If you are planning to start your career in Digital Marketing in India, then I am sure you have heard about Digital Vidya. Without any doubt, they are one of the most popular names when we talk about certification courses in Digital marketing. Today, I got the opportunity to share the amazing interview of Pradeep Chopra, the Founder & CEO of Digital Vidya on my blog.
Pradeep has shared some amazing knowledge and information, which will help beginners to understand how Digital Marketing industry is growing in India and what is the future of Digital Marketing. I am sure you will enjoy the complete interview and also share this with your friends & colleagues who want to build a career in Digital Marketing.
Interview of Pradeep Chopra (DigitalVidya.com)
I have asked 15 questions to understand every single aspect of Digital Marketing in India and how to plan a career. And Pradeep has answered them with complete details. This is simply amazing and a goldmine of information for who is interested to grow in this industry.
Q1. Welcome, Pradeep to my blog. Kindly share about yourself and some background before starting Digital Vidya.
Pradeep Chopra: Hi, I’m Pradeep Chopra, Co-Founder of Digital Vidya. 19 years ago, in 2000, my college friend Kapil Nakra and I decided to take the entrepreneurial journey and founded Whizlabs. After successfully leveraging Digital Marketing to make this grow, we decided to launch Digital Vidya to impart Digital Marketing training formally.
Talking about my educational background, I’m an IIT-Delhi graduate. Before working on my own business, I worked with TCS for a short period of time. During my work tenure with TCS, I received a once in a lifetime chance to work with an American Company. I was all set to start the next phase of my life in America. While I was just completing the visa formalities, I was invited by my friends to join their startup. And that was it, I immediately had a change in plan and started working on my own venture.
Q2. How exactly Digital Vidya happened and what is the story behind that?
Pradeep Chopra: Till date, the journey with Digital Vidya has been amazing with a lot of learning at every stage. As we decided to take the entrepreneurial route, things were a little difficult initially.
As they say “Nothing Great Comes Easy”, we did face a few challenges. In 2000, we were proactively working on our first product. After trying all the permutations and combinations of different strategies of selling, we were unable to get a single conversion.
After a while, we witnessed our first conversion from the USA. Amazingly, the conversion price was much higher than the price we had kept for the product. When we checked the source of the conversion, we found out that it was due to some random SEO implementation we had done on the website. Back in those days, Search Engine Optimization was not known well in India and this showed us an optimal way to sell our product. This was the instance when we were accidentally introduced to Digital Marketing.
After learning more about Digital Marketing, we started sharing the knowledge with our peers. However, in the year 2009, we came to a decision to share this knowledge in a formal way. Initially, we started with Social Media Marketing workshops which received an overwhelming response. It was in 2013 when we created a comprehensive Digital Marketing Course and started delivering it using the online delivery method. This gave birth to our flagship course – the Certified Digital Marketing Master Course.
Q3. How it has evolved in the last few years? Would you like to share some stats?
Pradeep Chopra: Since 2009, Digital Vidya has been providing training through the online delivery method. However, after getting a number of requests to have a classroom training course, we launched Digital Marketing Classroom Training in Gurgaon, Delhi & Mumbai.
Till date, Digital Vidya has trained more than 35,000 professionals and students from over 55 countries with 3000+ training batches.
Q4. Is this the only venture under your name or you have multiple other projects as well?
Pradeep Chopra: Before Digital Vidya, we were working on another brand – Whizlabs. It is an online training provider offering online certification training in various disciplines such as Cloud Computing, Java, Big Data, Project Management, Agile, Linux, CCNA, and Digital Marketing.
In 2015, we acquired Digital Academy India, an Indian digital marketing education firm to expand our reach and further enhance the quality of our digital marketing certification programs for our customers and partners.
Q5. What is the scope of Digital Marketing in India (From both Business & Career point of view)?
Pradeep Chopra: Needless to say, Digital Marketing is ruling the marketing domain. In a short span of time, Digital Marketing has proved it’s worth providing exceptional marketing opportunities and promising career options.
Business Perspective: With the online revolution, people have shifted to the internet. When they start looking for some information or buying a product/service, they do try the internet. Businesses cannot afford to ignore these channels.
Career Perspective: Digital Marketing has opened a gateway of career opportunities for aspiring Digital Marketers. The demand for skilled digital marketing professionals has increased considerably with digital transformation.
Q6. How Digital Vidya is preparing a candidate for this world of Digital Marketing? Do you also provide job assistance?
Pradeep Chopra: Theoretical knowledge and practical experience are two sides of the same coin. Both these aspects are essential to learning Digital Marketing efficiently.
We at Digital Vidya focus on both these dimensions and provide a right mix of instructor-led sessions, assignments and case studies to give the best hands-on learning experience.
