How AI Is Changing the Way Brands Get Discovered | Saurabh Kumar, Envigo

In our latest conversation at Media Mohalla, we speak with Saurabh Kumar, Founder & Director of Envigo, a digital marketing agency he co-founded in 2008.

With a background spanning digital marketing, business strategy, analytics and technology, Saurabh has been at the forefront of the evolving digital landscape. His entrepreneurial journey offers valuable insights into building a business, understanding consumer behaviour, and navigating the ever-changing world of digital marketing.

From the early days of digital advertising to the growing influence of AI and data-driven marketing, this conversation explores the ideas, experiences and lessons shaping the future of the industry.

1. Envigo has worked with over 230 brands across 14+ markets. Across these engagements, what is the most common mistake you see brands making when trying to build digital visibility, and how has AI changed that challenge?

Brands build visibility around channels instead of around their brand. They chase rankings, followers and traffic as separate goals, and the brand story stays inconsistent across the web. Search engines tolerated that. AI systems reward consistency. ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity assemble answers from many sources, and they recommend brands whose identity, expertise, and category position read the same everywhere. Visibility now depends on being clearly understood, making it as much a brand-clarity challenge as a keyword one.

2. How is Envigo helping brands transition from traditional SEO strategies to Generative Engine Optimisation, particularly when visibility on platforms like ChatGPT and Gemini is becoming increasingly important?

We treat it as an extension of SEO, so clients keep what works and add what is new. Our DualRank framework covers traditional SEO and Generative Engine Optimisation in one system, tracked across Google, ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude. In practice, we audit how each AI platform currently describes the brand, structure content so models can extract and cite it, and build third-party mentions that reinforce the brand’s authority. Clients see both channels in one report, which keeps the transition measurable.

3. Having worked across multiple international markets, are you noticing differences in how brands in India and global markets are adapting to AI-led brand discovery?

Global brands, particularly in the UK and the US, started asking about AI-led discovery earlier and tend to arrive with a defined budget and a measurement question. Indian brands are moving quickly and show strong curiosity, and many are still deciding where AI visibility sits within their marketing plan. The biggest difference is in sources. AI platforms cite different publications and directories in each market, so a UK brand and an Indian brand need different authority-building plans. The principle stays constant: be clear, be credible and be present where models look.

4. At Envigo, how do you approach a brand that has strong Google rankings but is completely absent from AI-generated recommendations? What does the transformation process look like?

This is a common starting point, and it is fixable. The process runs in four stages:

• Diagnose: Test the prompts buyers use across the major AI platforms and record who gets recommended and why.
• Find the gap: Rankings reward pages. AI recommendations reward entities, meaning a brand that is consistently described, corroborated by independent sources and easy to summarise.
• Build: Strengthen entity signals, restructure key pages for extraction, and earn mentions in the publications and directories that models draw from.
• Monitor: Track mentions, sentiment and citation sources monthly, and refine.

5. As an agency, how does Envigo distinguish between AI-generated visibility that creates genuine brand consideration and visibility that simply generates mentions without influencing purchase decisions?

We look at the context of the mention. A genuine consideration signal places the brand in a recommendation, with a reason attached, for a prompt that reflects buying intent. A vanity mention appears in a generic list or a loosely related answer. We measure the quality of the prompt, the position within the answer, the sentiment, and whether branded search and enquiries rise afterwards. Mentions matter when they connect to pipeline.

6. With AI tools increasingly automating content creation, campaign management and analytics, how is Envigo redefining its agency model to deliver value that goes beyond execution?

AI has made execution faster and more affordable, so we price and position our work around judgement. Our team spends its time on strategy, brand positioning, experimentation and measurement, while AI handles production at scale. Clients receive more output and clearer accountability for outcomes. Our proprietary frameworks, DualRank for search visibility and the Growth Experimentation Lab for conversion, reflect that shift from tasks to results.

7. As the founder of Envigo, what is your vision for the agency over the next five years? Do you see Envigo evolving from a digital marketing agency into a broader AI-driven brand growth and visibility partner?

Yes. I see Envigo evolving from a digital marketing agency into an AI-driven brand growth and visibility partner, and the shift is already underway.

Brands now compete for attention in two places at once: search engines and AI systems that recommend, summarise and decide. A partner who owns both has a clear advantage, so over the next five years Envigo will build around three commitments:

• Visibility as a core discipline: DualRank will grow into a complete discoverability practice. It will cover how a brand ranks on Google and how ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity describe it, tracked in one place.
• Growth tied to measurable outcomes: Our Growth Experimentation Lab will extend that visibility into conversion, so every gain in discovery connects to enquiries, pipeline and revenue.
• Depth through engineering and original data: Envigo will bring enterprise-grade AI and systems capability to clients who need it, and our research programme will give brands evidence they can act on.

The commercial model follows from this. We will work with fewer, larger clients on long-term partnerships, and we will be accountable for outcomes as well as deliverables.

What stays the same is the foundation: human judgement leads, AI accelerates, and clarity guides every recommendation. In five years, I want a CMO facing the question of how AI describes their brand to think of Envigo first.