Iconify Consulting Group (ICG)

• LinkedIn Personal Branding • Strategic Market Positioning • Brand Consulting

Co-founder & CEO

Jaipuria Institute of Management

Guest Faculty

Gwalior Smart City Incubation Centre - GIncube

Startup Mentor

Narayana Business School

Guest Speaker

Indian Institute of Management Bangalore

XIM University

Careerflow

Social Media Marketer

K J Somaiya Institute of Management

National Institute of Technology , Patna

VICE Media

Social Media Marketing Project

As Co-founder & CEO of Iconify Consulting Group and a PhD scholar in personal branding, I help companies and leaders use LinkedIn as a strategic channel.

My work sits at the intersection of Corporate and employer branding, GTM (through LinkedIn) and personal branding. I’ve partnered with 270+ leaders across Fortune 500, Nasdaq, Inc. 5000, Silicon Valley, YC and Wall Street; recognized as an award-winning LinkedIn creator and ranked among top voices in LinkedIn personal branding. 
I’ve delivered executive sessions at top B schools, drawing on 14,000+ mentees and five years operating LinkedIn as an enterprise channel. 

Open to consulting and advisory.

Email: mishka.rana@iconifyconsultinggroup.com

The most underrated career advice, no one tells you about:

Learning how to ask for help without feeling small.

Honestly, the hardest thing I’ve had to learn is how to ask for help without feeling small.
For the longest time, it felt like admitting weakness. But I’ve realised if you don’t ask, the answer is already no.

I’m still improving here. Recently, during my research, I reached out to 200+ Fortune 500 leaders.
Around 70% replied, generously offering their time and insights.  That blew my mind. 
Some didn’t.
A few were unkind.
But the majority went out of their way to help me. 

That taught me two things:

1. People are kinder than we assume.
2. You also need to know ‘who’ to ask.

That shifted something for me. People are actually kinder than we expect. You just need to know who to ask.

And because I know what it feels like, I try to be that person who helps whenever someone asks me.

So yeah, if you’ve been holding back because it makes you feel “less than”, don’t. Just ask!


#Growth #Career #Mindset

MISHKA RANA

CEO @ICG | LinkedIn Thought Leadership + Employer Branding for Enterprises & C-Suites | B2B LinkedIn Marketing | Trusted by Fortune 500, Nasdaq, Silicon Valley & YC Leaders

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“Mera idea hai, par tu present kar degi kya?”“Kyun? Tera idea hai na?”
“Haan, but tu bol de na. You know I can’t speak well.” 

I saw a post on LinkedIn and it immediately reminded about one of my close friends, she was an absolute prodigy. (School & City Topper, Gold Medalist) 

She’d come up with the smartest ideas during group projects, but when it was time to present, she’d quietly say, “Tu bol de na.”

So I’d go up and speak, while she sat there, the real mind behind the work: half proud, half hidden.

Back then, I thought she was just shy. Now I realise: she wasn’t scared of ideas. She was scared of being seen.

No one teaches you how to own a room.

Because knowing something and saying it out loud, are two completely different skills. And no one teaches you the second one! 

In corporate life, that gap decides who moves ahead.
The loudest isn’t always the smartest but the smartest one who learns to speak up eventually leads.

If you can’t present your own work, someone else will and they’ll get the credit, the raise, and the reputation.

In entrepreneurship, it’s even harsher.
You can build the best product, run the best team, create the best strategy but if you can’t pitch it, if you can’t talk about it,
you’ll be invisible.

We don’t lose opportunities because we lack ideas.
We lose them because we don’t know how to articulate them.

And if you don’t speak for your ideas, someone else will rewrite them in their name.

In life, the difference between being brilliant and being remembered often comes down to voice and presentation! 

Show up. 

#confidence #pitch #career #personalgrowth

If I had the power to change one thing in the world, I’d make sure every woman gets the freedom to be truly independent: in choices, in money, in self-expression.

That was my answer when PALMONAS  
 asked me this question. 

And funnily enough, I was answering this at the Palmonas Navratri Celebration themed at Women Empowerment where independence was woven right into the campaign theme. Women received vouchers to receive free jewelry (YES!) and one lucky winner would receive a free jewelry from their latest 9KT collection.

We’re moving from ‘occasion-only jewelry’ to ‘wearable confidence.’
Style should meet you where you are: in meetings, on flights, at dinners, everywhere.

Shraddha Kapoor,  Pallavi Mohadikar & Dr Amol Patwari - thank you for the invite, the collection, and the conversations. Loved every bit of it. ❤️

PS: Attaching the link here, add a li’l sparkle. https://lnkd.in/gZ2gjgnm

#women #professionals #jewelry

As an entrepreneur, I’ve noticed one thing change quietly over the last 11 years: the weight of saying “Made in India.”🇮🇳 

Back then, those words didn’t always inspire confidence. They were often read as “cheaper,” “outsourced,” or “good enough but not world-class.” 