Digital Vidya also has a Q&A forum that offers 24*7 support to students. This allows the students to ask queries regarding the course, assignments and case studies which are solved within 24 hours by expert trainers.
Additionally, we at Digital Vidya provide internship opportunities to our students so that they get the first-hand experience of working in real-world scenarios.
As far as the placement is concerned, we offer a 100% Placement support to make sure that our students get the right job as per the industry requirements.
Q7. These days everyone is interested to get into Digital marketing. Can anyone get into and build a career in Digital marketing?
Pradeep Chopra: Digital Marketing is one of the most in-demand career options today. By offering lucrative career opportunities, it has successfully grabbed the attention of a lot of students and professionals. There are no prerequisites to learn Digital Marketing and build a career in it. All you need to have is an interest in the domain & willingness to gain the Digital Marketing skill-set. A person from any educational background can switch their career into digital marketing.
Q8. When there are plenty of FREE resources & blogs available online, do you think a paid course is necessary?
Pradeep Chopra: Well, this is one of the most common questions I’m asked. I generally have a counter-question for this one. Since a lot of free resources and blogs are available online, then what is the need to attend schools and colleges. One can easily use the power of the internet to get the desired education and certifications. Internet is an ocean of information and grabbing each and every detail from there is quite a daunting task.
A well-researched and structured course curriculum is essential for proper learning. Online resources contain vast information which makes it difficult for freshers to focus on important concepts. On the other hand, a paid course helps individuals to learn concepts in a more structured manner. Generally, in-depth knowledge is not available for free which can prove to be a challenge. Self-learning is time-consuming and of course, there are no placement opportunities. Whereas Paid Courses provide internships as well as placements.
And ideally, you can’t get far without a mentor in the form of a trainer. Plus, the time taken to learn a concept will be much longer. Finally, another problem is that a lot of content online is unverified and just fluff.
Q9. When we have Degree or Diploma courses for Engineering, Medical, etc. do you think we should also have something like this in Digital Marketing?
Pradeep Chopra: I think skills are more important than a certificate or a degree. There are many institutes that offer a degree in Digital Marketing, and like Digital Vidya, many institutes offer certifications. But in all honesty, I think marketing skills bear a more determining role than anything else.
Q10. Internet connection is penetrating in India and with the launch of Jio Fiber, it will be another revolutionary move. How do you look into this news from the perspective of the future of Digital Marketing in India?
Pradeep Chopra: This would obviously be a very big thing. Internet Marketing and the skills related will become more in demand with all this.
Q11. What are the few high demanding skills under Digital marketing, if one wants to get expertise?
Pradeep Chopra: Digital Marketing is a wide concept and includes different channels. Having a thorough knowledge of all the Digital Marketing Channels is necessary. However, becoming an expert in at least one channel is what will help you gain a competitive advantage.
Some of the most in-demand digital marketing skills are Search Engine Optimization, PPC, Social Media Marketing, Email Marketing, Mobile Marketing, Inbound Marketing & Marketing Analysis.
Q12. When someone wants to get a job in Digital Marketing, what are the few high paying positions they can target and how much experience is needed for that?
Pradeep Chopra: There is a huge gap between the demand and supply of Digital Marketing professionals where demand exceeds supply. This has certainly raised the salary bar of Digital Marketing professionals. According to my experience, some of the highest-paying positions in Digital Marketing are Digital Marketing executive with 0-1 years of experience, Digital Marketing Specialist with 1-3 years of experience, Digital Marketing Strategist with 3-5 years of experience and Digital Marketing Head with 5-10 years of experience.
Q13. In this arena of online courses, what kind of competition are you facing?
Pradeep Chopra: There are many other institutes that are trying to do the same that we are in terms of Marketing. But we aspire to be a Product-oriented company where our product far exceeds the competition. We have successfully done that in the last 9 years.
Q14. What are the trending things in Digital Marketing in 2019 and how it will change in the coming years?
Pradeep Chopra:
Here are the trending things in Digital Marketing in 2019:
- Marketers are focusing more on Marketing Automation
- Artificial Intelligence has penetrated in the Digital Marketing Domain
- Video Content has become everyone’s favorite
- Voice Search is becoming more prominent
Q15. What would be your best advice to a beginner who wants to pursue a career in Digital marketing in India after passing out of college? Where exactly you place Digital marketing compared to Engineering or other typical career options?
Pradeep Chopra: To build a career in Digital Marketing, one needs to be aware of the changing trends and continuously enhance his/her skill set. For students who want to pursue a career in Digital Marketing after their graduation should upgrade their analytical and communication skills, master in one particular area of Digital Marketing that complements their interest, develop a marketing mindset, be curious to learn more and inculcate a habit of practicing more. The best way to do all this is to take an intensive course of 4-6 months and focus on mastering the art.