Reshma Budhia, CEO of Toss the Coin (TTC), joked with co-founder and Managing Director Jayan Narayanan that their 12-year-old marketing consultancy should work so well that it should make money even as they sleep. In the event, that’s what happened!
From December 10 to 12, 2024, when Reshma was in the US for client meetings, TTC’s ₹9.17-crore IPO opened with a bang, was oversubscribed 1,025 times, and made history as the third most subscribed IPO on the BSE SME platform. On December 17 it was listed on the BSE at ₹345 against the issue price of ₹182, and quotes at around ₹380 at present. “It was surreal,” says Reshma.
Going to market
There aren’t many full-suite marketing consultancies that have chosen the IPO route to raise funds. Founded in 2012 as a partnership between Jayan and Reshma, primarily as a B2B tech consultancy for marketing strategy, TTC’s services grew to include strategy and consulting, branding, content development, and digital campaigns. “Led by design thinking, our approach to strategy starts from deconstructing the buyer persona and building content relevant to their sales cycle,” says Reshma.
Clocking ₹4.8 crore revenue in FY 23-24, the company looks to scale up its business with the IPO proceeds. It anticipates FY25 revenue of around $1 million (around ₹8.74 crore). As Jayan explains, the company needs to hire talented people from the IT industry and they are expensive. Also, as TTC expands, it’s looking to set up offices outside Chennai; it already has small teams operating in Bengaluru and Gurugram. “That’s a huge capex we would need. And the third plan is to scale up operations in the US, as that’s our largest market. We also plan to develop our own apps,” he says.
From a partnership it became a private limited company, and now a public company with marquee clients.
How it began
Jayan and Reshma were colleagues in IT firm CSS Corp in the early part of last decade. Jayan quit as he became bored with his corporate marketing job while Reshma, who was into content writing, quit a few months later to have a baby. Jayan connected with some of his old bosses to take up work ranging from client pitches to corporate overviews and graphic design. The early focus was on a B2B business model involving tech. In early 2013, Reshma teamed up with him.
As for the company name, Jayan insists the proverbial penny didn’t drop when he was tossing a coin, but rather he was looking for something with good recall. “The name has been one of the best decisions he made, for the recall it has, besides calling me into the business,” says Reshma with a laugh.
TTC’s business initially grew purely through references.
One of the bigger corporate gigs for the fledgling company was with the Murugappa group, involving internal branding for its HR. “It was a great exposure to corporate life and we realised that marketers who understand technology as well as users’ journey is a rare combination. And we always valued what we brought to the table. We said we will not negotiate because it is our intellectual property. And that really created our brand, with people saying, ‘Toss the Coin doesn’t negotiate but then they deliver beyond expectations’,” says Reshma.
Artisanal approach
Ram Sellaratnam, Group CEO and MD, iBUS Networks, says his company found TTC through reference. “Ironically, TTC is itself a marketing and branding company and should have been visible through media. We were pleasantly surprised to learn that TTC’s growth is mainly through endorsements of customers. Its approach to executing projects is almost artisan-like. No pre-conceived templates or models. iBUS is a beneficiary of this curatory approach. Jayan and Reshma were incredibly patient even as we struggled to verbalise our vision and positioning of iBUS. TTC combines hard work, a humble approach and astute creativity,” Sellaratnam elaborates.
From 2018-19, TTC became more ‘corporatised’, hiring more people and moving offices while its varied client list expanded. It got its first funding from venture capitalist Gunavanth Kumar Vaid.
Its clients include iBUS Global (rebranding and serving as CMO office for marketing strategy and content); 3i Infotech (crafting brand and visual language for sub-brand NuRe); overseas start-ups like Gigasolv, Medyaan, Oasis Global (working on brand narrative, positioning, and go-to-market); Brakes India and L&T Valves (strategic presentation enhancement); Aspire Systems (as an extended CMO office for five years now, creating campaigns, events strategy, videos, and new product strategy); and Anko, GCC of Kmart (for hiring, employee engagement and culture integration services).
Mervous apps
TTC is working on a bunch of apps, which it has dubbed as Mervous, as Jayan explains, to service the ‘nervous’ system of marketing. “These apps will come together to accelerate marketing in any organisation,” he adds.
TTC, Reshma says, has beaten some top marketers overseas to contracts. “Some of them tell me they can’t believe that an Indian marketing company could have actually won the contract. Our style has been not to show off and be humble. I’m hoping that with this confidence and the IPO platform, we can go all out and tell people that if you’re looking at B2B tech marketing, you must consider us eventually,” says an upbeat Reshma.
