5 PR Mistakes Startups Make—and Why They Keep Getting Ignored by the Media

 PR often is the very lifeblood of startups as it gets their marketing effort going without them having to break the bank. Unlike advertising, it is economical and a great vehicle for building credibility.

​That being said, carrying out effective PR is not something that many startups get right. They might obsess over product features instead of defining a clear strategic road map for their business. A lot of thinking and planning should ideally go into understanding the target audience and building up one’s brand.

​Let us look at where a startup might go wrong in its PR effort-

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1. Not Getting the Communication Dissemination Process Right

PR in 2026 is not the PR of ten to fifteen years back. Storied publications like the New York Times, The Times of India, The Washington Post and the Hindustan Times are not what people automatically turn to these days for their news. The disseminators of news and information are a diffused lot these days, with social media platforms, blogs, vlogs, YouTube videos and podcasts catering to their own specific audiences, largely replacing traditional media outlets.

​Startups can no longer rely on old style press releases and media interactions, with an Op-Ed thrown in for good measure targeting traditional media outlets to promote the offerings of their business. They need an evolved and dynamic PR strategy that speaks to the new-age media platforms of news dissemination.

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2. Not Getting the Message Right

This is the trickiest part and could make or break a startup’s PR initiative. Founders can talk passionately about their grand vision, but when it comes to explaining in simple terms what they exactly do and help accomplish, they flounder and are unable to come up with an unmistakable crystal clear message for their target audience. A startup founder should know exactly what it is that they offer to their prospects in terms of solving their problems in a manner that they sit up and take notice. You get that right, and that is an important step in the direction of making them care about engaging with you. The key here is to differentiate your product or service from the others.

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3. Conflating Founder News with Real News

Startups more often than not are the passion projects of extremely committed founders. It is, therefore, easy to conflate founder news with the real news. Just because a startup company is all pumped up about an important announcement relating to the founder, it does not naturally follow that journalists and their readers or viewers will share the same sense of excitement. He or she may have launched a new product, managed to raise capital or hired someone with a sterling reputation; it won’t cut much ice with journalists and media outlets unless they find something newsworthy in the proposed story.

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This could be something that ties in with a trend that the latter (journalist) might already be following, or it is something that sparks a debate or even a controversy. It could also be something that has a human interest angle to it. It is always about newsworthy debate and discussion and rarely about founder news.

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4. Looking at PR with a Marketing Lens

Founders are, at the end of the day, business people with a product to sell. Unfortunately, that is not the way one can look at PR. Coverage obtained via PR is earned coverage and not bought coverage. Journalists are not obligated to provide coverage to a company, but to inform, educate and sometimes caution people about things and matters that concern them. It may, for instance, apprise them of any future trends that might impact their lives or educate them about the importance of a new concept or phenomenon making an appearance, often by weaving evocative stories. It is in learning to seamlessly integrate one’s narrative into what the journalist’s story or report is trying to accomplish that one finds success.

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5. The Need to Understand PR

Founders need to understand the PR process and not get disheartened if their initial efforts don’t quickly get them the expected results. PR takes time to deliver as it is a relatively slow and organic process, as compared to advertising, but it is ultimately believed to deliver better results and more bang for the buck, given that the media coverage is earned and not bought.  Founders, as it is are under a lot of pressure from multiple sources and seeing one’s intense PR efforts not seeming to deliver any results for quite some time, can be disconcerting. Getting disheartened and losing faith in PR is something that startup founders need to guard against.

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They need to understand the PR process and devise a strategy that helps them obtain an understanding of how to get a journalist, publication or media platform interested in their pitches. That is where a dedicated PR specialist or an agency can help them find their groove faster.

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PR is something that every startup needs. It is, therefore, imperative for founders to accord it the importance it deserves and see PR help them engage with the target audience in the most impactful way possible. In fact, if done right, PR has the potential to transform the fortunes of any business, especially a startup.

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Startups in the world of AI

 

                                                                     

                Image generated by Gemini

Is it a great time to found a startup at a time when AI seems to be poised to impact every aspect of human endeavour and activity? Do the tremendous efficiencies that are said to accrue from deploying AI make it far easier to run a successful startup, or do the complexities arising from its adoption make things difficult?

With small businesses being the backbone of most nations’ economies, both in terms of GDP and private sector job creation, can artificial intelligence-powered startups achieve breakout growth through market-disrupting innovation? The fact that startups have access to easily available open-source tools, as well as a huge amount of high-quality data, does give them a leg up with regard to coming up with out-of-the-box solutions that are unconstrained by the hitherto high costs of research and development that something like that might have entailed in the past.

With innovation being made so much easier to achieve, even the smallest of startups can match the operational efficiency of much larger organisations. This empowers them to function in a nimble and super-efficient manner, enabling them to make lightning-fast strategic moves like rapidly coming up with new iterations and aligning very quickly to any market changes.

