About Me

About Me:

 

Hello! My name is Lakshmi Nagarajan.  I live in Bangalore, India.

I’m a self-taught marketer. I don’t have a MBA or a degree in marketing; the single most sought after qualification in most job descriptions.

I spent the first six years of my career writing code and managing projects in the education & finance sectors before transitioning to digital marketing. I learned SEO by getting my hands dirty generating 100K MAU for an interior design website in 2017, 10M views on Pinterest, watched a ton of YouTube videos on PPC campaigns to learn the nuances, followed sub-reddits for SEO hacks, joined Slack communities, and listened to hours of marketing strategy Podcasts to stay abreast on tools. 

And experiment with tactics based on what I see and hear. The curiosity to learn, double down on what works, and the willingness to unlearn what doesn’t keeps me going.

Career Highlights

 

Practo: Head of SEO   | Bangalore   |   Jun 2023 – July 2025

  • Owned and scaled SEO channel, establishing it as the top driver for growth, responsible for 70% of high-intent marketplace traffic and 30% of margin
  • Managed ~4M monthly organic visits; achieved 3% y-o-y growth 70% of 12M traffic and 30% of revenue from marketplace SEO 
  • Developed a comprehensive SEO roadmap, mapping Practo’s share of TAM across its 10 categories
  • Built Perplexity and Python-powered agentic AI model for content enrichment of 10000 pages completing the first 3000 in under 45 days and cutting a 6-month process to weeks
  • Trained the content-ops team on AI automation techniques, including prompting and LLM workflows for complex collection of 1M procedure and pricing datapoints
  • Created SEO scoring for 1.2M URLs; enriched 8M data points through agentic AI; added 500K monthly organic visits
  • Saved ₹25L/year by automating RCA via Looker Studio, Screaming Frog, GA
  • Presented ₹1 crore+ impact business case to secure buy-in for new SEO initiatives 

HRBx |  B2B Marketing Consultant |  | Bangalore | Jun 2022 – Jun 2023

  • Designed/developed HR and employer branding sites (hrbx.in, talentbranding.in).
  • Established organic inbound B2B engine through SEO, blogs, user guides, case studies
  • Implemented topic-led content marketing strategy to publish blogs, user guides focusing on 3 verticals: virtual CHRO, talent engagement and executive search that led to 2x conversion

NVT Group:  Head of Marketing    |   Bangalore |    Jan 2020 – May 2022

  • Worked directly with the three founders of NVT luxury real estate group, ISME and NPS schools
  • Set up the in-house marketing team of 8
  • Positioned NVT in the top 5  premium real estate brands in Bangalore
  • Sold 135+ luxury villas priced ₹3–4 Cr each during the peak of COVID-19 through 360° marketing
  • Managed ₹3 crore annual budget across businesses
  • Executed integrated campaigns across billboards, brand videos, brochures, email, and paid ads
  • Collaborated with agencies for brand storytelling and asset creation to 
  • Ran full-stack campaigns: billboards, videos, broadsheets, paid
  • Trained a team of analysts to constantly test new tactics to improve discoverability and engagement

Founder | dressyourhome.in | Jan 2017 – Dec 2019

  • Built a top-10 home decor website (100K MAU, 108K followers, 10M+ Pinterest views)
  • Partnered with 100+ B2B/B2C clients (e.g., Asian Paints, Flipkart, Godrej)
  • Contributed to company rebranding by co-developing a new brand mascot and assisting in the creation of a 20+ page visual style guide, ensuring consistency across all design and messaging outputs

IFT | Head of Content |   Aug 2013 – Dec 2016

  • Led Q-bank and mock test content for CFA L1/L2
  • Built brand presence via Analyst Forum, blogs
  • Managed PR/reputation via content

Business Analyst / Onsite Coordinator  | TCS, Cognizant   |  Jul 1999 – Oct 2006

  • Led client relationships, requirement mapping, and international delivery teams

Education

  • MICA – 1 Year Program in Digital Marketing
  • CFA – Level 2
  • NIT, Trichy – B.E. Instrumentation * Control Systems

Personal Info

LinkedIn | e: lakshmi.vivek@gmail.com

About This Site:

I’d been toying with the idea of owning a space that serves a dumping ground of the resources I bookmark, articles I’ve written on SEO or otherwise (LinkedIn is sometimes not the right place for everything). A space where I can express freely without judgment, without the pressure of engagement,and one that transcends jobs. A space purely for my love for SEO.   

Random Fun Facts:

If you’ve read this far, it’s about time to reveal why I didn’t pursue Masters.

Fun fact #1: I studied in 10 different schools across states, boards and countries for Grades 1 to 12. Grade 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 were all in different schools.

I’d had enough. So by the time I got to my final year of engineering, I decided to not go back to traditional schooling.

Paradox of change.

Strangely, learning did not stop. I enrolled for the CFA program and more recently, a program on digital marketing from MICA.

Fun fact #2: Why marketing as a career choice? My first choice was UPSC. Marketing happened by accident. I loved it so much that I was hungry to learn more. Feeds the analytical brain + need for creativity.

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