Monthly Archives: December 2015

ZIPDIAL

Zipdial : One Of World’s Most Effective Marketing & Analytics Platform

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We Indians never fail to make an Innovation out of an invention!

Americans created Burger, we created Vada Pav, Chinese created noodles & soup, we created Chinese Bhel & 1 by 2 soups, and Graham Bell invented phone call and we Indians killed it by inventing “Missed Calls”!

Missed Calls is our way of saying “thinking of you” or “call me back”. It’s like the modern day Morse code.

Going few steps further – there’s a company capitalizing big-time on this Out of the box idea.

ZipDial!

What is ZipDial.com?

Founded in February 2010 – ZipDial is one of world’s most effective marketing and analytics platforms for the emerging markets which are aggressively used by major global brands.

In most of the emerging markets today, more than 90% of money is spent on offline marketing, around 60 to 90% of the retail market is still unorganized in which roughly 95% of the transactions still happen in cash. Advertisers still find it very difficult to connect with their audience, understand their preferences and their behaviours.

But one thing common in this part of the world is that, they all have mobile phones!

ZipDial being an interactive platform, capitalizes on this feature and works through missed calls from users. All a user needs to do is, ZipDial (dial the number) the dedicated number of a particular service or company, which gets disconnected after one ring. Post this, the number that they called has a predefined function that gets invoked with the call, and accordingly their request is sent to them via message.

ZipDial uses a user-friendly pull-based or opt-in model, wherein one receives a message only when a service is requested and the company also never sends push messages to users.

In 2011, there was a change that took place in the needs and regulations around user privacy by TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India), which restricts sending of spams and push messages to mobiles. This makes ZipDial an even more viable and highly important model to work around, because of its opt-in and spam-free solutions.

This idea has been designed to help you integrate mobile into your marketing plans as well, and to help companies build a brand and create an awareness through – Social media integration, Targeted promotions, Targeted Content, Content Gratification, Follower engagement, etc…

They offer a customised range of services which includes: –

  • Lead capturing and customer relationship management via mobile
  • Market research, polling and customer feedback surveys
  • Brand promotions and consumer engagement
  • Making personalized content such as mobile banking absolutely simple and accessible to the masses
  • Mobile number verification for businesses including eCommerce and other Web Businesses

Comparatively, the response rates of ZipDial are way better than the web surveys and SMS campaigns. Their concept also helps you to reduce the user friction and is far more faster than telephone, web and any other medium.

The beauty of their service is that you get to reach your customers when it is the most relevant to them via mobile, and this does not limit you a specific set of urban audience, but ZipDial’s service has its reach deep in the mass markets and rural areas too.

Some of their clientele includes some of the biggest of the brands in the world such as – P&G, Unilever, Cadbury, Colgate, Pepsi, Coke, Disney, etc., who officially report that, they have seen an increase in their unique user traction by a minimum of 2x and up to 60x as compared to their earlier performance.

What Are Their Strategies, Partnerships And Revenue Models?

To begin with – ZipDial is a business wherein, their model itself is their biggest and strongest strategy!

It is clearly evident that, the mobile phone user base being larger than the internet user base; reaching out to the customers dedicated mobile apps and social network platforms, or for that matter digital marketing campaigns has continued to show limited results.

This is largely because – people largely still use feature phones rather than smart phones, they do not download multiple apps, and there is also no specific guarantee of user engagement even after the app is installed or a user “likes” the brand/product page.

This proves that end-users are still more comfortable with phone calls and text messages, than they are with apps/websites or internet in general.

Hence, keeping that in mind – ZipDial capitalizes on the prevalence of “missed calls” in India and all other emerging markets and hopes to expand globally!

ZipDial’s strategy is to tap into this segment of the market and provide a unique offering to corporate clients to help them in connecting and engaging with their respective audience via calls and texts. Their service being a win-win situation for all the parties, and helps companies get connected with the users who are really interested.

Some of the benefits of using such a marketing model include:

  • Worldwide Accessibility
  • Attainment of the actual consumers in need and without invasion of their privacy
  • Unrestricted availability on all devices
  • Ability to reach a wider audience
  • Leverages brands with ‘Social Media Integration’ by helping consumers to post or tweet product feedback without logging into Facebook or Twitter via text messages.
  • Maintenance of a verified database of millions of mobile numbers to help its clients target the right set of audience by understanding the User Demographics.
  • Helps brands in dealing with end-to-end distribution of samples.

Surprisingly, even after becoming a global brand, ZipDial works on a strict ‘Word-of-mouth’ policy for its marketing or advertising, and strongly believes that this strategy is more powerful than anything else.

What is even more interesting to know is that, the uniqueness of their model is such that, it not only helps the brands with better visibility, marketing, publicity, analytics, but automatically markets ZipDial too.

Talking about their Revenue Model –the bigger brands usually opt for a range of services to which runs around tapping a larger audience. Hence, this involves more money. But on the other end, generally speaking – ZipDial services can also be attained very easily for a very simple subscription of ₹1,000 per ZipDial number per month.

Who Led The Brand?

The brand is lead by Valerie R. Wagoner, Amiya Pathak and Sanjay Swamy!

VALERIE R. WAGONER – CEO – Valerie is not only the founder but was also the CEO of ZipDial, which recently got acquired by Twitter in Jan 2015. Currently at Twitter, she is the Senior Director of Growth Markets, and is responsible for both the teams of product and business user growth strategy, execution and results.

Since she comes from a cross-disciplinary and multi-cultural background and has experience of working with several prominent organizations; she had recognized at an early age the potential of the Indian market and had decided to move here to capitalize on this opportunity.

To give you a short brief about her career – Valerie started her career with ‘Goldman Sachs’ in 2004 as a Financial Analyst and then went on to shift to ‘Ning’ – a platform company for social web applications (Program Manager) and then ‘SayNow Corporation’ that got acquired by Google (Product Management and Business Development Consultant), in a span of one year.

Later, she settled down with ‘eBay’ as a Business and Product Manager in 2006 for almost 2 years, where she took care of Strategy and Execution of two different horizontal business areas i.e. Local trade and Cross-border trade.

After completing this stint, she decided to move to India and started working with ‘mChek’ – a mobile payment solution in 2008. She used to head the Strategic Initiatives here and was responsible for execution and testing of new delivery channels and business models.

After working here for around three years, she then started ZipDial in 2010!

Other than these, she has also been a part of quite a few notable organizations including: –

  • One of 14 members on the Global Agenda Council on the Future of Consumer Industries for the ‘World Economic Forum’
  • A part of the Expert Advisor Panel to the ‘GSMA mWomen Programme’
  • A part of the Advisory Board of the ‘Grameen Koota Development Trust’ (GKDT)

Talking about her qualifications – Valerie has completed her BA with Honours in Public Policy from the Stanford University, where she was also the President of Graduating Class for Phi Beta Kappa. Additionally, she also holds a Masters Degree in Economic Sociology from Stanford University.

