Journal of Content, Community & Communication Amity School of Communication Vol. 15 Year 8, June - 2022 [ISSN: 2395-7514 (Print) ] Amity University, Madhya Pradesh [ISSN: 2456-9011 (Online)] DOI: 10.31620/JCCC.06.22/06 69 AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION INTO WHY STARTUPS RESIST USE OF DIGITAL MARKETING Jayanta Chakraborti Associate Professor, Symbiosis Skills and Professional University & Research Scholar, NIT Agartala Email: jayanta.chakraborti@sspu.edu.in Anirban Dutta Assistant Professor, NIT Agartala, Tripura Bhaswati Jana Research Scholar, GD Goenka University, Gurgaon ABSTRACT Despite the challenges of pandemics and economic slowdown, the Indian economy is witnessing a surge in entrepreneurial activities. At the same time, we are also seeing start-up companies witnessing financial losses, mass lay-offs and salary cuts due to pandemic restrictions and economic slowdown. The main reason for failure is the lack of a viable strategy to develop and execute a strong branding, promotion and marketing strategy. Digital marketing offers a viable and affordable option to start-ups for marketing and brand building. However, many of the start-ups are resistant to the use of digital marketing for marketing and brand building. The purpose of the research study is to understand why start-ups resist the adoption of digital marketing tools and technologies. We have conducted a cross-sectional study by collecting primary data from 355 respondents from a similar number of companies, who were either owners of start-up companies or managers working in start- up companies. The important finding was that factors like usage barrier, value barrier, risk barrier and psychological barrier were the major inhibitors to the adoption of digital marketing by start-ups. Gender, age and size of the company played a moderating role in influencing the adoption intention. For male owners of start-up companies, the effect of usage barrier, value barrier, risk barrier and psychological barrier all were significant, while for female owners, only the effect of value barrier and risk barrier was significant. Value barrier and risk barrier had a significant impact on young owners, while usage barrier and value barrier had a significant impact on middle-aged owners and value barrier and risk barrier had a significant impact on old owners. Keywords: start-ups, digital marketing, innovation resistance theory, functional barrier, psychological barrier 1. INTRODUCTION Despite the pandemic and economic slowdown challenges, the Indian economy has witnessed a surge in entrepreneurial activities. The number of start-ups registered in India, as of 31 st March 2022, is 61,400, which is the third highest in the World (Nair, 2022). India also has more than 100 Unicorns. A Unicorn is a start-up that has reached a billion-dollar valuation (Team Inc42, 2022). While on one side, we have start-ups in India that are scaling up at a rapid pace, there are also start-ups that are facing immense difficulty in reaching out to the right customers and sustaining their business. These are the start-ups that are operating on meagre working capital and do not have sufficient cash to spend on promoting their business through the print medium, electronic medium or sponsorships. For them, digital marketing is a viable option where the return-on-ad-spend (ROAS) can be maximized using an optimum budgetary allocation (Chahal & Chakraborti, 2018; Sharma et al., 2022a; Jain et al., 2021). Digital marketing offers both organic and inorganic options for marketing and promotion. Organic digital marketing can be done without any financial investment.