Project London: MADFest, Meta, & Momentum

It’s May 2025. I’m sitting across from Ben, the VP of Global Partnerships at MADFest, which is the UK’s biggest marketing festival. 15,000 people attend each year.

We’ve been talking for 20 minutes. I’m walking him through why we’re building SARAL, our philosophy, our mission, our vision for how brands can influence.

He pauses, leans back, and says,

“Would you like the chance to get up on stage and tell everyone about this?”

I don’t even blink.

“Yeah, of course! That sounds exciting!”

I take 5 minutes after the meeting to think about it. Then it hit me.

It's MADFest. The UK’s biggest marketing festival. The same one that Rory Sutherland, one of advertising’s living legends, speaks at yearly.

And now, I’m on stage. FUCK!

It was both exciting and nerve-wracking. I’ve never been to London. I’ve never really spoken on a serious stage before. How are people going to react?

I have no idea… but as usual, deep down, I know I’ll crush it.

So I get to work.

After 2 weeks, I have a compelling keynote ready. I spent the next week rehearsing it. I rehearsed it nearly 25 times. I knew the keynote so well, I could recite it in my sleep.

I was ready to fly ✈️

My First Time in London 🇬🇧

My flight is awkwardly timed. 4 am on a Sunday.

Which means: I don’t sleep on Saturday, head to the airport around midnight, and take the red-eye to Heathrow via Dubai.

I’d heard about London’s famously unpredictable weather, but nothing prepared me for what greeted me the moment I landed.

It’s hotter than Mumbai.

“What the fuck”, I think to myself. I packed my hoodies and jackets for nothing!

The second half of Sunday is the only time I get to be a tourist. Work begins on Monday.

So I arrive at my hotel, having had only 3 hours of sleep in the last 24 hours, and decide to take the Tube to Central London for some sightseeing and walking around.

🥵 The inside of the train is a furnace. I learned the hard way that London does not have the technology required to deal with unforeseen natural calamities… like AC for the summer.

By evening, though, things cool down. I find my way to the Thames River and hop on a boat tour, my go-to way to get a quick lay of the land in a new city.

I go for a trip around the Thames, and listen to the commentator talk about the “expensive” prices of the apartments on the river bank… and yet they’re cheaper than Mumbai real estate.

Apparently, lack of AC has its perks.

Jokes aside, it was beautiful.

London, being a 2000-year-old city that’s still thriving, has a unique blend of old-school soul and modern architecture. It feels a bit like South Mumbai on steroids (the Indians are still the same 😂).

It’s everything I saw in the movies. I spend the rest of the day walking around, thinking about what I can do to make the most of my time here. Work begins tomorrow.

The day of my keynote

The event and my keynote are in two days. So I spend those two days visiting our brands in London, building relationships with partners, and having some classic British cuisine (aka Nando’s).

My keynote is tomorrow. I spent the night before rehearsing it a couple of more times. I feel confident and sleep with the slides in my head.

The day has arrived. I get there in the morning.

MADFest is massive. Multiple stages. Thousands of people. The stage I'm speaking on, the “Creator Economy” stage, is the second biggest stage at the entire event.

I somehow don’t feel as nervous as I thought I would. I guess practice makes one confident.

It’s go time.

… and it lands SO WELL.

There are nearly 300 marketers and CMOs in the audience. Nobody leaves mid-keynote. Most people take pictures of my slides. Smiles and “aha” nods.

The applause at the end was electric. I step off the stage buzzing with a high. I want to do it again.

I spent weeks obsessing over the right phrasing, wondering if my ideas would land.

And then suddenly, they do — with strangers. In a city I’ve never been to. On a stage I didn’t expect to stand on.

I knew I wasn’t just representing SARAL, I was representing India 3.0. And I think I did a pretty good job.

Shipping Code, Closing Deals

While I’m away in London building relationships, my team is shipping greatness.

I check my phone after the keynote, and I see this message.

I smile. It’s perfect timing.

I then show it to customers in person. They’re impressed. We’re launching it publicly soon. SIA is our influencer assistant that does the nitty-gritty so CMOs can focus on the larger picture.

I meet all the interesting people we’ve been speaking to over Zoom for years. Shaking hands and breaking bread together makes everything feel so much real.