In 2013, MIT Technology awarded her the title of Top Innovator Under 35 for India. In 2011, she was named a Leading Woman in Technology for India by the Women in Leadership Forum.

AMIYA PATHAK – COO – Amiya, an alumnus of IIT Kanpur and IIM Calcutta is the one who had built the first version of the ZipDial platform single-handedly. Prior to ZipDial, he had also built several tech platforms for companies such as Ketera and Zapak.

SANJAY SWAMY – CHAIRMAN – The Managing Partner at PRIME Venture Partners (formerly AngelPrime), Sanjay also acts as the Chairman and Mentor at ZipDial. Prior to these, Sanjay was the CEO of mChek and had also worked with a range of companies in India and the US in leadership roles. He has completed his Masters in Aeronautics and Flight Control Systems from the University of Washington.

How Has Their Growth Been So Far?

ZipDial was founded in 2010!

Valerie and Sanjay were on a late night flight back to Bangalore from New Delhi brainstorming about the problems retailers face in tracking consumer loyalty and after
debating on various points, it struck them that a ‘missed call’ would be an ideal way to solve many problems for businesses in general.

This conversation deepened over the following weeks, and turns out, it was a grand solution to many solutions and a wide range of use cases. They also tried to researched about any similar business in India and globally, but to their surprise they found none.

Having said that, they decided to build a business around it, and got in their third co-founder, Amiya Pathak, to build the first version of the platform. Interestingly, Amiya had a fracture on one of his hands, and had literally coded the platform with one hand.

And with that, ZipDial – the world’s first mobile engagement platform based on missed calls was launched in March 2010!

They knew that execution is equally important as coming up with innovative ideas, hence, to play it safe they began each of their services one-by-one.

To test its potential, they created a Cricket Scores service whereby a user could ZipDial and in return would receive an instant SMS with the latest cricket score. With literally ZERO MARKETING (except for a few Facebook posts), the service instantly took-off and within a couple of months they had millions of users using this service millions of times per day. On the day that India was playing with Pakistan, ZipDial had clocked a whooping 4 Mn missed calls.

During that time, they had a team of 12 people which were divided amongst the engineering, design and product marketing, business development, sales and operations departments.

They started approaching potential clients with their idea and within no time they got their first client, ‘Gillette India Ltd’ for an advertising campaign.

During that phase Valerie also participated in a reality show called “The Pitch” organized by Bloomberg TV India, where the winner would be awarded with INR 5-crores. Although, they failed to win, but what they achieved was something much bigger than that, ‘EXPOSURE’!

Over the period of time, they managed to help some of the biggest events and clients which included –

  • The Times of India campaign during Anna Hazare’s demand for the Lokpal Bill (registered 1 lakh SMS’s and 45 lakh missed calls),
  • Partnership with Kingfisher to create and launch ‘Book Cricket game’ through missed calls (was played a total of 84,931 times in about 15 days),
  • Banks to help their customers to check their bank balance,
  • Big eCommerce firms like Amazon and Flipkart to help users download their mobile apps,
  • Political parties like Congress and Politicians like Prime Minister Narendra Modi,
  • Bollywood stars Amitabh Bachchan and Shahrukh Khan,
  • And many more…

Their client list also accounted for some of the biggest names in the corporate world such as – Proctor & Gamble, LG Mobiles, Sanofi-Aventis, Bloomberg UTV, Pepsi, KFC, etc… By 2013 they had not only reached the milestone of 400 million missed calls, but also were clocking a turnover of Rs.5.4 crores.

In the next year, ZipDial was also ranked as the 8th most innovative company in the list of the ‘World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies’ among industry leaders like Google, Apple and Twitter by FastCompany.

And in the present year of 2015 – ZipDial has been acquired by Twitter for roughly $30 Mn. This acquisition was done to make great content more accessible to everyone and also to reach out deeper in the developing markets users who have cheap data plans or bad internet connectivity.

Today, they hold a global presence across South Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa and the Caribbean and their service successfully reaches out to more than 60 million users.

Talking about their funding prior to their acquisition, ZipDial has begun with a fundraiser of in Rs.3.5 crores in 2011from Mumbai Angels, Blume Ventures and PRIME Venture Partners.

This was followed by two undisclosed rounds of funding in December 2012 from 500 start- ups and Times Internet separately. Later and lastly, they raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Jungle Ventures in 2013.

ZOPPER

Zopper-Hyperlocal Marketplace That Connects Local Retailers To Online Shoppers!

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Since the evolution of eCommerce, the offline retail industry is said to be amongst the worst ones to get affected.

And in an attempt to support these offline merchants, many Hyperlocal-modelled companies have also seen to be coming up since the last few years, as well. But the one that rules this market is – Zopper.com!

Let’s give you detailed insights about the product, the company and its founders!

What Is ZOPPER.COM?

To begin with Zopper is a play on the word ‘Shopper’ implying to “A Smart Shopper” Be it offline or online – a Smart Shopper is someone who believes in shopping in a
convenient environment, receiving instant satisfaction and more importantly, after sales support.

Zopper aims to combine both the worlds of online and offline shopping, while giving similar experience to its customers.

Owned by “Solvy Tech Solutions Private Limited” and founded in 2010 – Zopper.com is a hyperlocal marketplace that connects the local retailers to the online shoppers. Basically, it helps consumers to find products and check offline prices and also helps them with the nearest shop that has that product.

Customers can choose the retailer with the best price for a product, from over 500,000 online and offline retailers. And being one of India’s biggest Online shopping apps for Electronics, their Category offerings include a whole range of products such as – AC, refrigerator, cameras, washing machine, home theatre, Smartphones, Computers, Laptops, Gaming Consoles, Kitchen Appliances, etc

Zopper, unlike its peers uses a Mobile-first technology and only works on the mobile application. It collects or aggregates product information from thousands of e-commerce sites and all the local retail merchants in India. Zopper mainly caters to the urban mobile-savvy audience.

They are known to offer 100% Genuine Online Electronics that are original and brand-new products from trusted local sellers, or local Stores. These products come with a genuine brand warranty on all products and service with an easy in-app claim that is offered by Zopper itself called – “Zopper Assure”.

While on the app, their state-of-the-art technology allows you to examine the products closely by using their zoom option that offers greater Clarity and Relatibility.

After u have chosen the product you wish to purchase, you are also offered different modes through which you can make payments – Cash on Delivery, Credit / Debit Card, EMI, Net-Banking, Ola Money and other wallets.

These products are then delivered to you by the store within 48 hours that too completely Free of charge.

What Are Their Strategies, Partnerships And Revenue Model?

To begin with, a certain pattern of shopping has been observed amongst the Indian audience, it’s called – ‘Research Online and Purchase Offline’ [ROPO]. Zopper is capitalising on this factor.

Zopper had begun their site as ‘Reviews42’ which used to offer user-generated product reviews. Their role was limited to list products from different websites and crowd source reviews.

Doing so, they found it extremely difficult to monetise this project for various reasons.

