What began in 2011 as a scrappy gamble by two advertising outsiders, Vaishal Dalal and Manan Joshi, has today morphed into one of Ahmedabad’s loudest success stories. Excellent Publicity, once a fledgling agency with nothing but ambition, now clocks a turnover of Rs 100 crore+.
In just 13 years, the company has evolved into a full-blown media-tech powerhouse, fusing human creativity with data-driven precision. Its client roster reads like a brand marketer’s fantasy league: Google, Amazon, Amul, Axis Bank, Starbucks, Flipkart and Asian Paints – 1,300 of them in FY 2024–25 alone.
At the helm is Vaishal Dalal, chairperson, co-founder and director, a chartered accountant who swapped balance sheets for brand battles and has been making bets ever since. As Excellent’s chief finance strategist and resident dealmaker, Dalal drives business development, crafts growth playbooks, and ensures every campaign is engineered for impact.
His leadership has earned the firm a trophy cabinet of accolades, from the Gujarat Young Achievers Award and Mumbai City Icon Award to a coveted spot among India’s top 100 advertising and marketing agencies. Dalal himself was crowned with the Top 100 Great People Managers Award in 2023, proof that his knack for scaling brands is matched only by his ability to inspire teams.
Indiantelevision.com’s Rohin Ramesh traded emails with Dalal, who pulled back the curtain on how Excellent Publicity went from scrappy start-up to Rs 100-crore+ media-tech agency and why the agency’s next big act might just be its boldest yet.
Edited excerpts
On your “microwave moment” when you realised media was your true main course
The turning point came not with numbers or funding, but with obsession. The first idea was building a platform from which people could book tables at restaurants, but that was just an idea. My goal was to solve an issue people were facing, and my initial idea gave me the process of building its narrative, the name, logo, and launch campaign stirred something deeper. I found myself more engrossed in building something no one would have even thought of. And that’s when I came up with the idea of “on wheels”.
To give the idea a push, I started a magazine where we wrote and designed everything ourselves and even built shelves inside auto-rickshaws for travelers to read during their rides. But instead of the magazine, people were more drawn to the advertisements on the outside of the autos. That unexpected insight gave us our opening; this was where the idea of transit advertising was born.
The curiosity around how billboard branding works had always been there, and this experience made it clear: branding wasn’t just an accessory, it was the engine. And the media wasn’t just a service, it was a platform for impact.
That realisation led to the foundation of Excellent Publicity, a media aggregator that aimed to declutter the space of offline media buying and planning. Eventually, we evolved into building an AI-integrated ad-tech platform that helps brands execute advertising globally, both offline and digital, with simplicity and scale.
On the name Excellent Publicity coming from
It came from intent. The name “Excellent Publicity” was chosen not just as a label, but as a promise, to ourselves and to every client we would eventually work with. It had to be aspirational but also grounded. No jargon, no fluff, just a clear message: we deliver nothing less than excellent. It became both our identity and our benchmark. Every campaign we executed, every feature we added to our AI platform, was a step toward making that promise real.
On the motivation of going forward when the bank balance said “LOL”
What kept us going was belief, not just in the vision, but in our ability to figure things out, even if it meant failing forward. We had no Plan B. We didn’t have funding or a fallback. So when the bank balance mocked us, we responded with action: cold emails, late-night research, and experiments that eventually paid off. Every inch of progress was hard-earned, which made it meaningful. Today, when clients across 23+ countries trust our platform to book their campaigns, it’s a reminder of what persistence can build.
On what is more tough, filing ITRs or convincing a legacy client to try programmatic?
Convincing a legacy client, without doubt. Numbers are predictable. People, not so much. Especially when they’ve done things a certain way for decades. But we saw this as an opportunity, not a challenge, to educate and progress. Our platform and the team made it easier. When clients could receive live media inventory, real-time pricing, and cross-platform insights, all at the click of a button, it wasn’t just convincing, it was converting.
On you being India’s “Prompt Whisperer” for marketers who don’t know their LLMs from their LCDs
We’re not trying to be whisperers; we’re translators. At Excellent Publicity, we’ve built a platform that speaks business, not just code. Whether you’re a startup founder in Bangalore or a brand manager in Berlin, our platform eliminates the tech intimidation. You don’t need to know how an LLM works; you just need to know your audience. The AI handles the rest: inventory, targeting, media planning, and campaign booking. You click. It calculates. It’s advertising without the guesswork.
On balancing spreadsheets with storyboards, and P&Ls with punchlines
The secret is in integration, not balance. I don’t switch hats between data and creativity; I wear both. My finance background taught me discipline; advertising taught me intuition. One feeds logic into the system, the other breathes life into it. Whether we’re building a strategy for Burger King or defining media budgets for a fintech brand, the goal is always the same: maximize ROI while staying memorable.
On challenges of building an adtech beast out of Ahmedabad
It’s liberating. Not being in the conventional advertising hubs meant we were free from the pressure to conform. We built for need, not for noise. We understood Tier 2 and Tier 3 markets deeply, and now, through our AI-integrated platform, we’re scaling globally. A business in New York can launch a campaign in Mumbai within minutes, without picking up the phone. That’s our real flex, location never limited our ambition. And since having presence in Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, and Surat along with the UAE, we understand the local and global markets thoroughly, which helps us simplify advertising for brands globally.
On your secret to win trust across such wildly different verticals
It starts with listening. Every brand, whether legacy or startup, wants clarity, speed, and results. We bring that with our hybrid approach, human insight powered by AI logic. Our platform doesn’t generalize; it personalizes. Whether it’s Amul’s mass appeal or CoinDCX’s niche strategy, we’re able to adapt the media mix with precision and speed. That flexibility, backed by trust, is what keeps them coming back.
On one thing AI still can’t do that your team nails every time
Empathy. AI can process data, predict behavior, and even draft copy, but can’t feel it. It can’t understand cultural nuance, emotional context, or the layered meaning behind a regional campaign. My team can. Whether it’s deciding what billboard location is best in Baroda for a brand or designing a strategy that can appeal to the locals in Dubai, the human pulse is irreplaceable. AI is our engine, but people are the soul.
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