Rohith Sai – SEO Consultant & Co-Founder of SEO With Senthil

Where it started

My career began in Chennai at echoVME Digital, where I learned SEO from the ground up: site structure, indexing, and the technical fundamentals most businesses get wrong. From there I joined NetElixir as a Senior SEO Analyst, working on US e-commerce brands. That's where I learned to think in revenue, not rankings, and where I saw how big agencies really operate.

I didn't learn SEO from YouTube. I learned it inside agencies, on real accounts, with real money at stake.

The call that changed everything

In 2024, a close friend called me. He had quit his job to start his own agency, and he wanted me with him.

"We'll work out the compensation."

It felt like the right moment to take a bold step. So I quit my job, left Hyderabad and moved to Bangalore, without telling my parents I had quit.

I also took a 50% pay cut. I was earning ₹80,000 a month at the US company; he could offer ₹40,000, because we had no clients yet. I said yes. It was a startup, it was a learning phase, and I believed it would be my company too.

6 AM to 2 AM in a 1BHK in Madiwala

The company started in a small 1BHK in Madiwala, near Christ University. It was just the two of us. Work started at 6 in the morning and ended at 10 or 11 at night, and some nights at 2 AM, because there was nobody else to do it.

One day he asked me what I was really looking for when I quit my job. I told him honestly: a share in the company and in whatever profit we made.

"Obviously, I'll give you that."

I pitched clients, built sales decks, and brought in everything I'd learned about how big US agencies operate. At one point I was handling 13–14 clients on my own, with just an intern and a writer.

From a PG in HSR to a 50-person agency

Slowly, it worked. We moved from the 1BHK to a boys' PG in HSR Layout, with a team of four or five working out of our rooms. When we reached 6–8 people, we took our first co-working office. My uncle and aunt, and his parents, cut the ribbon. We had our families' blessings.

After that, the company grew fast. I built the SEO team, helped set up the social media and Google Ads teams, chose team leads across departments, set up our CRM, ran operations, and handled hiring. I even did the HR work. That's a startup: you do everything. I loved how much I learned.

Within two years, the agency hit ₹2–3 crore in revenue, something very few Indian digital marketing agencies manage, and grew to close to 50 people. After the first few months my salary went back to ₹80,000, and after a year it rose to ₹1.25 lakh.

We lived together in a 2BHK and spent weekends planning how to grow the company and who to promote. He often told me he'd open branches across the country, that I'd run the main one, that I'd be the future CEO, and that I'd get my equity.

The question I asked

Then life happened.

At 28, my father was diagnosed with cancer. His chemotherapy and treatment cost ₹10–15 lakh. My salary couldn't cover it. We sold our gold to pay for his treatment, and I was running from place to place to find the funds.

At the same time, my family had started looking for marriage alliances, and in India the first question is always what you have to your name. My uncle told me:

"If you're getting married, it's better to have everything on paper than a word of mouth."

So I asked. Over lunch in a hotel, I told my friend that my family needed it in writing, even 1% or 2%.

His answer:

"You haven't proved anything to me yet. Once you prove yourself, then I'll give you equity."

It shook me completely. I had left my job, taken a pay cut, and spent two years helping build that company from a 1BHK to 50 people. I never expected that from a close friend.

"I'm the boss, and you're the employee"

From that day, things changed. His family moved to Bangalore, so I vacated our 2BHK and moved in with friends. To support my parents and my father's treatment, I started taking freelance projects, and that became a problem too. Small client issues turned into finger-pointing. One day he told me:

"I'm the boss, and you're the employee. You should work like that."

We were barely speaking. Everything was happening at once: my father, money, a friendship falling apart. I wasn't myself. I realised I was spending my best years building someone else's dream instead of my own.

Four days in Singapore

I was about to turn 29, and I needed to get away. Singapore came into my mind, almost randomly. My childhood friend Bharat and my uncle were there. They helped with my visa, let me stay with them, and showed me the city.

While I was there, I thought: why not explore opportunities too? I messaged people in my industry on LinkedIn. A few replied. (That's me in Singapore on that trip, at the top of this page.)

A shopping trip that changed my life

One of them was Senthil, who had been running his own agency, SEO With Senthil, for about two years from JustCo at The Centrepoint on Orchard Road. We talked for a few minutes about how SEO was changing. He was in a rush to go shopping, so he said:

"Why don't you come along? We can keep talking."

By the end, he asked if I could help him with a project. I said: "Let's talk about money later. First, see what I'm capable of."

I went back to India. One project became two. I delivered both.

This time, on paper

In the first week of January 2026, Senthil asked to talk. On a Google Meet, I told him everything. I said I'd either start something on my own, freelance full-time, or join a US company.

"Why don't you join me as a co-founder?"

He needed a tech partner to own SEO and technical delivery while he led client relationships. I said yes, but this time I said upfront that everything goes on paper. He agreed straight away.

On 5 February 2026, we registered Seed Scale Pte. Ltd. in Singapore, the company behind SEO With Senthil. We kept the SEO With Senthil name because clients already knew and trusted it. I hold 49% and Senthil holds 51%. As a Singaporean majority-owned company, we qualify for government grants and earn more local trust. Forty-nine percent of something real is worth far more than a promise of everything.

I resigned from Dare Network in January 2026. During my last months there, I kept learning and kept showing up at industry events, including a visit to Google's office. My last day was 16 March, and on 18 March I flew to Singapore.

Picking myself back up

I won't pretend it was easy. That period was one of the darkest of my life, and I was close to depression. I owe a lot to the friends I lived with in Bangalore. They were the ones who kept telling me:

"You're capable of doing this on your own."

So I got back to work. I spent a month in Singapore setting up our operations. Now my day starts at 6:30 AM to match Singapore hours and often ends at 11 or 12 at night. It's a startup again, but this time it's mine.