Therefore, when they could not see the desired results, he decided to rebrand the portal to a price comparison tool for shoppers and called it Zopper.com.

This new model was focused on price comparison of products for buyers, and not only did it contain that, but also included local shops that were selling the same product. The difference between Zopper and their competitors was that, they competitors used to compare prices from online retailers only.

Basically, their strategy was to act as a Hyperlocal marketplace for consumer durables and home appliances, who not only helped with Price Comparisons but also helped the customers with the near-by shops for the same as well.

Their portal was a connecting point between local retailers and the consumers, which also helped the physical stores gain lost visibility, and to do so they have also partnered with 500,000 offline retailers spread across 30 cities at this point.

What differentiates Zopper the most is that, it makes consumers aware of the best prices from local stores, and they make sure to get the goods delivered within 24-48 hours.

They have also created an offline offering called – ‘RISE’ platform which retailers use, to broadcast their inventory and pricing information on a real time basis.

Talking about their revenue model – the primary source of earnings for Zopper is ‘Lead Generation’, which at this point accounts for about 90% of their revenues. This means whenever a customer uses the website to reach a merchant, the company receives a fixed percentage of the sale.

Other than that, they also earn some of their revenues through ‘Fixed Monthly Subscription’ fees from merchants, and ‘Affiliate Income’ like Cost Per Click (CPC), etc.

More recently, the company has also partnered with “Lowe Lintas & Partners” as its Creative Partner, following a multi-agency pitch, to help them create a brand name for themselves.

Their Go-To-Market Strategy will be to focus on boosting and spreading their brand presence across 30 cities in the country. They would also be using technology to accelerate their growth as well. This would also include adopting digital campaigns, social media campaigns, consumer activation programs, and retail branding to acquire customers.

Who Is Leading The Brand?

The 250+ member staffing of Zopper.com is currently led by Neeraj Jain – CEO, and Surjendu Kuila – COO.

NEERAJ JAIN – CEO, ZOPPER.COM

A first generation entrepreneur of his family, Neeraj holds a Post Graduate Diploma in Management from the IIM-A, along with B.Tech in Electronics Engineering from the University of Lucknow.

Personally, Neeraj is someone who is neither too studious nor a workaholic and is said to be a pretty cool person to be around. He believes in the mantra – “Work while you play and play while you work.”

He started his professional career with ‘Hughes Software Systems’ (Gurgaon) in the year 2000 and continued till 2003. He worked there in various roles from testing to software development to pre-sales on different software products related to telecom.

In 2005, he worked with ‘Adventity’ (a start-up KPO) and ‘Spark Capital’ (a small investment bank) for a year. Post this, he started his own Advisory and Financial Consulting firm along with ‘Mohit Gopal’ called – ‘Metalogos’, in July 2006.

While at it, they used to advise a range of small and mid-sized companies like Logistics, Media, IT, Internet, Fashion, Travel, etc! Metalogos used to help these companies on various levels and business-related issues like financial planning, project analysis, arranging funds, and many more…

And finally, after Metalogos he co-founded Zopper.com in 2011!

SURJENDU KUILA – COO, ZOPPER.COM

Again, a first generation entrepreneur of his family, Surjendu has completed his MBA in Marketing Finance and Entrepreneurship from the IIM-C, and also holds a B.Tech Degree from the IIT (Roorkee).

Personally, again a very calm headed person, he holds immense interest in Deep Space, Military history and Judaism, and also loves to watch Dave Chapelle’s stand-up comedy as well. Other than that, he is also a fabulous Sitar Player and has also represented Bengal in Junior Hockey.

Talking about his career – Prior to founding Zopper, Surjendu had spent 8 years working in the USA for a range of companies. This began with ‘Infosys’ (Connecticut) as a Programmer Analyst for Hi-Tech and Discrete Manufacturing in 2001. He was a part of their core team and had built products for clients like Pitney Bowes.

He left his job there in 2004 and moved to ‘Apple Computers’ in 2004 as a Software Programmer, IS & T Group. He worked there till 2006, post which, he joined ‘CIBER Inc’ (Seattle) as a Technical Architect, State & Local, and used to build ETL tools for clients like New Jersey Department of Labour.

In the next three years, he went on to work for companies like ‘RSA’ (The Security Division of EMC) in California, ‘eTouch Systems’ in California, Rediff.com, and finally, Luna Ergonomics Pvt. Ltd in New Delhi.

Post this stint, he along with Neeraj formed Zopper.com!

How Has Their Growth Been So Far?

Zopper.com – a property of ‘Solvy Tech Solutions Private Limited’, as per Wikipedia, began its journey with ‘Brand and Me’ in 2010. It started off as a site that provided product reviews. Later, the name was then changed to ‘Reviews42’.

The business model of Reviews42 was basically to publish user-generated reviews about consumer durable products and home appliances. Their role was limited to list products from different websites and crowd source reviews.

Doing so, they found it extremely difficult to monetise this project for various reasons, mainly being revenue generation. When they approached brands for advertisements, they wanted Reviews42 to remove negative reviews about them.

Therefore, when they could not see the desired results, they decided to rebrand the portal to a price comparison tool for shoppers and called it Zopper.com in 2014. Around the same time, they also received an investment of $5 Mn from Tiger Global Management, to help them rebrand themselves.

Zopper was basically started with an intention to offer price comparison of offline and online stores along with acting as a medium to connect the consumers with the local retailers.

In a very short span of time, Zopper has managed to gain 200,000 offline merchants on its website, and their traffic has also risen three times in a year – from 10,000 users a day to 30,000 users a day. This further increased to 3 Mn monthly active users in early-2015.

In 2015 – the company also tied-up with ‘The Mobile Store’ as their merchant partner. Using the Zopper app, a customer would now be able to discover & buy products from nearest outlet of The Mobile Store, and would also receive their product within 4 hours.

By the mid of the year, the company had reached to even greater heights as compared to the day it rebranded. They had not only partnered with ‘Citrus Pay’ to enable product purchase directly from its app, scaled its presence from one city to 10 cities, increased their list of merchants to 500,000, but had also reached to over 1 Mn app installations so far.

In September – Zopper also announced the addition of ‘Harneet Singh’ to their professional family as their new Chief Business Officer. Harneet was working with ‘Dominos Pizza India’ as a ‘Senior Vice President’ before he joined Zopper. This appointment was also to support the large-scale expansion plans they were all set to launch.

Talking about their investments – so far, Zopper has till raised three rounds of overseas funding, since their inception. This includes an investment round by Blume Ventures, Ventureast and Nirvana Ventures for an undisclosed amount in 2011 and 2013.

This was followed by an investment of $5 Mn and $20 Mn by Tiger Global and Nirvana Venture Advisors in June 2014 and then June 2015.

Lastly, the 250+ member strong company holds offices in Noida, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Mumbai, and has a presence in 22 cities, and also has plans to expand its services across 30 Indian cities within the next short while.