On the flip side, the high rate of obsolescence of the cutting-edge solutions offered by AI means that startups will need to work very hard to maintain their competitive advantage in the market. They could get trapped in a treadmill kind of race that hampers growth. Constant innovation and adaptation do not necessarily lend themselves to growth and stability, for a startup, as it would not be able to find its feet in terms of zeroing in on a niche for itself. Then there is also the fact that the regulatory landscape is evolving with regard to grappling with the cons of AI, like data privacy, algorithmic bias and ethical concerns about its use. Also, given that AI open source tools are available to everyone, the advantage evens out, and it is quite challenging to apply a given AI technology in a manner that others can't replicate.

Is AI- A Game Changer for Startups?

At the core of starting a new business lie its viability and chances of finding success. The very best of business ideas might not stand muster in a tough and cutthroat marketplace. It is important that your product or service should not only have sufficient demand, but that you should also have a fair idea of who your target audience is, as well as have your financial planning sorted. Besides, you should be aware of the kind of competition you face. On top of all of that, you need an insightful marketing strategy to achieve your sales and revenue objectives. While in the past you might have needed to hire experts to guide you with all of the above, you can now use AI to help you through all of these processes cheaply and in double quick time.

AI can help startups personalise marketing campaigns, carry out precise market segmentation enabling better targeting, leverage predictive analytics allowing for strategic decision making, and optimise the marketing & sales processes. It can also help with compliance related matters,   enhance security and protect against fraud. What’s more, it can also help a startup attract funding from investors by helping it get its financial analysis right.

Startups in the world of AI largely have a good thing going. Artificial Intelligence levels out the playing field for a lot of small-time entrepreneurs who were looking to launch their startups, but were intimidated by the challenges involved. In fact, there was never a better time for startups to launch, scale up and rule, the challenges notwithstanding.

 

 

Is growing EV adoption really good for India?

Photo by Kindel Media: https://www.pexels.com/photo/ev-charger-in-california-usa-9800004/

 There is no doubt about the fact that EV adoption has taken off in India. The evidence of this is most prominently visible in the shape of e-rickshaws and electric two-wheelers that seem to be proliferating all around us. We also see a sizeable number of electric cars parked in Indian residential areas or moving around the roads of the larger cities of India. The EV sales in 2023 surpassed 1.5 million in 2023, a whopping 50% increase over the previous year. Overall EVs contributed to an already impressive 6.38% of India's total auto sales. [1]

All of this seemingly is in line with the nation's strategy of reducing the reliance on fossil fuels and contributing to the fight against environmental pollution. But is it really? While it is a fact that electric vehicles have no tail-pipe emissions, the source of the electricity being used to charge the batteries of these vehicles determines how much net pollution is caused by EVs. With coal accounting for 75% of the electricity produced in the country, [2]the increased use of electric vehicles may not actually contribute much to a cleaner environment.

Add to that the fact that electricity is heavily subsidized or even provided free to many in India's rural hinterland and you begin to create a problem for yourself. There is already a proliferation of demand for electric two-wheelers in the rural areas. Sensing opportunity in this fast-growing segment a large number of emerging entrepreneurs have entered the electric two-wheeler segment, pushing up the number of start-ups to over 150 from 54 in 202.  With the political parties of the day falling over each other in a race to provide the most subsidized or free power to rural areas, the environmental cost of coal-based generation is something that doesn't seem to have been taken into account.

Till the time that all EV charging stations source clean electricity produced using non-polluting renewable sources the unbridled expansion of electric mobility should receive a second look.  While electric cars by themselves are a lot more environmentally cleaner than internal combustion ones, one should also bear in mind the environmental problems associated with the materials (lithium) that go into the making of an electric car battery.

The growth of EVs in India is all very welcome but should be tempered with a lot of caution. Apart from ensuring that the vehicles are charged with clean electricity, an effort should also be made to encourage people to use public transport run using cleaner fuels like CNG. The growth in information technology has meant that people don't really need to commute as much as they used to in the past and the less people travel, the better it is for the environment. Till the time EV charging stations can boast to be 100% clean and green, ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) manufacturers can continue to refine their engines with regard to their producing fewer environmentally harmful emissions. The road to a green future is a long and arduous one and is anything but a linear journey.

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[1] https://energy.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/power/indias-ev-sales-surge-to-1-5-million-in-2023-up-50-report/106971357#:~:text=adoption%20of%20EVs.-,

[2] https://www.coal.nic.in/en/major-statistics/generation-of-thermal-power-from-raw-coal#:~:text=In%20India%2C%20power%20is%20generated,of%20the%20total%20power%20generation.