You can almost hear the busy, creative brain ticking behind those bright twinkling eyes as she greets you for the first time. She is Sowmya Iyer, founder-CEO of DViO Digital — one of India’s largest integrated marketing companies that focuses on 360˚ digital transformation of brands and businesses spanning across a multitude of sectors. In addition to being the driving force behind DViO, Sowmya is also a start-up investor, chief mentor at the MAD-Tech Incubator that DViO runs and a prolific TEDx Speaker.
She directs a marketing incubator for start-ups in advertising, content and marketing technology. At present, her incubator houses five start-ups and she plans to grow the portfolio to 25+ start-ups next year. It is a unique initiative to connect brands with the innovation and value that start-ups have to offer and has been seeing immense traction and market value.
In 2007, she launched Xebec Digital (XD), initially as a division of a full-service mainline advertising agency. Sowmya soon got XD as an up-and-running, independent and fast-growing digital marketing company. In no time at all, the organization grew into one of the largest, independent digital marketing agencies in India. In 2017, Sowmya bought off the company from her partners and rebranded it DViO Digital.
Today, DViO caters to businesses across seven markets in three countries — Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Pune, the UAE, Malaysia and Africa — and has over 130 digital media experts across offices in areas of digital content creation, digital videos, creative, mobile marketing, technology and media.
Under her leadership, the organization has been selected for the prestigious Elevator Program by Google India. Besides, it has won many awards for various campaigns across a diverse clientele.
Over the past 12 years, she has been a consultant to more than 100 businesses. She is an exuberant speaker at international and domestic conferences on such topics as leadership, digital media and so on. She is also a trainer in leading management colleges and has contributed significantly to various strategic discussions on digital marketing for the Government of India.
In her hard-earned free time, when she is not attending boardroom meetings, she is seen either attending the PTA ones for her young daughter, or hitchhiking across Bhutan with her friends and family. An avid reader, she spends the little idle time that she gets mentoring young talents and listening to podcasts.
DViO Digital has crafted successful campaigns for such brands as Star World, Star Movies, Star Gold, Hotstar International, Gaana.com, Reliance Mutual Fund, Cox and Kings and Protinex, among others.