Additionally, they are also intending to expand their merchant base from half a Mn to 1 Mn as well. To support their fast growth, it is also being reported that, the company would be raising $100 Mn in Series-B funding very soon.

Babyoye

BabyOye.com : Top Ecommerce Player In The Mother & Child Segment

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If you look at numbers 10 years ago; the Mother & Child Care Market in India which is now estimated at ₹75,000 crores in 2015, was completely unorganized with not even one single retailer to address the needs.

Only the ones who travelled abroad had the luxury of buying the necessary products, whereas the ones, who were dependent on the local brands or the unorganised stores, didn’t have much option to fulfil their needs.

But times have now changed! We now have BabyOye.com.

In December 2014, Mahindra Retail acquired BabyOye – a top eCommerce player in the Mother and Child Segment for an undisclosed amount. During the time of purchase, BabyOye was one of India’s largest online stores, which had more than 13,000 kids and baby products from over 500 brands.

According to Mahindra Retail, they had done so in an attempt to expand the reach of their offline store ‘Mom & Me’ to a larger audience and also to secure their base in the eCommerce segment.

This acquisition was said to be a wise decision taken by Mahindra’s for 3 very important reasons:

  • Same industry
  • Common Competition
  • Long-term vision of market domination

Post the acquisition, as a part of their Omni-channel strategy, Mahindra Retail also went on to drop the name ‘Mom & Me’ (both offline and online) and renamed all its 115 maternity and childcare stores as ‘Babyoye by Mahindra’ as well. On the other end, they shut their website down, and diverted all the traffic to BabyOye.com as well.

Shockingly, this was the first time an Indian retailer had opted for the name of the company that it acquired, for its existing brand. But according to the company, they wanted a single unified brand presence across all channels and since, ‘Babyoye’ had a larger recognition, was more youthful, and gave better relatability to the younger parents, they chose this name.

Since their acquisition, BabyOye has gone through a huge remodelling and today, it sells products across 11 major categories.

What Is Babyoye.Com And Their Business Model?

Babyoye.com was established in May 2010 in Mumbai and was subsidiary of ‘Nest Childcare Services Pvt. Ltd’. It is an eCommerce website which sells mother and baby products and services.

BabyOye is a one stop shop from where you can purchase all kinds of products for your newborn, toddler or the mother. Other than that, you can also find a list of services related to pregnancy and infant care, offered by service providers who help you while birthing, breastfeeding, etc., and also advise you on nutritional requirements for you and your baby.

The base purpose of the portal is an attempt to make the lives of new parents a little easier by helping them in making informed choices on what to purchase, what’s needed, what is available at different price points, etc. And not only that, but the portal also gives you the leverage to see what other customers think about the product you want to purchase as well.

To help you achieve all that, Babyoye has partnered with 80 of the best National and International brands for distributing their products.

It offers an assortment of more than 30,000 products that are spread across several categories like toys, diapers, books, clothing, toys, baby food, games, etc., from some of the best brands in the world like – Snuggles, Oye, Mom & Me, Ollington St., 1st Step, Chicco, Zero, Lil Posh, Mee Mee, Pigeon, Farlin, Little Tikes, Fisher Price, Pampers, Huggies, Funskool, Benetton, etc…

The Market Segment they target remains the young parents with a decent income who prefer online mode of shopping.

Talking about their Business Model – BabyOye followed an ‘Inventory model’, wherein it stored an inventory of the best selling products in their warehouses that would help them sustain for almost 15 to 20 days.

All these products are sealed by the manufacturer to ensure the best quality and authenticity. You purchase products either by registering or by making a payment as a guest, but if you get registered, it will help you in availing all the deals and / or coupons that are available. All you need to do is: –

  • Visit www.babyoye.com
  • Choose the products that you wish to purchase and add them to your shopping cart.
  • Then check out of the shopping cart, to move on to making the payment using one of their payment options of – Credit cards, Net-banking, Debit cards, Cash on Delivery, Online Store Credit and Gift Cards.
  • Input your billing and shipping address, choose the preferred mode of payment and follow the payment instructions.
  • And done!

Other than that, to make the process even more easier, they also have a Call Center to guide you through the whole process and to help you to make the right purchasing decision. Their customer care number is – +91 22662 50000 (7 AM – 11 PM IST). But you still have to place the order online itself.

Based on the nature of the product, the company has designed a multi-tiered shipping policy with its logistics partners – BlueDart and Aramex. As of date, they deliver within 3-7 working days to more than 5000 cities across India.

They don’t accept orders below ₹100, but all the orders below ₹500 are charged with a convenience charge of ₹50, and all the orders above ₹499 are shipped for free.

Their return policy is also pretty awesome too and all you need to do is, you need to return the package within 30 days of the sale date and receive a full refund minus the shipping charges.

Who Is Leading The Brand?

BabyOye is the prodigy of the husband-wife duo Sanjay Nadkarni and Arunima Singh Deo who had personally faced issues when they were having a baby, and had decided to take the technology route to solve the problem at large. The Founding Team: –

Sanjay Nadkarni – Founder & Ceo

Sanjay has completed his MBA in Marketing from the Welingkar Institute of Management, and BE in Chemical Engineering from the Manipal Institute of Technology. He started his career Sify Limited as their Key Accounts Manager in 2001.

Prior to BabyOye, a large part of his professional career had gone into demystifying, guiding and harnessing the power of telecommunication infrastructure for Bharti Airtel. He has worked with them for around 9 years at various designations including – Regional Consultant, Vertical head for M&D and Business Solutions, Regional Head for Business Solutions, Product Head for Domestic long distance, and lastly Head Commercial Management.

Post that, being an urban Indian parent who wants to make informed decisions about critical infant-care / mother-care options, Sanjay launched his own venture along with his wife – BabyOye.com.

Arunima Singhdeo – Co-Founder & Coo

Arunima has pursued her MBA in International Business from the Symbiosis institute of Management Studies in Pune, before which she had also completed her BBA in Marketing from the International Institute of Professional Studies from Devi Ahilya University in Indore as well.

After completing her education, she had kick-started her career with Hyundai Motor India Ltd as a Management Trainee and later had moved on to work with Naukri.com after 2 years.

She had worked with Naukri.com as their Vice President for more than 9 years in Noida, post which she monetized her expertise and launched her own venture with her husband – BabyOye!

What Is Their Business & Marketing Strategy?

BabyOye had indeed managed to gain a huge popularity in a matter of few months, mainly due to its user experience.

Beginning with the portal itself – the objective of the makers in regards to this eCommerce site was to provide a user-friendly, time saving platform to the Indian customers, offer relevant product information and options to users, evolve and change according to customer behaviour, etc.

Hence, following that objective from day one itself, the portal was designed in such a way that it could deliver high performance, 99.99% uptime, and a robust and a scalable infrastructure, so that it could lead to providing solutions to modern Indian parents, with the click of few buttons.

Other than that, BabyOye had also mounted-in a tool that helped them customize and refine the search based on various departments, the items or for that matter the age or gender of the child.

