Author(s): Ritu Srivastava and Piyush Gotise
The case deals with the decision dilemma related to brand awareness of a vocational education digital start-up firm, Spreading Knowledge from India. The Indian market had a big demand for regional language based vocational education courses because of the diverse languages. There was no firm offering such courses in India. The founder of Spreading Knowledge, Mr. Paurus Deshpande identified such a need and started offering courses in Marathi language to people of Maharashtra and adjoining states. The firm started in 2020 during Covid times and gained good traction. To expand its offering and reach the target audience Mr. Deshpande realised there was a need to create brand awareness. He also knew from the participant feedback during the pilot test phase that print media was considered credible while social media offered faster reach to the target audience. He recognised that for branding, marketing communications would be required. Social media seemed to be a way to do this but with a limited budget of 3,500 $, he was not sure of the choice of platforms. He wondered between the possibilities of using only Facebook as was being done currently or to club it with Linkedin and Youtube along with regional newspaper.