What's fueling India's new generation of PR founders?

There was a time when the idea of starting a PR agency came after decades of experience in a communications career. 

The older ladder was spending years learning the business, building a network, working your way up, becoming a senior leader and, somewhere along the way, decided it was time to put your own name on the door.

However, now, that timeline is starting to look a little outdated.

Across India's PR and communications ecosystem, a new generation of professionals is choosing to start agencies not after two or three decades in the business, but sometimes before they have even turned 30. 

The shift raises so many questions: 

Have the barriers to building an agency genuinely come down?
Has social media made individual reputation a stronger currency?
Are clients increasingly willing to buy specialist expertise rather than institutional scale?
Or is a younger generation simply less willing to spend years climbing an agency ladder when it can potentially build something of its own much earlier?

The timing is interesting because India's PR industry itself is expanding and changing. According to the PRCAI SPRINT 2026 report, the Indian PR industry grew 11% in FY26 to ₹3,230 crore and now accounts for 12.6% of the Asia-Pacific PR market. The industry is projected to reach ₹4,500 crore by 2030.

The question, then, isn't simply why young people are starting PR agencies. It is whether the traditional route to building a PR agency is losing relevance because if someone can build a client base, develop a specialisation, create a personal reputation and assemble a team without first spending 15 or 20 years climbing the agency hierarchy, what does that do to the industry's old equation of experience, relationships, scale that leads to the ultimate credibility.

There is clearly more business entering the ecosystem. But more interestingly, there may also be more room for different kinds of businesses to emerge within it.

Archana Jain, CEO, PR Pundit Havas Red, sees the emergence of younger agency founders as part of a much wider change in India's business landscape. “Our country is becoming younger in its demographic profile, and so are the businesses that are shaping its future. What has changed is the growing respect for younger minds, fresh thinking and digital-native expertise.”

Jain points to a broader acceptance of younger people assuming leadership roles across industries, arguing that clients today are more open to working with entrepreneurs who bring agility and a contemporary understanding of audiences and culture.

And she sees this as more than a generational blip, stating, “I do see this as a structural shift rather than a passing trend.”

For an industry that historically placed considerable weight on experience, relationships and scale, that is a significant change in mindset. But structural change does not necessarily mean that the old currency of experience has disappeared.

Deepak Jolly, Founder and Director, Consocia Advisory, draws a sharper distinction between being able to launch an agency and being ready to shoulder the responsibility that comes with advising clients. “Starting an agency and being prepared for the responsibility of advising clients are two very different things,” he highlights. 

Jolly's own career offers a perspective that younger founders cannot necessarily replicate. Before establishing Consocia Advisory, he spent several decades on the client side, working with organisations including Hindustan Unilever, PepsiCo India, Airtel and Coca-Cola India.

He says that it was the hand-on. Experience that changed the way he understood the relationship between a client and its communications partner, particularly when expectations move beyond a written brief or when a difficult situation emerges without warning.

For younger founders, he believes the challenge is not that they have started too early, but whether they are prepared to learn quickly enough, exercise judgement and take responsibility when the stakes rise.

Moreover, Jolly also believes that relationships are another piece of the traditional PR equation that may prove harder to shortcut. “Relationships also remain fundamental to this profession. Without strong relationships, even the most capable agency will struggle,” he mentions.

That distinction introduces a more complicated question into the debate around age.

If clients are increasingly comfortable choosing a younger founder, what exactly are they buying? Is it the individual's expertise and agility rather than the accumulated institutional experience of a large agency? And when the founder's personal reputation is a major part of the proposition, can that credibility be separated from the business itself?

The changing economics of the communications function may be accelerating this transition.

Deepa Dey, Integrated Comms, Advocacy & Sustainability Specialist  points to a market in which companies are reassessing their PR and marketing resources amid mergers and acquisitions, difficult market conditions and pressure on both revenue and profitability. At the same time, the communications mandate itself has expanded, with earned, paid, owned and shared media increasingly coming together within the remit of communications leaders.

The result is a different kind of agency demand. She articulates, “Today's clients need a more tailored approach, that is also cost effective, tech enabled, and sometimes for a short term. They are not shying away from giving the mandate to a smaller agency.”