The look-and-feel of the portal, along with the overall features and functionality, and fast response time, successfully managed to attract a lot of eyeballs!

Further, BabyOye has also adopted for the franchising route to open physical offline stores as well. Additionally, it has also been seen offering its customers an ‘ABC’ program (Awesome Benefits Club) to its customers. Under this program, customers earn points for purchases made through online and offline stores, and can redeem them while making purchases on BabyOye.

BabyOye has also partnered with all other daily deal sites like Snapdeal.com, Mydala.com, Dealsandyou.com, and many other online shopping and ecommerce platforms for customer acquisition.

Talking about their Marketing Strategies… maintaining a high visibility on the digital medium i.e. social media sites has always been an important part of their marketing and CRM strategy. It has greatly helped them in interacting with their customers.

They have been using the medium (more particularly Facebook) to launch interesting campaigns and contests to encourage users to participate and share views, post baby photos etc. They have been also been using it to launch products and get instant feedback on them as well. And going by the stats, BabyOye’s Facebook page has helped gain a tremendous increase in their traction.

Now unlike other brands BabyOye does not use YouTube to promote themselves, their advertisement or promotional offers, campaigns etc., it actually uses YouTube to provide educational information like quick tips and counselling sessions to mothers who are looking out for some quick DIY (Do-it-Yourself) tips.

Other than these, they have also launched a unique blog on their website called “Content Mom” which is a platform for mothers who hold the knowledge and experience of motherhood, to help others make parenting easy.

Basically, Content Mom is a program through which any mother who wants to help others out, can come ahead and share her opinion of the products of BabyOye that she has used.

In other words, you will have to review baby products, and for doing that you shall be paid as well. Although, it wouldn’t be in cash, but in terms of baby products, toys, clothing, and essentially the products that are a fit for your child’s age.

Explain Their Revenues, Growth, And Roi…!

The company that started operations in 2010, within a span of a year had expanded to 4,000 products, was receiving 1000 visitors daily, and was also registering 80 transactions per day.

With employee strength of 15, their reach had also greatly expanded to 20,000 cities and towns across India in India.

To add to that, they had also started expanding its team and was adding people to its merchandising, operations, products and marketing teams to reach a strength of 60 (roughly) in the next few months as well. They were also in preparations to expand from the two warehouses they had in New Delhi and Mumbai, to a few more.

In 2011, the company also raised their first round of investment from Film actress Karishma Kapoor, who also became the largest individual shareholder in the company as well. This round was followed by the funding round of $2.5 million from Accel Partners and Tiger Global in April 2011.

By 2013, the company had grown to 13,000 products that were offered by 120 Domestic and International brands. Although the official financial details were not disclosed, but going by the daily transaction of 300 to 350 at an average transaction size of ₹2,000, BabyOye was making revenues somewhere close to ₹30 crores.

In the same year, BabyOye also ‘acquired its competitor Hoopos.com’ from its founder Vijay Jumani, to become a larger entity and gain better market share.

And finally, their journey came to an end in December 2014, when Mahindra Retail acquired BabyOye for an undisclosed amount.

Mouthshut

Mouthshut : All-Round Consumer Review Platform With 100% User Generated Content!

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There has been a drastic growth in the popularity of independent user-generated reviewing sites in the last decade. Several businesses have also seen to be using this medium as a part of their advertising campaign as well.

According to a research conducted recently by India’s apex Internet Association- IAMAI, more than 60% of Internet users in India believe that online reviews greatly influence their choice.

But the pioneer of this industry remains Mouthshut.com!

What Is Mouthshut.Com And Their Business Model?

Founded in 2000 by Faisal Farooqui; MouthShut.com is a portal wherein one can Read, Write, Rate, and Comment on Reviews about a whole range of products or services. One can also use the site to compare products as well.

In other words, mouthshut.com is an all-round consumer review platform and all the content on the site is completely user-generated as well.

Any visitor can become a member for free and then can begin with writing reviews or sharing photos and diaries, discuss their opinions about brands or their products, etc.

MouthShut.com had fathered this concept much before they were popularised by Facebook and Twitter. It has become one of the topmost, highly popular and trusted consumer feedback networks that accounts to millions of reviews written by ordinary consumers on thousands of products and services across around 250+ categories.

At large, it is a community where consumers connect with each other by adding each other in their Trusted Circle, send each other Virtual Gifts, maintain a photo gallery, etc. “Trusted Circle” is something that people use to avoid the possibility of fake or malicious reviews.

Other than that, MouthShut.com also has a service wherein any cell phone user can send SMS-based reviews on +919769696967 and post on Mouthshut.com. It’s called ‘Mouthshut Mobile Service’.

More recently, with the changing environment and in an attempt to modernize its business model, Mouthshut.com has also moved itself from being a consumer review site, to a buyer’s guide.

In this new role, MouthShut will be acting as a platform that helps consumers decide which product to buy from a range of categories. It would also act as a blog where consumers can file complaints for bad service or products and companies can take it from there to act and react to complaints.

Beyond all that – Mouthshut.com has also been of great use in “Academic Research”. Due to the depth and variety of original content, MouthShut.com has and is being used by researchers to understand the behaviour of the masses.

The articles and reviews on the site have been greatly used to quote consumer and culture pattern by various mediums. And mouthshut.com as a whole has also been a part of several case studies on Consumer Behaviour as well.

On the other end, Mouthshut.com not only offers its consumers a free platform to express their opinions, but also has various programs to help businesses to gain from the platform, so that they can improve offerings and brand reputation. They call it “Mouthshut for Business”!

For businesses, MouthShut.com helps them understand the complex web of Social Media and reviews. It also helps them scale-up their brand by using offering various options such as branding and ads. Overall, they help you to attract eyeballs with Display Advertising, Video Ads, Contests, etc…

Additionally, they also help you to directly connect with your customers with the help of Brand Pulse. ‘MouthShut Brand Pulse’ in their words is – an annual subscription based feature for brands who wish to have meaningful interactions with consumers. It helps you understand what people are saying about your brand.

All-in-All – Mouthshut.com’s business model is a clever mix of advertising, sales and local sales for the retail industry, online market research, and a perfect platform to understand the satisfaction of their customers.

MouthShut.com also offers a portal that provides daily discount deals on spas, dance classes, health checkups, car service, restaurants discounts etc., called – ‘Dealface.com’.

What Market Segment Are They Targeting?

If you look closely, mouthshut.com is a business model that targets both ends of the pole. On one end, their audience is the consumers who are reading and writing reviews about products or services for the benefit of the ones who may be looking for advice; while on the other end, their target audience is also the businesses who want to improve their customer engagement and resolve issues or complaints that they might come across.

According to a recent study by Nielsen global survey – 87% Indians who access the Internet trust recommendations for purchasing of products or services from others, than any other kind of advertising. Thus, making word-of-mouth the most powerful tool in the industry!

Having said that; MouthShut.com being a platform for first hand product reviews and product information, primarily targets the buyer end of the market who are in search for genuine advice!

