The founder and CEO of Martist Services on leaving a senior marketing career, building an integrated agency from scratch, and why clients now ask her team what to do instead of simply handing over a brief.
Madhulika Joshi started her career in 1999 with one plan. She would write advertising copy for a well-known creative agency in Mumbai. She had finished an MBA in advertising and PR, she had been writing quirky lines since college, and she could already picture the ads.
Her first job did not follow the plan. She joined the brand communication team at Leela Ventures, part of the Leela Group of Hotels, and found she liked working inside a brand far more than writing for one from outside. Over the next two decades she held senior brand and marketing roles across hospitality, lifestyle, retail and wellness. Then she founded Martist Services Pvt. Ltd., the integrated marketing agency she now leads as CEO and Chief Creative Officer.
That route matters. Most agency founders come up through agencies. Joshi came up through clients, and it has shaped almost every decision she has made since.
When Joshi entered the workforce, marketing jobs had not yet split into the tidy departments companies have today. There was no separate content team and no standalone communications function. One person might handle PR, media relations and the agencies producing the advertising. She took on all of it, and by her own account she loved the range.
Later roles included work with Pidilite Industries and Fevicol, where she played a key part in launching Hobby Ideas, an arts and crafts initiative. Those years gave her something many agency professionals never get, a close view of what a brand manager is actually answerable for. Budgets, internal approvals, sales targets, leadership expectations. She understood brand-building and business reality from the client's side of the table.
She eventually decided to start her own venture, focused on strategic marketing and consulting while staying close to brand work. That decision became Martist.
The idea for Martist did not arrive in a single moment. It built up over years of working with agencies while she sat on the brand side. She kept noticing the same distance between what businesses needed and what agencies delivered.
“Brands needed partners who could understand the business problem first, not just execute communication,” she says. She wanted to build an agency that combined strategic thinking and creativity with a stronger sense of ownership, and a culture that suited a marketing organisation.
Two problems stood out. Marketing had become fragmented. A brand might use one partner for strategy, another for social media, a third for creative, and others for digital, content, PR and campaigns, with little connection between the thinking behind each. At the same time, many agencies were being seen as execution partners rather than strategic collaborators.
The other gap was depth. Joshi felt agencies needed to learn their clients' businesses far more closely. At Martist, she says, “the brief is only the starting point.” The team looks at the commercial objective, the consumer, the category and what the brand actually has to achieve.
The move from corporate leadership to entrepreneurship felt, to her, like a natural next step. It was a chance to take everything she had learnt and build something with her own point of view.
Moving from marketer to employer turned out to be harder than moving from employee to consultant. Inside established brands, Joshi had worked in structured, process-driven environments where most of what she needed already existed. At Martist she had to build it herself: hiring, HR practices, how the company presents itself to people thinking of joining, how work gets reviewed.
She describes the sudden need to think about people, processes, cash flow, client relationships, culture, quality and growth all at the same time. She has also been open about the doubt that comes with leaving a stable career. In earlier interviews she has said there were moments of questioning whether she had made the right decision, and that those moments gave way to a sense of fulfilment as the company took shape and progress became visible.
The second challenge was scale. Growing an agency tends to dilute the thinking that made it worth hiring in the first place. Joshi's answer has been to become more selective about the work Martist takes on, put stronger processes in place, give the team more ownership, and focus on clients who value strategic thinking over pure execution. “The journey has involved a lot of learning, unlearning and constant course correction,” she says.
Ask Joshi for the biggest turning point and she does not name a client or an award. She describes a change in the questions being put to her team. “We were no longer only being asked, ‘Can you create this?’ but increasingly, ‘What do you think we should do?’”
Being invited into brand direction, campaign thinking, positioning and wider business conversations changed the nature of the work. It also settled the direction she wants Martist to take: fewer transactional relationships, stronger partnerships, and work where the agency's thinking is valued as much as its execution.
Martist offers brand strategy, creative communication, social media, digital and performance marketing, content, campaigns, influencer engagement, PR support, design and visual storytelling. Its website also lists out-of-home solutions and brand workshops. Within the company sit several sub-verticals, each covering a different part of marketing.
What the company says sets it apart is how those services fit together. The team does not treat them in isolation. It starts with the business objective, studies the audience and the brand context, and builds the communication around that.
Storytelling carries much of the weight. “We believe every brand has a story, but the real value lies in identifying the right story, shaping it meaningfully, and telling it consistently across platforms and touchpoints,” Joshi says. Experience across hospitality, retail, wellness, lifestyle and travel helps, because an idea that works in one category can often be adapted for another.
The name reflects the same thinking. Martist rests on the belief that every marketer is an artist, and the company's stated purpose is to creatively inspire those with big ideas and keep igniting their dreams.
For a client, the practical difference shows up in how decisions get made. When strategy, creative, social and digital sit in separate firms, the brand has to translate between them. It carries the positioning from one partner to the next and hopes nothing is lost along the way. Martist tries to take that job off the client's desk. Strategy, creativity, content and execution work together, so the thinking that shapes a campaign is the same thinking that shapes the posts, the design and the PR around it.
Joshi says the ability to combine cross-category experience with strategic and creative thinking has become one of the company's strongest differentiators as it has grown. A team that has worked with hospitality, retail and wellness brands can bring what it has seen work elsewhere to a new problem.
Over the next five years, Joshi wants Martist to be known as an integrated, strategy-led marketing partner with strong storytelling and sharper thinking. That means a more selective portfolio of high-value clients, deeper capabilities and more proprietary thinking, with work that has both creative and business impact.
She also wants the company to give something back. As Martist grows, she plans to create more chances to mentor and groom young professionals entering the industry, exposing them to real-world learning and helping build a stronger next generation of marketers and creative thinkers.
“It is about growing our relevance, our influence and the value we create for clients, teams and the larger marketing ecosystem,” she says. Size, in other words, is not the main measure.
Joshi's advice to new founders begins before the business plan. “Start with clarity on why you want to build the business, not just what you want to sell,” she says. Entrepreneurship, in her view, takes patience, resilience, financial discipline, the ability to adapt and a willingness to keep learning.
She is wary of both extremes. “Do not wait for everything to be perfect before starting, but also do not confuse speed with progress.” Build carefully, she says, listen closely to customers, choose people well and stay close to the business. And stay open to changing your mind. In her experience, some of the strongest decisions come from learning what to let go of, what to rethink and what is truly worth building.
Who is Madhulika Joshi?
Madhulika Joshi is the founder, CEO and Chief Creative Officer of Martist Services Pvt. Ltd., an integrated marketing agency. She has more than two decades of experience in brand and marketing roles across hospitality, lifestyle, retail and wellness.
What does Martist Services do?
Martist offers brand strategy, creative communication, social media, digital and performance marketing, content, campaigns, influencer engagement, PR support, design and visual storytelling.
What makes Martist different from other marketing agencies?
The agency starts with the client's business objective instead of the brief, joins strategy, creativity, content and execution into one process, and draws on cross-category experience in sectors such as hospitality, retail, wellness, lifestyle and travel.
About Madhulika Joshi
Founder, CEO & Chief Creative Officer, Martist Services Pvt. Ltd. Website| LinkedIn| Instagram: madhulika.inspire
This feature is brought to you by Startup Times.
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
Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *
Add a newsletter to your widget area.
Top Stories
