Lessons on Entrepreneurial Marketing from BoldCare and NSRCEL | Founder Framework Masterclass – Episode 1
In today’s startup ecosystem, founders face a marketing landscape that has fundamentally changed. Traditional tactics are no longer sufficient in a world where user behavior is shaped more by emotion, culture, and community than by logic or pricing alone.
In the first episode of the Founder Framework Masterclass, a learning series hosted by NSRCEL in collaboration with WeWork Labs, Professor Ashis Mishra(Marketing Area, IIM Bangalore) and Rahul Subramanian, Co-founder and CMO of BoldCare, explored what it really takes to build relevance in today’s consumer ecosystem.
What emerged was a focused discussion on entrepreneurial marketing: a strategic, lean, and user-centric approach that every early-stage founder canapply – regardless of industry or scale.
What Sets Entrepreneurial Marketing Apart
Unlike established firms, startups cannot rely on brand recall, legacy distribution, or large advertising budgets. Their strength lies in speed, creativity, and direct access to users.
Entrepreneurial marketing is not just a scaled-down version of conventional marketing; it’s an entirely different mindset. Founders must:
- Solve a specific, real problem instead of chasing broad awareness
- Focus on long-term relationships, not just short-term conversions
- Prioritize flexibility over fixed plans or scaled operations
Where traditional marketing seeks to dominate markets, entrepreneurial marketing seeks to resonate with the right users. This distinction influences everything from messaging and content to channel strategy and brand voice.
Moving from Competitor-Focus to Customer-Focus
Many businesses claim to be customer-centric, but their strategies are often driven by competitors’ actions. Entrepreneurial marketing flips this logic.
The masterclass emphasized that customer-centric businesses don’t stop at meeting benchmarks. Instead, they aim to deliver outcomes that matter to users, even if they fall outside standard industry practices.
Startups that truly embrace this approach place customer satisfaction, trust, and experience at the center of their decision-making, not as a by-product of growth. This principle becomes especially important in early stages when brand trust is still being earned.
Why Customer Personas Matter
Founders often make marketing decisions based on assumptions or aggregate trends. But in early-stage contexts, specificity is more powerful than generalization.
The concept of a customer persona; a detailed profile of your ideal customer based on demographics, motivations, pain points, and behavioral patterns helps startups stay focused.
BoldCare’s early strategy reflected this. Rather than build for a generic consumer segment, the team identified a specific user group with a distinct need: men seeking discreet, stigma-free care around sexual wellness. That clarity shaped their product design, packaging, support model, and even the tone of communication.
Founders can build similar clarity by spending time understanding the user context: not just who they are, but what they fear, aspire to, and need reassurance about.
The Strategic Role of Content
Marketing is no longer only about visibility – it is about trust. And trust is built through non-transactional value.
The session highlighted the importance of content as a long-term equitybuilding tool. Founders were encouraged to ask: What can we teach, explain, or demystify for our users, without asking them to buy right away?
Examples like Zerodha’s educational content strategy show how startups can lead with value, rather than offers. In BoldCare’s case, clear, respectful, and stigma-free language in their communication played a vital role in building early credibility.
For startups in emerging or sensitive categories, content often becomes the first (and sometimes only) brand touchpoint. Making it thoughtful and useful is non-negotiable.
How BoldCare Built for Trust in a Taboo Market
BoldCare’s approach to launching in the sexual wellness space was guided by discretion, empathy, and user education. Rather than lead with aggressive marketing, the team focused on building an ecosystem of care.
Key elements included:
- Offering free doctor consultations alongside product bundles
- Enabling anonymous support through platforms like WhatsApp
- Using clean design and neutral packaging to ensure privacy
- Avoiding exaggerated claims or overpromising outcomes
The company positioned itself not just as a product seller, but as a health and confidence enabler. This approach helped reduce user hesitation, encourage repeat behavior, and deepen brand trust; outcomes that paid long-term dividends.
Iteration as the Core Marketing Engine
A recurring theme in the session was the value of continuous iteration. Startups are rarely right the first time, especially when it comes to messaging, positioning, or channel selection.
BoldCare’s marketing evolved through a series of adjustments. They changed their pricing, tested different creatives, switched formats (from Ayurvedic to prescription products), and experimented with influencers, ads, and content formats.
The underlying principle was simple: data should guide every pivot. Engagement metrics, click-through rates, page scrolls, and user feedback were all used to optimize for conversion and clarity.
For founders, iteration should not be viewed as a correction – it is a permanent part of entrepreneurial marketing.
A Framework for Measuring Marketing Success
Rather than track only revenue, the speakers advocated for a staged approach to marketing metrics, often referred to as the funnel model:
- Traffic & Reach: Website visits, impressions, and awareness metrics
- Engagement: Time spent, content shares, scroll depth, click-through rates
- Conversion: Cart adds, sign-ups, purchases, or app downloads
- Retention & ROI: Repeat purchases, customer lifetime value (LTV), ROAS
Founders were cautioned against measuring success purely through revenue or ROI too early in the funnel. If users aren’t engaging meaningfully with content or the product, long-term conversion will remain elusive.
This model also enables prioritization. For example, if conversion is low despite high engagement, the product positioning or CTA may need reworking
BoldCare’s Approach to Resource-Led Marketing
Operating in a niche with limited budgets, BoldCare applied performancefocused strategies to make every rupee count.
Their early priorities included:
- Identifying creatives with the highest ROAS (return on ad spend)
- Streamlining ad channels based on user behavior
- Simplifying messaging to maximize clarity and reduce drop-offs
- Improving post-purchase experience to drive LTV and retention
Rather than spreading efforts across multiple channels, they doubled down where results were visible. This lean approach allowed them to build momentum with fewer experiments and greater focus.
Emotional Trust as a Competitive Advantage
In categories with stigma or social discomfort, emotional trust becomes the strongest moat.
BoldCare’s goal was not just to treat a condition, but to create an environment where users felt seen, respected, and supported. Their product was only part of the solution; the rest came from the experience: the reassurance of doctor access, the clarity of FAQs, and the subtlety of communication.
Founders were encouraged to think beyond features and benefits, and instead ask: What kind of emotional experience are we designing? Because in saturated markets, how your product makes someone feel is often more important than what it does.
Marketing as Meaningful Storytelling
The session closed with a focus on storytelling; not as a campaign technique, but as the core of modern marketing.
The strongest brands don’t sell features. They sell beliefs, aspirations, and identities. They evolve with their users and create continuity between product, purpose, and presence.
Startups that align their story with the lived experiences of their users; honestly, consistently, and with nuance – build reputations that advertising budgets can’t replicate.
In early-stage ventures, your story is often your strongest differentiator. It deserves clarity, investment, and strategic intent.