Talking about the kind of audience they receive; interestingly, the visitors from within India are usually in the age group of 8 to 25 years, while the hits that they receive from the West, and the mostly the ones who visit to check out travel deals and to understand their genuineness, and are in the age groups of 30 to 55 years.

According to their research, the youth in the family are more internet savvy and frequent users, and are also the important decision makers in Indian homes. And this is the age group mouthshut.com actually targets.

What Are Their Business & Marketing Strategies, Partnerships And Revenue Models?

To begin with – Mouthshut.com is made in adherence to ‘Web 2.0 standards’ which has greatly helped them in creating a platform which is able to generate Crowd-sourced Content.

This has helped them to create a logical and diversified monetization strategy such as – earning revenues from reviews and products from brands, Backlinks to Product sites, Aggregation of eCommerce, etc!

Other than that, due to an enhanced network of users, fresh and search friendly content, mouthshut.com is also able introduce a ‘Cost per click model’, and is also able to boost their SEO (Search Engine Optimization) greatly.

MouthShut.com has also partnered with Google for their snippet program, which helps Google to display product ratings from MouthShut.com directly in Google Search result.

Additionally, they also participate in Google’s AdSense Publishing Program.

Many domestic and international brands have been leveraging MouthShut.com to create and increase their brand value. They have tied-up with a range of online and offline companies for the promotion, advertisements, etc., of their products or services.

At the same time, they have also partnered with various brands to become a ‘one-site stop’ for them, where consumers can contact the company directly through their site, for any complaints or otherwise. These companies in return pay a subscription fee, but access to the site remains free.

Moving on to their Marketing Strategies – Mouthshut.com has always been known for their most unique marketing strategies which greatly rely on Word-of-mouth, which has always been their primary strategy to market themselves.

Going back to their starting days, mouthtshut.com had has rolled out a marketing stint wherein, they had promoted their brand on the back of the Auto Rickshaws. The idea was to use autos across Mumbai (to begin with) as a low cost but effective marketing tool.

They had painted the URL of its website behind the backs of thousands of rickshaws. They paid these Auto Rickshaws Rs.200 (on an average) for letting them display the ad for a few months.

The company later expanded this advertising campaign in Delhi, Bangalore, Pune, Chennai, Kolkata etc. And according to their research, a huge majority of the users came to know about mouthshut.com through these auto ads.

This stint had become so famous that MouthShut.com was also mentioned in the Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur Magazine, London’s Financial Times, and almost all the newspapers and TV channels in India.

Looking at the grand success of this strategy, even large companies such as Oracle copied their idea in India as well.

Due to such brilliant strategies, Mouthshut.com has also been recommended by various social media commentators and its credibility is such that their content is also often used by many including at least fifty non-fiction books, and the Marketing Management textbook by the Father of Modern Marketing himself – ‘Philip Kotler’.

Who Leads The Brand?

Born on the 23rd of April, Faisal Farooqui is the Founder and CEO of MouthShut.com.

Faisal belongs to a family who own a couple of bakeries in Mumbai. He has completed his Bachelor of Science degree in Information Systems as well as Finance from the State University of New York at Binghamton.

Later, he was also recruited from campus itself, and had worked in the Telecoms consulting practice of American Management System, in Fairfax, Virginia.

Faisal is named as one of the Top Contemporary Entrepreneur in India and has often been invited to speak on entrepreneurship, technology, social media and marketing seminars globally. Besides this, he has also been a guest lecturer at colleges such as the American University in Dubai, IIM (Ahmedabad), IIT (Mumbai), NASSCOM, NITIE Mumbai, IAMAI, etc.

He has also received several awards, some of which include: –

  • Listed among 50 Indian Young Leaders (British Embassy, India)
  • Received the ‘Top 100 Digital Icons of India’ Award
  • Listed as top Business People of India – Entrepreneur magazine
  • Termed as a Youth Icon (Doordarshan, India’s national TV channel)
  • Awarded as the Top 100 Powerful Digital Icons in India (Impact Magazine)

Other than mouthshut.com, Faisal has also cofounded ‘Zarca Interactive’ – a Virginia-based enterprise survey and feedback company in 2002.

How Has Their Growth Been So Far?

Mouthshut.com has begun as a self- funded and what the leverage he held was that, since he belonged to a financially stable family, he didn’t have any financial pressure to support them.

The total seed capital that he started-off with was roughly ₹12 lakhs that he had collected from his savings and help from friends. He started-off in a small garage at Bandra that his father used to own and had given him to use. Out of the total, more than 50% of it was used to arrange computers and setting up servers. The rest was used in the day-to-day functioning.

He began with a team of 7 software engineers and graphic designers, and focused more on the product than on the beautification of the office.

Since he didn’t have a lot of business experience, the initial year was a real pain. He had exhausted all his financial reserves in the first nine months itself to develop premium quality of content, and had come to a stage where he had no money to pay the salaries as well.

He had to reach out to his family to help him out with funds. As a matter of fact, he didn’t even take any salary for himself for the first two years. To add to that, the revenue in the first year was zero, so he couldn’t do any advertising as well.

What helped mouthshut.com the most was word-of-mouth publicity, to become popular. This increased gradually, and with the increase in the number of hits, the website became large enough for to tie up with Google and display their advertisements. And with that began the incoming of revenues. This helped them to break even in the second year.

With that money, they also began strategic advertising, and came up with the idea of displaying their company name behind Auto-Rickshaws, which went viral and made them a huge brand!

Within a matter of a decade, they also received various awards from across the world, increasing their prestige even more.

By 2011, Mouthshut.com was carrying reviews of more than 4 lakh products and services and also was getting an average of 1.2 lakh hits a day. They had also increased their staffing to 30, and had also moved to a bigger office as well. Although the amount was not disclosed, but it is certain that they were generating revenues worth a few crore rupees by then.

By the next year, the company also launched its mobile site, with a strategy to establish a strong mobile presence. To be more specific, they had three specific goals – to offer their vast range of content to people, to help consumers in taking decisions quickly, and to continue to help consumers to share their views and opinions more easily.

Although, the company has been tight-lipped about the amounts of investments received, but according to their website, over the period of time they have been funded by three investors, which include: designMD.com (Virginia, USA), Direct Information Technology LLC (Dubai, UAE) and a few Angel Investors in America of Indian Origin.

And today, in a matter of 3 years; the company has grown on to influence the world with its 8 strong million consumers who visit the platform per month. They now have around 5 million registered users who regularly review more than 500,000 diversified products and services.

VLCC

VLCC – The Unique Beauty And Wellness Multinational Corporation

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What Is VLCC And Their Business Model?

Founded in 1989 and headquartered in Gurgaon, VLCC Health Care Ltd is the prodigy of Vandana Luthra that on the whole, specializes in scientific weight management solutions, skin and hair-care treatment, beauty services and personal care.

