Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Ankit Jain. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Ankit, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Going back to the beginning – how did you come up with the idea in the first place?

I started my career as a Software Engineer in one of the biggest IT company of India – Tata Consultancy Services. I moved to Mumbai – The Financial Capital and one of the most happening city of India, for my job.
Mumbai had a very different vibe than my hometown Indore. There were people from different walks of life and had diversified thought process.

I was part of the Toastmasters club in TCS and in every session we had to speak on a randomly selected or a pre-selected topic. It was so much fun and I got the opportunity to interact with lot of creative minds and learn from them.
As I moved forward with my journey in Toastmasters, I learnt something new about myself, which was my interest in penning down my thoughts in the most engaging manner I could.

I was appreciated by my club members for my writing skills and this really motivated me to move forward with my newly developed interest.

It was year of 2012 and Mumbai was a hot and happening hub for creative writing and blogging. Big names of the Blogging world like Indiblogger and BlogAdda had their own community of bloggers and they used to organize bloggers meets, blogging contests and had their own forum where bloggers/creative writers from all over the country could come and interact.
I started my own blog and included my articles from Toastmaster in it. I included the link on my social media accounts and got appreciation from my friends.
Meanwhile, I also submitted my blog to Indiblogger and Blogadda and luckily got included in their community in the first go.

I was really very happy to be part of the community and started interacting with folks on the forum and reading their blogs.
I was literally blown away by their articles, as they were very well articulated, deep and engaging.

I started going to the blogger meets and got to interact with a lot of creative souls in person.
That is when I understood the vastness of blogging fraternity and the plethora of activities that people were involved in.

Travel Bloggers used to visit high end hotels, get exclusive invites from tourism board and also products to review.
Food bloggers were invited to high class restaurants for tasting and review. Fashion bloggers were provided high end clothes and accessories to try and review, Similarly, beauty, automobile, finance bloggers had their own perks and the list is endless.
Everyone was busy reviewing stuff, creating content and earning through it,

That is when an idea clicked my mind – “Why not built one stop destination for all kinds of review. You name it, we review it”.
Next, I discussed it with three friends in a pub and R4review was born. We built a team of creative reviewers across the country. Our motto was to experience and review all kind of services and products to help our audience get the best of everything around them and help brands get the engagement they were looking for.

In just 3 months, we were a team of 15 creative souls hailing from different cities of India, USA and UK.
One of my friend helped with building the portal and another one helped with the marketing and we were all set to reach out to the brands and talk with them about our motto and how we could help them reach to a broader audience.

Within next 6 months, we were able to connect with a significant number of brands and provide them with the content and engagement they were looking for. Our strength was our team which had folks from different cities who gelled really well with each other.

In just one year of launch, we were loaded with campaigns from various brands like Dove, Tata Motors, Bajaj Allianz, Edelweiss, Neutrogena etc. and invites from a lot of Indian Restaurants, Social Events and Fashion Weeks.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am Ankit Jain, a techie who has passion for modernizing legacy systems into Cloud. However, I was bit by the content creation bug in 2012 and that is when I got into this industry.
Currently, I am the co-founder of R4review, where we review everything under the sun.
I am also the Chief Traveler for Explorer Lens. and an Amazon Influencer and Reviewer.

R4review was the brainchild of 4 friends who were sitting in a pub and discussing about the potential of influencer marketing and content creation and how it is going to evolve in next 5 years. This was in back in 2015 and that is when R4review was born. We started with couple of cities in India, but within 2 years, we had team members in almost all major cities of India and also in USA and UK.
We had our peak in 2018-19, when the R4review family grew to 30 team members and we had our 100th brand collaboration.
Then Covid hit, impacting the influencer industry the most and rest is history.

We had our shares of struggle, but we are back in business :)
Currently, we provide the following services:
– Sponsored Content
– Affiliate Marketing
– Reviews (Product, Service, Restaurant, Hotels etc.)
– Guest Blogposts
– Brand Ambassadorship
– Giveaways
– Food and Product Photography

As a Chief Traveler for Explorer Lens, I pen down my travel experiences, itineraries, travel tips and capture the beautiful world through my lens.
I have explored more than 20 national parks and 25 states in USA and still counting.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

My mission for R4review is to have a team member (reviewer) in every major city of this world and make it as the one stop destination for providing any review service.

For Explorer Lens, my goal is to cover each and every country of this world and provide my audience with the best travel tips and itinerary, which can enrich their travel experience.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

I think there are 3 most important things when it comes to brand collaborations and growing your clients:

1. High responsiveness – Brands like influencers who are quick with their response and doesn’t leave them hanging in the middle. I have seen content creators who provides high quality content, but they don’t respond in time and that makes brand reach out to someone else.

2. Honesty – You should be honest with the engagement you can provide, your content quality and the timelines.
Brand really likes influencers/reviewers whom they can trust.

3. Sticking to deadlines – This is super important and really impresses brands.
If you stick to the deadlines or even try to deliver before that, brands really love coming back.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.r4review.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/r4review/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/r4review
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ankit-jain-73ba4025/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/ankitdavv

Image Credits
R4review Team