Arun Benitto

Marketing leader with 17 years of experience, including the last 5 years at AECC — a 500+ employee study-abroad consultancy operating 50 offices across 12 countries — progressing from Digital Marketing Manager to Head of Marketing. Leads AECC's central Digital Innovation Hub marketing function (40+ members) within a 100-member hub, setting strategy and enabling in-market teams across 12 countries to execute independently. Marketing under this leadership drives roughly 40% of total revenue through integrated demand generation, brand strategy, and full-funnel performance marketing.

Has built three marketing functions from zero across EdTech, hospitality, real estate, and healthcare-adjacent sectors; led the organic strategy through the Google core-update cycle and the AI Overviews/AEO shift ahead of category peers; and driven a full website rebuild and analytics infrastructure in partnership with engineering. Recipient of two internal awards for business impact and an active B-school marketing jury member. Seeking a VP Marketing / Director Marketing role with P&L ownership.

Head of Marketing at AECC (2024-08 – Present)

Lead AECC's central marketing function within its Digital Innovation Hub (DIH) — own a 40+ member marketing team (SEO, Content, Social, Performance, Marketing Automation) inside a 100-member hub, collaborating with a 60+ member Tech/Analytics/QA function on a project/squad basis for execution.

• Drive marketing's contribution to ~40% of AECC's total revenue across South Asia, South East Asia & Australia (10 markets); manage ₹5Cr+ annual media budget while reducing CAC by 30% through full-funnel optimization.
• Set central strategy, governance frameworks, and performance standards executed by in-market marketing teams across AECC's 12-country network, who own local operational execution while the central team drives strategic direction and cross-market decisions.
• Own organic/SEO/AEO strategy end-to-end since 2022 — led recovery from major Google core updates, then re-architected strategy for the AI Overviews/Answer Engine Optimization shift with a UGC-led content model, ahead of category peers (Leverage Edu, Yocket, LeapScholar, IDP).
• Led a full website rebuild in partnership with full-stack developers and analysts, and built leadership-facing analytics dashboards (Looker Studio, Zoho Analytics) — moved Core Web Vitals from red to green and lifted conversion rate by 1.7x; present insights directly to the MD on a regular basis.

Senior Manager – Marketing at AECC (2023-01 – 2024-07)

• Expanded remit to include offline event budgets and business development activity for South Asia; partnered with regional branch heads to plan and execute brand/BTL activities aligned with digital strategy.
• Redesigned CRM lead-servicing workflows and built channel- and parameter-based lead scoring; introduced SLAs with the sales team — lifting overall lead-to-conversion funnel performance by 35%.
• Diagnosed lead leakage from untracked inbound calls and implemented cloud telephony with automatic dialler and WhatsApp automation — improved time-to-first-contact and call-connect ratio, saving ~20% in cost per meeting.

Digital Marketing Manager at AECC (2021-08 – 2022-12)

• Owned online marketing for South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nigeria); delivered blended ROAS of 400% on Google and Meta paid channels.
• Began owning organic/SEO strategy in 2022, positioning AECC as a notable player in the organic space through traffic growth of 10x.

Head – Digital Marketing at 361 Degree Minds Consulting Pvt. Ltd. (2020-08 – 2021-07)

Built the digital marketing roadmap for a consumer EdTech business offering skill-oriented courses (Data Science, AI/ML) alongside university partner programs (Online MBA, BBA, BCA, B.Com).

• Strategised and executed the organisation's SEO roadmap program-wise, and ran lead-generation campaigns across Google, Meta, Instagram, LinkedIn, and content platforms.
• Delivered admissions pipelines for partner institutions including SRMIST, Jain University Online, DY Patil University, Manipal University Jaipur, and Praxis Business School.

Digital Marketing Manager at Chennais Amirta IIHM Pvt. Ltd. (2017-04 – 2020-08)

Joined as the company's first in-house digital marketing hire; built the function from zero to a 10+ member team and led the pivot from an ATL-dependent model (~80% of revenue via ATL pre-2017) to a digital-first model.

• Grew digital's share of company revenue from 43% (2017) to 63% (2018) to 77% (2019), while reducing CAC by 60%.
• Marketing-led channels directly drove 2,800 of the institute's 3,650 total admissions (77%) in 2019, while managing ₹2.5Cr in online marketing spend & delivering a blended ROAS of 800%.
• Grew the brand's social media presence from scratch to the 2nd-largest online brand in the hospitality education sector.

Digital Marketing Manager at UrbanTree Infrastructures Pvt. Ltd. (2015-09 – 2017-03)

Joined as the company's first digital marketing hire; built the function from scratch and led its transition from a traditional/offline marketing model to a digital-first ecosystem, ranking it among the top 3 digitally strong real estate companies in Chennai.

• Led strategic website migration and ran project-specific SEM campaigns that set new conversion benchmarks; directed development of a custom CRM for lead management.

Sr. Digital Marketing Consultant | City Head | Branch Manager at AdGlobal360 India Pvt. Ltd. | Pensa Media Solutions Pvt. Ltd. | IndiaMART Intermesh Pvt. Ltd. (2012-10 – 2015-08)

• Devised digital media strategies (SEM, SMM, Mobile Marketing) for clients across Real Estate, Education, Travel, E-commerce, and Entertainment.
• Owned digital strategy and founder personal-branding for a network of 13 fertility clinics in Chennai, including Dr. Saravanan's ARC Chennai — managed paid media, organic social, and website development, converting leads at a 15% rate in a high-trust healthcare category.
• Managed a 15-member sales and campaign delivery team, driving new client acquisition, competitor analysis, and continuous campaign performance improvement.

Assistant Manager – Business Development at Diamond Shipping Agencies Pvt. Ltd. (2009-10 – 2012-04)

• Acquired customers for freight forwarding and Customs House Agency (CHA) services across Tamil Nadu; identified and validated a new service offering through market demand analysis.

MBA in Marketing & Operations – PSG Institute of Management (2007-07 – 2009-05)

B.E. in Aeronautical Engineering – Hindustan College of Engineering (2002-08 – 2006-05)