My biggest high was closing a deal in person. I visited their office, did a mini-workshop for their team, and they were convinced of our “Predictable Influence” model.

Deal closed. Cash collected.

Reminded me early days in sales. I was 20 years old, and I used to skip college to go door-to-door selling growth services to gyms.

But this wasn’t the biggest nostalgic moment I had. What came next was bigger.

The VaynerMedia Pitch

All my friends from college know how OBSESSED I was with Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) from ages 16 to 20.

At MADFest, I met some people from VaynerMedia and charmed my way into getting a meeting with their influencer team at their London HQ the following day.

Partnering with them would be huge for SARAL. But honestly, this meant something deeper to me personally.

I grew up in government housing. It was in an impoverished, high-crime, low-opportunity neighborhood. Growing up, there was no one around me I could look up to.

The “successful people” had a low-paying, regular job at some company.

The average person was a deadbeat, good-for-nothing loafer.

The worst person was probably peddling drugs or in jail

I never wanted that for myself and my future. So, at 10 years old, I decided to surround myself with the right people. Not physically, but mentally, through books and YouTube.

I devoured Gary’s “DailyVee” vlog series. I watched Casey Neistat take his Boosted board through New York and teach me about discipline. I studied Tom Frank and Jordan Peterson like my life depended on it. In many ways… it did.

They gave me perspective. Hope. A sense that I could escape the environment I was in, not physically at first, but mentally at least.

Ten years ago, I watched Gary vlog from what was probably the same exact London office I just walked into.

Now, I was the one being invited in.

I had some insane flashbacks. I felt emotional and accomplished at the same time.

It was a real “started from the bottom, now we're here” moment.

But back to business, the Vayner team loved it. They’re currently using one of our larger competitors… and the exact things they hate about that tool are the ones we’ve solved.

Let’s just say: something’s cooking 😉

A train to Birmingham

A few more days of intense, back-to-back meetings, and more serendipity later. I’m on a train to Birmingham, a city 2 hours away from London.

I’m there to spend the day working and workshopping with one of our agency partners.

I showed them our new SIA feature, and they were impressed.

As somebody who loves the show Peaky Blinders, I really wanted to explore more of Birmingham and channel my inner Tommy Shelby. But business comes first, I had a dinner meeting back in London with another client.

By 7 pm, I’m back on a train, laptop open, riding toward a plate of proper Indian food and one last conversation to close out the day.

Like Tommy says, “Legitimate business, John, is the priority.”

Another moment of pride: SARAL at Meta

It’s my last day in London.

My suitcase is packed. My flight is in 12 hours. But there’s one last stop I had to make.

I was invited to a closed-door event at Meta’s London HQ. It was a room filled with 250 of the sharpest minds from top agencies and brands across the UK.

In the middle of his keynote on generating 1,000+ ad creatives with AI, the speaker casually drops:

“We’ve been using tools like SARAL… the founder is right there”

I’m sitting in the middle of the room. All heads turn to me.

Basking in the spotlight, feeling proud in a way words can’t fully capture.

We’ve been building this product from our bedrooms in India. Bootstrapped. No outside capital.

And now? It’s being named-dropped on stage at Meta Headquarters.

I texted the team immediately. A photo of our name up there. One of those moments that makes all the late nights and hard calls worth it.

One last memory before takeoff. And what a send-off it was!

What this means & what’s next

As I fly back home, the lights of London fade below me, and I have a much-needed breather to reflect. I can’t find words to put how I feel about this trip, and everything that transpired.

Coming from where I come from, being a completely self-taught marketer & entrepreneur, building everything from scratch, doing what I just did in London… being proud is the least of how I feel. I feel gratitude, drive, and hunger.

I feel a sense of responsibility towards my team, my family, my country… and it weighs heavier than I anticipated. Maybe I think too much.

Every handshake and every smile reminded me of where I started, and what’s possible now that I’m here. I’m so excited for the future, and already feel a sense of lagging behind the vision I’m meant to be living.

More than pride, I feel driven.

We will build SARAL into the go-to platform for influencer marketing worldwide. Done from India, built for the world, empowering brands to predictably influence their markets.

To create a global organization from our bedrooms while being self-funded. To be a world-class builder of businesses. To hit $1B in revenue. To contribute meaningfully towards India 🇮🇳

This is the story in my head. And I will write it next.