Basically, VLCC that is short for – ‘Vandana Luthra Curls and Curves’ is beauty and wellness multinational corporation that is widely recognized on a global scale, for its
scientific and natural weight-management practices by using a unique DNA based weight management system to customize weight loss program weight loss solutions and therapeutic (meaning: healing) approach to beauty treatments.

The VLCC Group serves as an umbrella for many brands like – VLCC Slimming, Beauty and Fitness, VLCC Personal Care, VLCC Natural Sciences, VLCC Institute of Beauty and Nutrition, VLCC Day Spa and VLCC Beauty Zone, and many more… but all these can be summed up into the following three:

  • VLCC Wellness & Day Spa
  • VLCC Personal Care
  • VLCC Institute of Beauty and Nutrition

VLCC Wellness is among the largest chains of Slimming, Beauty & Fitness Centres across Asia. They hold a strong presence both in India and overseas, and are widely known for their services like – Weight management, Beauty management, Dermatology, Day Spa, therapeutic beauty, cosmetology solutions, etc., in addition to that, they customize weight loss program by using a unique DNA based weight management system to perform scientific and natural practices for weight management.

As of date, VLCC is known to have the largest network within the beauty and wellness services industry in India and currently operates across 301 locations in 134 cities and more than 11 countries in South Asia, South East Asia, the GCC Region and East Africa.

Talking about their Day Spa – it is a place which acts as an escape joint to unwind from the chaos, pressures and stress of daily life. It is designed in such a way that its wellness quotient and their supreme quality treatments can be custom made to cater to your requirements.

And their qualified therapists are also trained in such a way that they instantly understand and indentify your unique requirements to suggest the best-suited therapies accordingly. They use rhythmic strokes in different ways and to different parts of the body that encourages the wellbeing of your body and mind.

VLCC Personal Care is the wing under which VLCC Group manufactures over 169 skin care, hair care, body care, functional foods and fortified food products. These are manufactured under the brands VLCC ‘Natural Sciences’, ‘SkinMTX’, ‘BelleWave’ and ‘Enavose’ in India and Singapore.

Some of their product categories includes – Facial Kits, Bleach, Skin Care, Fairness Creams, Moisturizers, Massage Oils, Hair Care, Shampoos, Conditioners, Sun Care, Eye Care, Lip Care, Shape Up, Wellness Range, and many more…

Apart from being retailed separately in 72,000 stores in India and many more across South Asia, the Gulf countries, South-East Asia, and Africa; these products are widely used in therapies at all VLCC Wellness Centers globally.

VLCC had ventured into the products business to capitalize on the strong research capability to manufacture the group held.

VLCC Institute of Beauty & Nutrition offers specialized professional courses in beauty, hair, cosmetology, make-up, spa therapies, and nutrition. The biggest bottleneck of the wellness and beauty sector was that it lacked well-trained manpower; hence, to address this issue, VLCC Academy of Training was opened.

It was established in 2001 with an aim to promote the sector more, and to provide the correct path to the ones who desired to get into the field. And today, they operate Asia’s largest network of vocational education academies in Beauty & Nutrition across India and Nepal.

Every year, the institute trains around 8,000 professionals in 65 VLCC Institutes, and overall they have trained far more than 40,000 students in subjects like – Cosmetology, Hair, Makeup, Nutrition, etc… This training business contributes roughly 10% to the group’s total turnover.

Other than that, VLCC is also working with the Ministry of Labour & Employment, Directorate General of Employment & Training (DGET), and GOI, to raise the bar of
vocational training in the beauty and nutrition sector in India.

What Market Segment Are They Targeting?

The vision of Vandana behind starting VLCC was to make health and beauty easily accessible to the masses.

But during the time when he opened her first Transformation Centre in 1989, the health and beauty market was very nascent, and putting together fitness along with beauty was an idea that was completely unfamiliar. Back then – it was either the mom-and-pop neighbourhoods parlours where you could find the basic usual services, or you had to be rich enough to visit the five star saloons.

Hence, Vandana wanted to target the middle class, who wanted to look and feel good, but within their budget. Additionally, she also targeted the Lunch Segment, by supplying ‘nutritious and healthy’ food. More closely, she wanted to target the middle-class women of India and the developing nations, to provide them with beauty services along with personal care products.

She successfully picked the unorganized slimming and beauty industry, and transformed it largely, into an organized one.

What Kind Of Business & Marketing Strategies, And Partnerships, Has The Vlcc Adopted?

Today, the VLCC Group holds many brands such as – VLCC Slimming, Beauty and Fitness, VLCC Personal Care, VLCC Natural Sciences, VLCC Institute of Beauty and Nutrition, VLCC Day Spa and VLCC Beauty Zone, and it goes without saying that it also needs professionals as franchise partners to manage the show.

Since, VLCC was started with a vision to make health and beauty accessible to everyone, in an attempt to reach out to a mass audience, they had adopted for a Franchise model in 2007.

So for them, it was of utmost importance that their Brand was being handled by the right kind of people, by people who understood what all was, is and should be involved in a franchisor – franchisee relationship, and most importantly forming the right expectations on part of both parties.

Hence, to channelize well across the country, they joined hands with ‘Franchise Mart’.

Other than that, they also partnered with the US-based ‘Pritikin’, who are leaders in the medi-spa domain.

For them, their franchisee centers are their business partners, who are the front faces of the VLCC, therefore, they have maintained standard parameters of service delivery at all outlets, be it company operated or otherwise. In other words, their franchise model is based on the hub and spoke concept. This helps them to control and standardize service delivery.

They have very strategically made sure to well-define their franchise models while keeping it extremely flexible. They have included different investment options, business format options, etc., which vary from investor, businessman, their potential, to the city or town they would be operating in.

They also help their business partners with literally everything to set up the business, be it buying equipment, or hiring of professionals to training, and even close monitoring to ensure efficient delivery of services, they stand by their partners.

But at the same time, their quality benchmarks at both ends are very strict and must be adhered to as well, and to ensure that, they also conduct regular audits and trainings as well.

Other than that, VLCC has also partnered with a BPO company called ‘Aegis Communication’ (an Essar group Subsidiary) to manage their domestic call centre
operations as well.

Talking about their Marketing Strategies – the company has been using every medium available, but with a touch of uniqueness, to present themselves well in the market.

To achieve that, they have partnered with ‘JWT’ and ‘Equus’, to provide them with strategic consultancies for their promotions, and to deliver strategic and actionable marketing insights across digital media they have got on board ‘Media Contacts’, which is a global interactive media network of Havas Digital.

They have also appointed ‘OGILVY & MATHER’, the leading creative agency for all their business verticals in India, while the GCC nations are handled by Dubai-based ‘Bates Pan Gulf’.

Lastly, ‘141 Sercon’ and ‘Thomson Connect’, helps them to manage its CRM initiatives and customer relationship management, respectively.

VLCC uses TV channels to give programs on knowledge about products from experts along with special offers. Additionally, their television advertisements have celebrities who endorse their products, with a central theme of these ads being ‘Shaping your confidence’.

