Founder · Strategic Communications, Reputation & Growth
A Wharton MBA with over twelve years in strategic communications, Shriya has helped legacy brands, venture-backed startups, CXOs and changemakers become the names their categories remember. Her career spans Spice PR, SUGAR Cosmetics, the Good Glamm Group, Raindrop Media, Ketto, Brut India and Hoichoi before founding Influence. She leads positioning and senior counsel on every mandate, which is the hard constraint on how many clients the firm takes at once.
Director · Entrepreneur in Residence
Ankur drives client delivery, business development and the firm's AI-led execution engine. An operator with a background across D2C e-commerce, marketplace growth and demand planning, he co-founded the EdTech venture Certination, scaling it past 100,000 users to a pre-Series A exit. At Influence he turns strategy into shipped work, fast, and leads Influence Productions, the firm's original music label.
Twelve years in communications and personal branding before founding Influence, with a record spanning 140 brands, 57 personalities and 15 mega events across beauty, technology, financial services, real estate, hospitality and consumer. Holds an MBA from Wharton. Leads positioning, senior counsel and every new mandate.
Runs strategy and execution across mandates, and heads Influence Productions. Background spans demand planning at Genpact, e-commerce leadership at Jaipur Rugs, co-founding an EdTech business to Pre-Series A with a 105 member team, and growth roles in SaaS. Named Entrepreneur of the Year 2019 by GERA.
Influence-era client results and pre-firm career credentials are reported separately and never blended. Where a figure on this site belongs to a founder's career before Influence, it is labelled as such. That distinction matters more than the headline number.
Specialist counsel is brought in per mandate for legal communications, policy, financial communications and production. Named, briefed and accountable, never subcontracted quietly.
Every mandate has one named lead who is present in every session and accountable for the outcome. Specialist counsel joins for legal communications, policy, financial communications or production, and is named to the client rather than hidden behind a firm signature.
Influence draws on a standing bench of former journalists, policy specialists, financial communicators and production directors, engaged per mandate. This keeps the core team small and the depth available, without the overhead a client would otherwise pay for.
Shriya is in the room for positioning and senior counsel on every mandate. That is a hard constraint on how many clients the firm takes at once, and it is the reason the client list is short.
Each phase of an engagement has a written definition of done, agreed before it starts. If a phase does not meet it, we say so in the review rather than moving on.
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