Most executives in India do not spend much time thinking about their online reputation. It usually takes a crisis, something already out in the open and being talked about, before anyone pays real attention. Look at the last few years of Indian corporate news, and this pattern keeps showing up.
Reputation and the Bottom Line
A CEO’s reputation is not something separate from the company they run. It carries real financial weight. Weber Shandwick and KRC Research surveyed more than 1,700 senior executives across 19 countries and found that, on average, they attribute 44 per cent of their company’s market value to the reputation of their CEO. That is a significant number. Yet plenty of founders and CEOs in India still push their own online image down the priority list, telling themselves they will get to it eventually. ‘Eventually’, in practice, tends to mean after the story has already broken.
Recent Examples
Take the Ashneer Grover and BharatPe episode from 2022. A leaked audio clip spread across the internet within hours, and the company’s name kept getting pulled back into the news for months. Part of the reason it dragged on so long was that there was no plan in place to manage it when it happened.
Or take Byju’s. The company was once valued at 22 billion dollars. By late 2024, its founder, Byju Raveendran, was the one saying its value had dropped to zero after investors like Prosus and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative walked away.
What does the data show?
Search visibility research consistently points to the same rough numbers: one negative article sitting on the first page of Google can cost a business close to 22% of its potential customers. Add a second or third negative result, and that figure can climb past 50%. Most people never scroll past the first page of a search. So whatever shows up there ends up carrying a lot of weight in how someone is judged.
The Data Behind Online Reputation
One bad article showing up on the first page of Google, that alone can cost a business about 22% of the people who might’ve become customers. Two or three such articles, and that number crosses 50% pretty easily. Most people don’t even scroll to the second page when they search for something. So whatever’s sitting on that first page, that’s kind of what people end up believing.
Industry Perspective
Build Brand Better, a Delhi-based online reputation management company. “By that point we are not building anything new. We are just trying to stop the damage from spreading further. The ones who handle this well are the ones who treat it as ongoing work, not something they remember during an emergency.”
Why does this matter beyond a single crisis?
The thing is, online reputation doesn’t just affect what customers think. Investors, business partners, job seekers, and even journalists often search a person’s name before making decisions. If the first few results show negative news with nothing recent or positive to balance it out, it can influence how that person and their company are viewed. That’s why many reputation experts say online presence should be managed the same way businesses manage finances or cybersecurity. It’s not about hiding criticism or removing honest news. It’s about making sure accurate, credible, and up-to-date information is also easy for people to find when they search online.
What can actually be done about it?
Nothing too complicated really. People working in reputation management usually say the same few things. Search your own name once in a while, the way someone outside your company would. Try building some real online presence before anything bad happens, not after the fact. Have some basic plan ready just in case things go wrong; even a rough one is better than nothing. None of this is difficult work; it just needs to actually be done, and done regularly, instead of getting pushed aside every time.
Build Brand Better: We work with businesses and individuals all over the world, and we see the same pattern over and over. People who are genuinely great at running their business but who don’t think twice about their own public image, right up until it becomes something they can’t ignore anymore.
About Build Brand Better
Build Brand Better is a Delhi-based online reputation management company that works with businesses and individuals across the world to monitor, protect, and manage how they show up online.
Media Contact
Build Brand Better
New Delhi, India
Phone: +91 99716 87251
Email: buildbrandbetter@gmail.com
