my first start-up, a hyper-local online grocery store called Combyn, that connected consumers with grocery stores in their neighborhood. I was having trouble building an online audience, so I decided to update my digital marketing skills to help me find a better connect.

I decided to take a course in digital marketing and shortlisted courses from different training providers based on three parameters: quality, depth of content and the price. I wanted a self-paced course in digital marketing to ensure that I could take the classes while I worked and enrolled in Simplilearn’s Digital Marketing Certified Associate.

The project-based work and instructive videos that were part of Simplilearn’s course helped me maintain a strong pace through the classes, and my interest grew with each session.

Professional Certificate Program In Digital Marketing
Expert sessions and AMAs by Meta Blueprint trainers

Professional Journey

Once I completed my digital marketing course with Simpliearn, something very unexpected happen to me. I was scouring Quora for building my audience base and ran into a Simplilearn alumni who had a similar passion for digital marketing just like me.

Mireille Davis was also a Simplilearn alumni had taken a similar Digital Marketing course and was just as interested in marketing and growth hacking as I was. We started talking about our passion and decided that we wanted to put what we had learned with Simplilearn to good use and started our own company, HitbySEO

Dive into additional inspiring career success stories in Digital Marketing here.