Even if you weren’t in manufacturing, the perception followed you. I’ve felt that bias in conversations where credibility had to be earned twice over; once for myself, and once for where I was building from.

Today, that has shifted. 

When I say I’m building from India, it lands differently. There’s recognition. 
There’s respect. 
Because India itself has built credibility.

Just look at it:
 -Eleven years ago, only a quarter of mobiles sold here were made locally. Today, 99% are, and 1 in 3 smartphones imported by the US is made in India.

-In defence, we’ve moved from being the world’s biggest importer to exporting to 100+ countries.

And pharma? India now supplies 20% of the world’s medicines, quietly saving lives in every corner of the globe.

This is Atmanirbhar Bharat in action. And as a founder, I can feel the shift in perception directly
“Made in India” no longer needs justification it carries weight by itself and I’m super proud to share this! 

For entrepreneurs, creators, and professionals, that’s huge. We’re no longer just representing our companies,  we’re representing a country whose narrative has flipped from doubt to trust! 

And that, to me, is the real win of Make in India. It didn’t just create industries. It created confidence. And confidence is the one thing every entrepreneur needs, whether you’re pitching, selling, or simply telling your story.

So, the next time we buy, let’s choose Indian first. Because most of what we used to import is now built here, and built at global standards.

Proud to be building in India. 
Proud to be an Indian. 🇮🇳

#MakeInIndia #VocalForLocal #Modi 
#Entrepreneurship

The best marketing strategy for B2B (and most underrated) in 2025 is not ads or influencer marketing.

It’s executive voice paired with brand voice.

Most companies don’t realize this until they burn budget. 

Ads can amplify reach, but reach ≠ credibility. And credibility is what moves buyers, partners, and candidates.

I’ve spent five years building LinkedIn strategies for senior leaders across Fortune 500, Nasdaq, Inc. 500, Wall Street, and Silicon Valley. The lesson is consistent:

Brand voice = continuity. A stable language set, shared proof, and compliance guardrails.

Executive voice = conviction. One defensible idea, lived context, said plainly.

This is no longer optional in 2025:

- Edelman’s long-running trust barometer keeps showing the same truth: people trust employees and experts more than ads or influencers.

- B2B buying is more complex than ever.  Gartner reports 6–10 decision makers now shape every enterprise purchase.

Turn employees into the right influencers
Not swag posts. 

Give teams a monthly theme, a few approved language blocks, and a simple prompt: “One decision we made this quarter and why.” 

And you get:

• Faster time-to-trust with buying committees (saves + senior threads)

• Lower CAC drivers via warm awareness and executive proof, not just spend

• Stronger employer brand (candidates quoting leaders, not slogans)

• Bias-clean language blocks that expand addressable market and talent

• Operational calm (governance written once; no weekly re-litigation)

• Attribution that holds up in exec rooms (UTMs→CRM/ATS; clean read-outs)

Your best CAC cut this year is credible founder/exec voice, not more budget lines!

#B2BMarketing #LinkedInforb2b #enterprisemarketing #linkedin #thoughtleadership

OpenAI just killed 1,000,000,000,000 startups! Forget the hype. Here’s what ALL became possible yesterday at OpenAI’s Dev Day: 

(and why you need to pay attention, whether you're a founder, marketer, freelancer, or just someone trying to stay relevant in next 5 years) 

The barrier to entry for building ANYTHING just dropped to near-zero.

1. ChatGPT  went from 100 MILLION weekly users in 2023 to 800 MILLION today. (Cool, right?)

2. OpenAI launched #AgentKit 
Remember when everyone was hyping n8n, Zapier and Make? 

Now you can build AI agents that can actually DO things, not just connect apps. AgentKit helps us build and ship AI agents just through drag and drop. 

Those $297/month automation courses?Obsolete.
Startups charging $10K to "build your AI agent"? Commoditized! 


3. Apps Inside ChatGPT - The Distribution Game Is Over

You can now build apps that run directly inside ChatGPT. No downloads. No separate platforms.
Canva, Figma, Spotify, Zillow are already there! 

4. GPT-5 Pro in API - Intelligence Is No Longer Expensive
PhD-level reasoning is now available to ANY developer through their API.

Remember when having "proprietary AI" was a moat? Gone.
Remember when you needed ML engineers on staff? Not anymore.
Remember when enterprise AI cost $100K+ to build? Try $100.
The playing field just got leveled. Hard.


5. Codex GA 
Here's where it gets wild.

Codex is now fully available with Slack integration and a developer SDK.
You can literally talk to it in Slack: "Build me a dashboard that pulls our sales data and sends alerts when we hit $10K"
And it just... does it. 

AI isn't a tool anymore. It's infrastructure. 
Like electricity. Like the internet. Like smartphones.

