In today’s fast-evolving digital economy, marketing is no longer just about creativity—it is about systems, intelligence, and scalability. As businesses struggle to keep up with fragmented tools, rising costs, and inconsistent results, a new kind of leadership is required—one that blends storytelling with technology.

At the forefront of this transformation stands Soma Bhattacharjee, Founder of Mahi Mahi Tech Solutions Pvt. Ltd., a martech company redefining how businesses approach marketing through AI-powered workflows and vertical intelligence.

With over 15 years of experience across advertising, digital transformation, and solutioning, Soma’s journey mirrors the evolution of the marketing industry itself—from traditional creative agencies to AI-first marketing ecosystems.

A Career Rooted in Storytelling and Strategy

Soma began her professional journey as a copywriter in the advertising industry, a space where ideas, communication, and brand narratives shape consumer perception. Starting in Bangalore, she later worked across Mumbai and Chennai, gaining exposure to diverse markets and industries.

Over a span of 15 years, Soma collaborated with some of the most respected names in advertising such as Hakuhodo, R K Swamy, and MRM//McCann. These years sharpened her understanding of how brands communicate, compete, and evolve.

However, Soma’s role didn’t remain confined to creative execution. As digital transformation accelerated, she transitioned into content marketing, pre-sales, and solutioning. This shift allowed her to understand marketing from a business lens—where strategy, technology, and revenue intersect.

“I was always good at finding solutions to business problems—whether through communication, campaigns, or productising services to generate more revenue from service streams,” Soma explains.

This natural inclination toward problem-solving became the foundation of her entrepreneurial journey.

The Entrepreneurial Spark Behind Mahi Mahi

Rather than being triggered by a single incident, the idea for Mahi Mahi Tech Solutions emerged from patterns Soma observed while working closely with businesses.

She noticed that resource-intensive industries often underutilised their potential, and many service-based offerings could be transformed into scalable products without increasing operational overhead. Soma refers to this approach as SaaS 2.0—Service as a Software.

“What I realised is that resource-heavy industries can offer much more through productised services without adding costs. And with AI, solving these problems became more uncomplicated,” she shares.

When AI adoption surged in 2023, Soma saw the perfect opportunity to formalise this vision. She launched Mahi Mahi with a clear mission—to build intelligent marketing systems that convert services into scalable, technology-driven solutions.

Spotting the Gaps in the Market

Starting in the AI era gave Mahi Mahi a strategic advantage. Soma quickly realised two major gaps in the marketing ecosystem.

First, AI could dramatically simplify workflows that were previously fragmented and human-heavy. Even before AI, Soma focused on structured, process-driven solutions. AI simply made those workflows smarter, faster, and scalable.

Second, and more importantly, small and medium businesses lacked access to enterprise-grade marketing quality.

Large enterprises operate with dedicated teams, tools, and budgets. Startups and SMEs, on the other hand, often rely on trial and error. Many founders burn money on marketing before abandoning it altogether because they don’t understand how to approach it strategically.

“Small businesses don’t fail at marketing because it doesn’t work. They fail because they don’t know how to do it right,” Soma says.

Mahi Mahi positioned itself as a bridge—bringing enterprise-level marketing systems to lean teams using AI-enabled frameworks.

What Makes Mahi Mahi Different

At its core, Mahi Mahi is a Marketing Technology (MarTech) company, not just a marketing agency. The company focuses on building systems rather than isolated campaigns.

Its mission is to help marketing teams and service providers make workflows seamless, measurable, and scalable, so they can extract real value from their efforts.

Mahi Mahi’s offerings include:

• Building marketing workflow products

• Designing AI-powered marketing systems

• Offering marketing services for startups and SMEs

• Acting as growth partners for first-time founders

• Productising service models into tech-enabled platforms

Soma and her team work closely with early-stage founders, helping them move from zero to one in their marketing journeys. Instead of burning budgets, founders learn how to build sustainable acquisition and brand strategies.

“We guide first-time founders who often spend money blindly before discarding marketing altogether. We help them understand how to do marketing in a way that actually supports business growth,” Soma explains.

Introducing mAIven: The Virtual Marketing Team

Beyond services, Mahi Mahi is also building its proprietary martech product called mAIven—a vertical AI marketing platform designed for lean teams.

Soma describes mAIven as a virtual marketing team for modern businesses.

“It’s essentially an agent hub with marketing depth of knowledge. A vertical AI product with intelligence built specifically for marketing,” she says.

Unlike generic AI tools, mAIven is focused entirely on marketing workflows. It integrates:

• Strategy planning

• Content intelligence

• Campaign execution

• Workflow automation

• Marketing insights

mAIven is built on open-source architecture, ensuring that user data stays with the user. It uses proprietary prompts, agentic systems, and marketing intelligence to create an ecosystem rather than another point tool.

The goal is simple—reduce dependency on dozens of fragmented tools and replace them with a unified, marketing-first intelligence platform.

Educating the Market: The Real Challenge

While technology was evolving rapidly, Soma realised that the real challenge lay elsewhere—education and mindset.

Most small business owners see marketing as an expense rather than an investment. With limited budgets, they want immediate returns without understanding strategy.

“Founders wanted to make the most of every penny, but they didn’t understand how strategy works,” Soma explains.

To solve this, Mahi Mahi adopted an education-first model. Instead of selling services immediately, the team began offering free consultations, where they demonstrated the potential of structured marketing for specific industries.

Many business owners were either unaware of marketing’s impact or executing it incorrectly. Once they saw how a system-driven approach could change outcomes, they became open to transformation.

This consultative approach helped Mahi Mahi build long-term partnerships rather than transactional campaigns.

The Breakthrough Pivot

A major milestone for Mahi Mahi came with the strategic decision to deepen its focus on building mAIven as a vertical AI platform.

Soma observed that marketing today has nearly 17,000 tools, most of them functioning as isolated point solutions. Businesses were overwhelmed with complexity rather than empowered by it.

Instead of adding another tool to the clutter, Mahi Mahi chose to build a platform that integrates the best capabilities into one marketing intelligence ecosystem.

mAIven is:

• Agentic in nature

• Powered by proprietary prompts

• Built on open-source infrastructure

• Designed for marketing depth, not general use

• Embedded with marketing intelligence

“We realised the future wasn’t another feature—it was a platform with marketing vertical knowledge,” Soma explains.

That pivot transformed Mahi Mahi from a service-centric company into a product-led martech innovator.

Vision for the Next Five Years

Looking ahead, Soma envisions Mahi Mahi as a pioneer in the martech ecosystem, solving marketing problems through AI-first systems and intelligent platforms.

“Mahi Mahi should grow as a leader in marketing technology—starting with AI and expanding into deeper marketing infrastructure,” she says.

Over the next five years, the company plans to:

• Scale the mAIven platform

• Expand product-led growth strategies

• Empower startups and SMEs with intelligent marketing systems

• Build a global martech footprint

Rather than chasing trends, Soma’s focus remains on building sustainable marketing architecture for real businesses.

Advice to Aspiring Entrepreneurs

For those looking to enter the startup ecosystem, Soma offers a practical piece of wisdom shaped by experience:

“Find a bigger problem to solve. Otherwise, your solution will eventually become somebody else’s product feature.”

Her own journey reflects that belief—moving beyond surface-level marketing execution to solving structural problems in how businesses grow, communicate, and scale.

Connecting with Soma Bhattacharjee

Website:www.mahimahi.in
LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/somabhatta/
Instagram:@thinkoutloud23