Incidentally, this is also the ‘baseline’ for the VLCC group.

Other than that, the company also uses a range of other promotional activities and marketing mediums such as Direct Marketing through mailers, Providing coupons and discounts for large packages, and many more like these…

These models, strategic partnerships and all the surrounding business and marketing strategies have greatly helped them in getting far ahead from competitors, and in reaching out to the untapped tier 2 and tier 3 markets, in a relatively shorter period of time.

Who Would Be Leading The Brand?

Born in 1959, Vandana Luthra is the founder of VLCC Health Care Ltd.

Vandana was born in Kolkata, West Bengal and studied a professional course from the Polytechnic for Women in New Delhi, post which, she went on to pursue domain-specific knowledge in beauty care, fitness, food & nutrition and skin care from Germany, UK and France. She is married to Mukesh Luthra.

Over the period of time, she has also authored two books – ‘Complete Fitness Programme’ (2011) and ‘A Good Life’, on wellness and fitness (2013).

Vandana has also been awarded with the ‘Padma Shri’ – the fourth highest civilian award, by the Government of India in 2013 for her contribution to the fields of trade and industry. Presently, she is also the 30th most powerful woman in business by Fortune India.

Vandana leads Sandeep Ahuja (MD – VLCC Health Care ltd, and CEO – VLCC International) who is the head of a large workforce that compromises of over 4,000
employees.

How Has Their Growth Been So Far?

VLCC started with a single Transformation Centre in Safdarjung Development Area, New Delhi, in 1989.

In the next 12 years, the outlet had developed into a relatively small brand which held some 35 centers nationally. And after the name was successfully built, thereafter it started scaling up aggressively and soon received funds from global investors as well. Their investors included CLSA (Credit Lyonnais Securities Asia) and Everstone.

They opened their first store outside India in Dubai in 2005, which was gradually followed by an aggressive expansion in other developing markets like GCC countries, Africa, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal and Malaysia, etc. By now they had evolved as a reference point for all those who wished to enter the industry. Their revenues had also drastically taken a jump from Rs. 84 crores in 2003-04 to Rs.130 crores in 2005.

Over the period of time and due to their smart Partnerships and Business & Marketing Strategies, VLCC had set itself on a high rate of growth.

In 2013, VLCC acquired ‘Wyann International’ in Malaysia to strategically enter a foreign market through a company who held a strong base.

In the same year, they also acquired a majority controlling stake in Singapore-based ‘Global Vantage Innovative Group’ (GVig). GVig owned three companies that manufactured and retailed a range of reputed beauty and wellness products and solutions worldwide.

And by the end of FY13, VLCC reported revenues worth ₹700 crores and an operating profit of ₹100 crores!

And when we look at them today, the company has come a long way to become a global wellness brand. It has expanded its reach to 300 salons across 121 cities and 16 countries, which include India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Malaysia, Singapore, GCC countries, Africa, etc.

The company has been growing at more than 30% annually since the past few years, and is also aiming to increase their turnover by five-folds to ₹5,000 crores in the next few years as well.

More recently and lastly, they have also filed their draft papers with markets regulator SEBI to launch their IPO and enter the stock market. They intend to raise at least ₹400 crores through this IPO.

Caratlane

CaratLane.com: India’s first and largest Online Jewellery Shopping Portal!

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Over the last one decade, the Indian internet market has grown exponentially. One of the sectors that has seen the highest growth is the online retail sector. And it is anticipated to grow furthermore by manifolds in the years to come.

Going further deep in the online retail market, experts believe that jewellery will be the next “in-thing”. And although, the Jewellery industry (on the online front) is still at a very nascent stage, the prospects definitely are bright. This is also because of the growing number of people who shop online.

Having said that, statistics say, about 10% of branded jewellery sales happen online, and to add to that, Jewellery is also said to be the largest selling product on eBay India. Hence, this has led premium jewellery brands to jump onto the e-commerce bandwagon.

Going a few more steps ahead, and to capitalise on this untapped market we have – CaratLane.com!

What Is Caratlane.com And What Is Their Business Model?

Headquartered in Chennai, Caratlane.com is India’s first and largest online portal that sells jewellery shopping destination in India.

Their product range includes a long list of Rings, Earrings, Pendants, Bangles, Chains and Necklaces, etc., of different types, forms and styles, using different materials such as: Gold, Diamond, Platinum, Casual, Formal, Fashionable, etc., and many more depending on the product.

All the Diamonds available on the portal are certified by reputed laboratories such as GIA, HRD and IGI, and additionally, these certifications are further verified by another laboratory to confirm the authenticity of the Diamond and the certificate match as well. On the other end, all their Gold Coins also come with a ‘BIS hallmarking’, which guarantees purity of the product.

The offline jewellery market was famous for not giving the product as shown. Hence, he made sure that every piece produced for CaratLane.com was manufactured exactly as per the given specifications.

To help customers with the right kind of guidance and support, the company has also hired highly experienced diamond consultants.

During the purchase process, a customer can choose the pattern of the solitaire to mount it in the jewellery piece, and the same can be swiftly customised. To add to that, there is also a consultation centre for the customer, wherein they also provide a 3-D model of how the piece would look like.

More recently, CaratLane has also launched an app that makes use of cutting edge Facial Recognition and 3D imaging technologies to offer a – 3D virtual jewellery try-on experience.

This allows the customers to virtually get a life-like feel of how it would look like on them. Other than that, keeping in mind the importance that jewellery needs to be tried-on, touched and felt before it is purchased, they have also launched a feature called – Try@Home. When you choose this option, a Try@Home consultant comes to your residence with the jewellery you selected, and many other designs based on your choice.

Talking about their Business Model – while all other Indian online jewellery portals have opted for a B2B (Business to Business) or marketplace model, CaratLane uses a B2C model wherein it acts as a manufacturer and sells directly to the consumers.

But instead of maintaining a conventional inventory, the company has opted for an innovative strategy. They have tied up with a strong network of ‘4000 vendors globally’, who supply products on request.

The company has also partnered with several logistic partners who hold expertise in the high value space, to provide an efficient delivery system. All these products are also packed under camera in a special metal box which is sealed in a tamper-proof packing and is travel-safe.

This allows CaratLane to custom make jewellery and get it shipped to their customers within 10 working days, unlike its competitors who take nothing less than 2 weeks. The shipping of all the products, along with its Insurance is completely free within India.

The company also offers a 30-day-return policy, along with a Lifetime Exchange for all their products, which means that if at any point in life you wish to exchange or upgrade the product, all you need to do is give them a call.

To make it even more comfortable, the company has also launched physical stores across 10 different cities in India including – Bangalore, Delhi/NCR, Hyderabad, Indore, Coimbatore, Chandigarh, Chennai and Thane, as well.

Who Is Leading The Brand?

CaratLane was founded by ‘Mithun Sacheti’ and ‘Srinivasa Gopalan’ in 2008.

Together, they lead a management team which includes – Siddharth (Senior Vice President, Marketing), