The founder of bootstrapped ORM agency Cerebrate Solutions wins Entrepreneur of the Year in Service Business: Digital Marketing, 12 years after building a category few agencies wanted.
Athikur Rehman Ansari, Founder & CEO of Cerebrate Solutions, has been named Entrepreneur of the Year in Service Business: Digital Marketing at the Entrepreneur India Awards. The award recognizes a founder who built one of India's most respected Online Reputation Management (ORM) agencies without outside capital.
Ansari began his career at a Mumbai call center on a telecom project and rose from executive to Quality Control Analyst within eight months. Over 21 years in customer service, call centers and ORM, he worked with more than 100 brands globally. He then built and led an independent ORM department at a social media agency, serving US and Australian brands, before founding Cerebrate Solutions.
His reasoning was simple. India's agencies were focused on building digital marketing infrastructure, while the consumer conversations happening across social platforms and review sites went largely unmanaged. "I saw potential in the ORM industry with very rare competition and started my own agency," Ansari says.
More than 12 years later, Cerebrate Solutions is independent and bootstrapped, with a team of 150+ experts. Its clients span BFSI, IT, SaaS, e-commerce, edtech, real estate, hospitality, automotive and pharmaceuticals. Roughly 60% of its portfolio is in BFSI, including some of India's best-known banking and financial services names.
The agency offers Online Reputation Management, Social Listening, Crisis Management and Reputation Risk Management. Its 24/7 monitoring covers Google, LinkedIn, Reddit, Quora, Trustpilot, Glassdoor and app stores, backed by a 15-minute crisis response SLA. It also manages Google Business Profiles and oversees Wikipedia pages.
During COVID-19, while much of the market contracted, Cerebrate scaled its operations and created jobs in a period of mass layoffs.
Colleagues point to how Ansari built the company as much as what he built. They describe a leader who consistently makes growth about the team rather than himself, who remains "the hungriest learner in the room," and who has created a calm, safe workplace where people do their best work. In an industry known for attrition, Cerebrate's people stay for years, and they say they stay because of him.
Ansari argues that ORM matters more as AI systems like ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude shape how consumers evaluate brands, often citing Reddit threads, reviews and forums over a brand's own website. In his view, reputation management is shifting from protecting page one of Google to shaping how AI understands a company. "Your customers are talking," he says. "LLMs are listening."
Cerebrate's five-year plan is global expansion. It will build on existing clients in Europe and the Middle East to open offices in multiple cities worldwide and bring international business into India.
Founder & CEO of Cerebrate Solutions Pvt. Ltd. Website | LinkedIn | Instagram
I am an entrepreneur, marketer, and mentor with a certification in entrepreneurship from IIT Delhi, one of the most prestigious institutions in India. I have a passion for connecting businesses with their ideal customers, solving real-world problems, and inspiring the next generation of founders.I founded and lead DevoByte, a digital marketing agency that provides a range of services, from SEO a
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