About / 01
Consultant. Trainer.
Mentor.
I am Shezad Ali Khan, a Mumbai-based digital marketing consultant and trainer. I lead the Digital Marketing program at IIDE — The Digital School, guest lecture across Hinduja, Thakur and Pillai, and consult founders before they are ready for a full-time CMO.
My career did not begin in the classroom. I started behind a Casio counter in 2010, selling watches and learning that every sale is really a conversation. That instinct moved online — and eventually into a lecture hall.
Between then and now: ORM at Zimmber, paid media at Sia Art Jewellery, and then the pivot that changed everything — teaching at Pace Career Academy and Digital Trainee in 2019. I keep one foot in practice as CMO at Technoserve Software Solutions so what I teach on Monday is what I ship on Tuesday. The Technoserve site is also where the latest Astro build work and the SEO architecture get tested before they reach client engagements.
I hold three formal diplomas — Web Development (which covers web designing end-to-end), Graphic Design, and Digital Marketing. That is why the engagements I take cover layout, type, and front-end as fluently as they cover SEO and paid. Clients and students get a single practitioner for the whole craft, not three.
My 2026 focus: consulting Mumbai founders before they need a full-time CMO, training the next 1,500 students into careers, and shipping the kind of SEO-first builds that compound over years.
02 / By the numbers
Twelve years, distilled.
1,500+
Students mentored
Across 38 cohorts at IIDE, Digital Trainee, and Pace Career Academy
12+
Years in marketing
From retail sales at Casio to CMO and lead trainer
50+
Brands grown
SEO, paid media, web builds — from D2C startups to B2B SaaS
8+
Colleges lectured
Hinduja, Thakur, Pillai, and institutions across Mumbai
38
Cohorts delivered
Each one a full curriculum cycle — not a one-off workshop
3
Formal diplomas
Web Development, Graphic Design, and Digital Marketing
03 / In the room
Lectures, workshops, classrooms.
Hinduja College — Strategy Week
Mumbai, 2024
Pace Career Academy — Whiteboard session
Mumbai
Hands-on workshop
Full house — guest lecture
Thakur College of Engineering
Mumbai, 2024
College classroom session
2024
Workshop wrap-up
Pace Career Academy
04 / What sets me apart
Why work with me.
Most consultants only consult. Most trainers only teach theory. I do both — and the gap between the two is where the real value lives.
Practitioner + Educator
Practitioner first
I keep one foot in the trenches as CMO at Technoserve. What I teach on Monday is what I ship on Tuesday. No theory-only teaching.
Full-stack craft
Three diplomas — web, design, marketing. Clients and students get one practitioner for the whole craft, not a committee.
Long-game thinking
I build for compound returns. SEO-first sites, skill stacks, career trajectories — none of it is designed for a quick win.
05 / Career journey
From a Casio counter to the lecture hall.
-
2023
Joined IIDE as Lead Trainer
IIDE — The Digital School · Mumbai
Leading the full digital marketing program — curriculum design, delivery, and student outcomes across 38+ cohorts.
-
2021
Appointed CMO
Technoserve Software Solutions
Full-stack marketing ownership for a software company — SEO, paid, web builds, and brand. The testing ground for everything I teach.
-
2019
Digital Marketing Trainer
Digital Trainee
The pivot that changed my career. Discovered that teaching forces a depth of understanding that client work alone never did.
-
2018
Digital Marketing Trainer
Pace Career Academy
First formal training role. Built the curriculum from scratch — whiteboard sessions, live audits, and placement-first teaching.
-
2017
Senior Marketing Executive
Sia Art Jewellery
Paid media and performance marketing for a premium jewellery brand. Learned the creative side of performance.
-
2015
ORM Specialist
Zimmber (later acquired by Quikr)
Online reputation management for one of Mumbai's fastest-growing home-services startups. Startup speed, startup stakes.
-
2010
Retail Sales — where it all started
Casio India
Behind a Casio counter, selling watches and learning that every sale is really a conversation. That instinct never left.
06 / Operating principles
How I think about teaching.
01
Teach what you do
Training 1,500+ students forced me to sharpen every framework. If I cannot explain it in 90 seconds, I do not understand it yet. The classroom is the editor.