You can either plug into it, or watch everyone else leave you behind. Your choice. 

Here's my honest advice:

- Stop learning "tools". Start building outcomes

- Document your learning journey (that's content gold)

- Get uncomfortable with speed
The gap between "I'll do it someday" and "I'm irrelevant" just shrunk to weeks.

- Position yourself as someone who understands this shift (that's how you win on LinkedIn)

The gold rush just started and within 6 months, there will be two groups:

Group 1: People who learned these tools, built with them, documented the process, and positioned themselves as experts

Group 2: People who watched from the sidelines, waited for "the right time," and are now scrambling to catch u

We're in the middle of the biggest wealth transfer in tech history.

The excuse of "I don't have time" or "I need to learn more first" doesn't work anymore.

The future isn't coming. It is HERE. In 2025.

#OpenAI #AgentKit #DevDay #AI #AIAgents

Our attention spans have been shrinking for 15 years straight. Ever open your phone to check one thing… and 40 minutes later you’re still scrolling? 

Every app you use was built to steal your boredom. 
Creativity needs boredom. Tech killed it!

We’ve replaced thinking time with reaction time.

According to a Harvard Business Review  analysis, the average knowledge worker checks their phone 352 times per day:  that’s once every 2 minutes.

And the average Gen Z user spends 9.4 hours daily across multitasking screens (Deloitte)

Now here’s the paradox:
The more stimulated we are, the less original our thinking becomes.

MIT found that teams given “quiet thinking intervals” generated 26% more original solutions than those constantly connected.
And companies that deliberately design digital downtime: like 3M’s 15% time, Google’s old “20% rule,” or Dropbox’s no-meeting Wednesdays, still lead global innovation output decades later.

So lately I’ve been experimenting with doing nothing on purpose.
10 minutes a day. No music, no podcast, no tabs, no Slack - just silence.

It’s funny how hard it’s become to be bored.
We avoid it like a weakness, when in truth, boredom is the birthplace of imagination.

So if you’ve been feeling less creative lately, it’s probably not you.
It’s the dopamine design of the world around you.

And the only way to win is to give your brain back what technology took away: stillness.

That’s where the next big idea will come from. Not from another scroll, but from the silence that follows it!

Every generation has its own “big fear. Millennials had FOMO. Gen Z? Apparently, it’s being called ‘mid’
Average. Meh. Nothing special.

I’m a Gen Z myself, and tbh, I’ve never really felt that fear myself. Except maybe 3–4 years back, when in my career that was probably the only time I low-key thought, “okay, maybe I’m mid right now.”

Still, we can’t ignore how real this word has become for so many people. The label “mid” stings in a way that’s hard to explain because Gen Z is constantly online, constantly being compared, and constantly judged.

That’s why I loved what AZORTE, a fashion brand, did in their latest campaign. The line they dropped was:
“You’re not mid. You’re just in the middle of your story.”

And honestly, that hit. Because most of us are in the middle right now. Not at peak, not at rock bottom, just figuring things out, trying, failing, restarting.

I loved that it wasn’t cringe at all. It felt like AZORTE was actually talking to Gen Z!

And that’s the genius of it. Campaigns that land aren’t about glamorizing perfection; they’re about mirroring the messy middle we all secretly live in.

#marketing #GenZ #ads

I smiled the whole time watching Zouk’s new Diwali film, because we’ve all been there! 

Every girl has that one unpaid porter in her life - brother, boyfriend, or dad; silently carrying her world.

Our emotional (and literal) support system who carries everything and never complains.

This Diwali, the story flips, he finally gifts her a Zouk bag.
A simple way to say,
“You’ve always had me. Now you’ve got a little more space too.”

In a world full of over-the-top gifting ideas, this one felt real, rooted, and refreshingly human.

A small nod to the people who’ve been carrying our chaos (and our keys) all along.

💛 Here’s to meaningful gifts and the everyday relationships that make life softer.

Watch the film, I bet you’ll smile too.

#Zouk #DiwaliCampaign #IndianCraftsmanship #RealStories #FestiveGifting

We’ve all seen it. 
At every Diwali party, there’s that moment: She turns to him and says, “Can you keep this in your pocket? My outfit doesn’t have any. Phone. Lipstick. Keys. Snacks. Suddenly, his festive kurta is carrying everything but his own stuff.
It’s a small moment, funny, even but it speaks volumes. At Zouk, we wanted to turn this insight into action.

Our Diwali brand film is inspired by this one moment that happens every single year, a brother tired of holding his sister's stuff decides to do something different. 
He gives his sister a Zouk bag. Not just as a festive gesture, but as a thoughtful solution, one that’s stylish, functional, and made to carry everything she wants to bring along.
Because smart gifting isn’t just about what looks good, it’s about what makes sense.

🎥 Watch the film. It’s funny, familiar, and a reminder that even small moments can spark big change.

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