That changes the equation for someone in their 20s considering agency ownership. A founder may no longer need the infrastructure of a large consultancy to compete for every kind of mandate. A focused proposition, a relevant network, specialist knowledge and the ability to solve a particular business problem can be enough to get a seat at the table.

Dey counters the age relevance among founders, underlining, “India's business start-up founders are either in their 20s or slightly older. Some of India's legacy PR consultancies were founded by founders in their 30s / 40s, almost like the current founders of the new agencies. Age will always be just a number to a client who finds the right partner who understands the business imperative and helps to solve it.”

The emergence of under-30 founders does not necessarily mean experience has become irrelevant. Instead, the definition of what constitutes a credible agency appears to be widening.

A younger founder may bring cultural fluency, speed, specialist expertise and a closer understanding of digital audiences. An established agency may bring decades of relationships, institutional knowledge, depth of talent and experience navigating complexity.

Clients increasingly have more reasons to choose between those propositions rather than automatically defaulting to one because of its size or history.

But that also creates the central tension for the generation entering agency ownership today. They may not need to wait 15 or 20 years to get a chance to build a firm. They still have to demonstrate that they can build something that lasts. 

Therefore, the real test is not whether a 25- or 30-year-old can launch a PR agency. Clearly, they can. It is what happens after the launch.

Can a founder win a first client and then retain it? Can personal visibility translate into institutional credibility? Can a specialist proposition evolve as the business grows? Can a founder build a team rather than become the entire agency? Can younger professionals develop the judgement that comes from exposure to difficult clients, complex mandates and high-pressure situations? And can they build relationships that endure beyond a single transaction or the founder's personal network?

These are the questions that will determine whether the current wave of young agencies becomes a durable shift in the PR industry's structure or simply another cycle of entrepreneurial experimentation.

Jolly cites, “The future of India's PR ecosystem will certainly be younger and more entrepreneurial but lowering the barriers to entry cannot mean lowering professional standards.”

Jain describes the arrival of younger entrepreneurs as an opportunity for the industry to become more diverse in the way it builds and operates communications businesses. “Their energy and innovation will help expand, diversify and strengthen India's PR industry in the future,” she says. 

Dey suggests that the function continues to absorb new capabilities while retaining its core purpose, explaining, “The future of PR will be interesting, the function will continue to pivot, to find new solutions & talent will continue to upskill and co-opt new ideas / execution capabilities, while remaining true to its core task of storytelling to create reputational and business impacts.”

So perhaps the question is not whether young founders are too young to start.

It is whether the industry is finally becoming comfortable with the idea that ownership, credibility and experience do not necessarily have to arrive in the same order.

The veterans have given us a sense of what this evolution could mean for the industry: how the barriers to entrepreneurship are changing, why clients may be more open to younger partners, and why experience, judgement, relationships and accountability will continue to matter even as the industry evolves.

But there is another side to this shift.

What does it actually look like to take that leap before 30? What happens when a young professional moves from being an employee to becoming the person responsible for winning clients, building a team, managing cash flows, making difficult calls and, ultimately, carrying the reputation of an agency on their own shoulders?

For that, we need to hear from the founders themselves.

e4m ‘Too young to start?’ series turns the lens towards the professionals who have chosen to take this unconventional route. Their journeys offer the other side of the coin, the ambitions that pushed them to start early, the challenges they encountered, the credibility they had to establish, the advantages they believe youth gives them, finding and retaining talent, developing meaningful relationships navigating the pressures of being a first-generation entrepreneur, and the realities that are often invisible behind the announcement of a new agency.

Because the story of India's under-30 PR founders is not complete without hearing from the people actually building these firms. This series will also answer why so many young founders are launching PR agencies before 30, what they believe they can do differently, where their models are tested, and what their rise could ultimately mean for the future of India's PR industry.

Over the next few stories, exchange4media follows their journeys to understand not just why they started, but what it takes to build, sustain and grow a PR agency when you have chosen to begin before the industry expects you to.

So, are they really too young to start? Stay tuned as we hear their stories...