Kunal & Mayank — My First Clients, My Mentors — Naman Dudeja

Naman Dudeja · Founder, Drome Media · September 2026 · 6 min read

Introduction

Everyone talks about finding mentors. Almost no one tells you where they actually come from. Mine didn't come from a course, a DM, or a networking event. Kunal and Mayank came to me as clients — and ended up becoming two of the most important people in my journey as a founder.

This is the story of how working with them changed the way I think about business, standards, and what it actually means to operate at a high level.

They Were Clients First

When I was building Drome Media from scratch in Sri Ganganagar, Kunal and Mayank were among the first people who trusted me with real work. I was young, hungry, and honestly still figuring things out — but they gave me a shot. That trust meant everything at that stage.

What I didn't expect was how much I would learn just by being in the room with them. Watching how they ran their own businesses — the decisions they made, the way they talked about money, people, and growth — was an education no course could have given me.

What Serious Entrepreneurship Actually Looks Like

Before Kunal and Mayank, my idea of business came mostly from the internet. Real operators think differently. They don't chase every opportunity — they pick a lane and go deep. They don't panic over a bad week — they look at systems. They don't talk about working hard — they talk about leverage, distribution, and standards.

"Being around people who operate at a higher level raises your own level faster than any book or course ever will."

Every conversation with them recalibrated my sense of what was possible. Problems I thought were big, they had solved years ago. Ideas I thought were ambitious, they considered the obvious next step. That exposure is what took Drome Media from a teenager's side project to a six-figure agency.

The Lessons That Stuck

Lesson one: your standards define your ceiling. Kunal and Mayank never accepted average work — not from themselves, and not from me. Delivering for them forced me to raise the bar on everything Drome Media produced, and that standard stayed long after the projects ended.

Lesson two: relationships compound. They didn't just pay invoices — they opened doors, made introductions, and vouched for me in rooms I wasn't in yet. In the Indian business ecosystem, that kind of backing from people with real reputation is priceless.

Lesson three: speed of execution beats perfection. Watching how fast they moved on decisions — test, measure, decide, move on — killed my habit of overthinking. That bias for action is now baked into how Drome Media runs client campaigns.

Why I'm Writing This

Gratitude, mostly. But also because I see a lot of young founders waiting for a mentor to magically appear. Here's what I learned: your mentors are often already in your life — as clients, collaborators, or the people who took a chance on you early. Serve them well, stay curious around them, and the mentorship happens on its own.

Kunal and Mayank bet on me before there was any reason to. Everything Drome Media is today — the systems, the standards, the results — carries a piece of what they taught me. This post is my thank you.

"Your first believers shape you more than your first wins ever will."

— Naman Dudeja, Founder, Drome Media