Shantanu Pandey

Who are you and what do you do?

Hi! I'm Shantanu Pandey, I founded A UI UX & Growth Marketing Agency -Tenet. I help global business scale digitally through an intentional combination of research, design, development, and marketing strategies. I have been in the marketing, design & technology space for over 8 years now, and I've collaborated with brands from startups to multinational enterprises, spanning across 30+ countries and 15+ industries.

I am originally from India, currently living in Dubai, UAE. I started my career doing product consulting for some e-commerce and SaaS brands based out of the USA and the UK. From there, I started freelancing with an intent to genuinely help my clients with outcomes instead of vanity metrics like clicks, impressions, etc. & and even bigger focus on really premium servicing experience in times when people just templatise everything. I saw a snowball effect happening – 1 client turned into 2, 2 turned in 4, and it kept growing.

Everyone that we worked with ended up become a part of our tribe, I guess and they recommended us left right and center. The result was outstanding growth. I started hiring top 1% talent across the globe to collaborate with me on incredibly impactful projects. Which led to an even faster growth.

What did it take/how did you get started?

Well, this may seem like the obvious answer any founder would say — but sheer hard hustle. If you're running a business, growing digitally is a must-have and not a good-to-have requirement. The problem I saw was that a lot of our clients had been working with different agencies or companies in the past but were complaining about the same thing — not getting a tailored service experience, not seeing tangible growth as the core outcome, and a templatised service delivery experience.

I trained myself through working with, and learning from, the top 1% of marketing design and talent across the globe. I successfully completed a lot of top certifications cohorts, personal development upgrades, technical skill enhancements, and much more. I invested whatever information I gained, back into my business, and this not only resulted in better outcomes for my clients but also significantly higher retention and recommendation rates.

What does the future look like for you and your business?

We are still scaling pretty aggressively. We are now present in four geographical locations that is India, UAE, UK and the US. Our in-house talent team is about 40 people strong. And our extended top 1% talent pool network has about 200+ individuals across 30+ service verticals that are ready to be deployed at a moment's notice for any requirement that our clients may have.

In the future, we are planning to roll out a lot of AI-based agentic products, which not only help our clients save a huge amount of money, but also changes the industry from a templatized service delivery model to really tailored, outcome focused and rapid scaling model.

What drives / motivates you on a daily basis?

What gets me going every day is people and momentum. I love being in the middle of things – winning new projects, making clients happy, or meeting new team members. When I see that notification about a new purchase order, a successful delivery, or an upcoming coffee meeting, I feel that burst of energy. I thrive on the flow of new challenges.

In our service business, each week brings exciting people to meet, problems to solve, and experiences that make a difference for real people. It's this mix of people, progress, and purpose that drives me forward. And honestly, the feeling never gets old. This momentum – the connections, the projects, the impact – keeps me inspired and always looking ahead.

What advice would you give someone interested in doing what you do?

Figure out the basics first: what pain points can you solve for a lot of clients that are big enough for them to pay you significantly well. Once you figured what problems, you can solve, figure out a unique way of doing that that is not only significantly more efficient than everybody else, but also drives much more targeted deliverables as compare to anybody else.

Finally, once you figure out what real clients want, what you can do to help, and how you can do that uniquely — dive deep into understanding how humans think and work, and leverage that information to create either content, or outbound messaging, or inbound funnels that attract your ideal client profiles for specific problems that you can solve.

What has been the hardest part of your business journey?

When you're running a business, sometimes things just stop or take a big hit, and you're the face of it all — to continue with the same momentum and motivation takes a lot of courage, learning curve, and optimism. I sometimes found myself losing almost all the hope I had for the agency, for its people, and for its clients because everything was going south on us.

Clients were leaving, revenues were drying up, team members wanted to change, etc. In the face of so many rejections, standing still and looking forward with a huge amount of optimism was the hardest thing that I had to do. But once you succeed in that challenge, you'll realise how important it was to do that.

How have you managed burnout thus far?

Taking breaks is the best way. It may sound counterintuitive to stop sometimes, but that's exactly what you may need. A well-rested mind and body are much more efficient. I had to learn that the hard way, but I did learn it.

What are a few resources that you'd recommend?

For marketing courses, I would strongly recommend trying CXL. For books, and this is one of my favourites, try reading 'How to win friends and influence people' by Dale Carnegie.