When I started MNB Research, my vision was simple: businesses of all sizes deserve clear, actionable insights — not generic advice. Over the years, that vision has taken me from late-night brainstorming sessions in Delhi cafés to corporate boardrooms negotiating multi-crore strategies. Along the way, we’ve seen what works, what fails, and most importantly, what actually moves the needle for clients.
This post is not a theory piece. It’s a mix of our real stories, client experiences, and lessons that can’t be copied from a textbook.
1. Why Data Without Context Fails
One of the earliest projects we took on was for a yarn trading firm in Haryana. They had an enormous inventory but no standardized system to monitor it. Every consultant they spoke with offered the same advice: “Digitize your operations.”
But here’s what those consultants missed — the firm didn’t just need digitization, they needed behavioral change among workers. Their workforce wasn’t skilled in using ERP tools, so the “perfect” digital solution would have collapsed within months.
We introduced a phased model: starting with training unskilled labor to use simple inventory techniques, building confidence, and only then layering in technology. The result? They reduced idle inventory by 27% in the first quarter.
📌 Lesson: Technology is only as strong as the people using it. Data without human context is wasted.
2. The Risk of Following the Herd
In consulting, it’s tempting to recycle popular trends — AI dashboards, aggressive digital marketing, “growth hacks.” But here’s a truth I’ve learned: if you’re chasing what everyone else is doing, you’re already behind.
When we launched Abrobot, our AI for abroad education, many competitors told us, “Students don’t trust bots for such big decisions.” Instead of following that fear, we leaned into our dataset of 25 lakh+ student reviews and insights from 4000+ consultants. We designed Abrobot to mimic the empathy of a consultant with the speed of AI.
Today, students and agencies both are not just using it — they’re relying on it.
📌 Lesson: Thought leadership often means swimming against the tide until the world catches up.
3. A Story from Our Digital Marketing Playbook
Last year, we partnered with a leading education solutions company that wanted to market to both schools (B2B) and parents (B2C). Their pain point? Every previous agency had treated B2B and B2C the same way — spamming both with generic Facebook ads.
We flipped the script. For B2B, we built LinkedIn-driven campaigns with competitor benchmarking and carefully phased rollouts. For B2C, we focused on Instagram reels, influencer storytelling, and bite-sized explainer videos.
The result was not just more leads, but higher-quality leads — schools that were ready to buy, and parents who trusted the brand.
📌 Lesson: Strategy without segmentation is noise. Speak differently to different audiences.
4. My Unpopular Opinion (That Clients Secretly Love)
Here’s something I often say in meetings:
👉 “Good consulting is not about giving clients what they want. It’s about telling them what they don’t want to hear — but desperately need to.”
Sometimes that means telling a startup founder that their branding is confusing, even when they’re emotionally attached to it. Sometimes it means advising a corporate to cut a pet project. These conversations are uncomfortable, but they’re also why clients trust us.
📌 Lesson: Authority comes not from agreeing, but from having the courage to disagree — with evidence.
5. Where We See the Future Heading
Whether it’s consulting, marketing, or abroad education, the future belongs to firms that can combine:
- Technology + Human judgment
- Global insights + Local execution
- Data + Storytelling
At MNB Research, we’ve built our edge by staying at this intersection. Clients don’t just get slides and numbers — they get real-world tested strategies, born from our own experiments and failures.
Closing Thoughts
If there’s one message I want readers to take away, it’s this:
Don’t buy services. Buy outcomes.
That’s the philosophy we live by at MNB Research — whether we’re helping a trading firm fix its inventory, a major education player build its marketing funnel, or a student make a life-changing decision about studying abroad.
Because at the end of the day, the measure of our work is not in the reports we deliver, but in the breakthroughs our clients achieve.
✍️ Written by Mridul Nanda, Founder & CMO, MNB Research
From Boardrooms to Breakthroughs: Lessons We’ve Learned at MNB Research