02
Learn by teaching
A student question is a stress-test no client brief can replicate. Each cohort exposes the gaps in my own thinking — and that is the whole point.
03
Fundamentals over tools
Tools change every quarter; fundamentals do not. I teach how to think about audiences, distribution, and feedback loops — the toolset comes later.
04
Boring beats brilliant
The compounding work — showing up for cohort 38 with the same care as cohort 01 — outperforms any tactic that goes viral on LinkedIn. I bet on consistency.
07 / Working stack
Current toolkit — classroom and otherwise.
Teaching tools
- —Slide decks (Keynote, Pitch)
- —LMS: Notion + Google Classroom
- —Assessment frameworks
- —Cohort retention playbooks
AI & Automation
- —Claude (Opus, Sonnet)
- —GPT-4o for multimodal
- —n8n, Make for orchestration
- —Self-hosted RAG (pgvector)
SEO & Analytics
- —Ahrefs, SEMrush
- —GA4 + BigQuery + Search Console
- —Screaming Frog
- —Schema.org engineering
Build & Ship
- —Astro, Next.js
- —Tailwind CSS, WordPress
- —Cloudflare, Vercel hosting
- —TypeScript when warranted
08 / Education & credentials
Three diplomas, one craft.
I did not specialize early — I stacked disciplines. Web development gave me the builder's eye. Graphic design gave me the visual language. Digital marketing tied them together into a career.
Diploma 01
Web Development
Full-stack web development covering HTML, CSS, JavaScript, server-side scripting, and end-to-end web design. This is the foundation that lets me build, not just brief.
Diploma 02
Graphic Design
Visual communication, typography, layout systems, and brand identity. The reason I can audit a landing page for visual hierarchy as fluently as for conversion rate.
Diploma 03
Digital Marketing
SEO, paid media, analytics, content strategy, and social. The connective tissue that turns builds and designs into measurable business outcomes.
Government Accreditation
Certified Trainer — Skill India
Government-certified Digital Marketing Trainer under the Skill India initiative — accredited by MESC/NSDC to train and assess professionals against the national Digital Marketing Manager qualification (NSQF Level 6).
- Qualification Pack
- Digital Marketing Manager (MES/Q0706) v2.0
- Framework Level
- NSQF Level 6
- Issuing Authority
- Media & Entertainment Skills Council (MESC)
- Recognised Under
- Skill India / NSDC, Govt. of India
- Trainer ID
- TR584949
- Valid Until
- January 2027
09 / Where I teach
Institutions and platforms.
Primary
IIDE — The Digital School
Lead Trainer for the full digital marketing program. Curriculum design, daily lectures, student placements, cohort management.
38+ cohorts · 1,500+ students
Guest faculty
Hinduja · Thakur · Pillai
Guest lectures on SEO, AI in marketing, career trajectories, and web development fundamentals. Semester-length and single-session formats.
8+ colleges across Mumbai
Previous
Pace · Digital Trainee
Where the teaching career began. Built curriculum from scratch — whiteboard sessions, live audits, and a placement-first philosophy that carried forward.
2018 – 2022
What's next
Have a project,
a team, or a curriculum?
I consult founders before they need a full-time CMO. I train teams who want to stop outsourcing and start owning their marketing. And I build the SEO-first sites that compound while you sleep.
— On YouTube
Quick Takes
Short, practical bites on digital marketing, AI tools, and the lessons from 1,500+ students. No long intros.
Day 1 in China | Street Food After Jummah
Day 2 in China | Yiwu Stationery Market Tour for Startups & Resellers!
Day 3 in China | Cheapest Wholesale Market | New Trendy Products
Day 4 in China | Premium Gifting Products in Cheap Price | Perfect for Resellers!
Day 5 in China | Yiwu Garden Walk Turns into Live E-Commerce Masterclass
Day 6 in China | From Window Shopping to Finalizing Orders in Yiwu
Day 7 in China | Business Lessons & Factory Connections
Day 8 in China | Faith, Scarves & Smart Selling Setup
Day 9 in China | Cash Payments, Fast Dispatch & Digital Invoices
07 / Get in touch
Let's
make
something
good.
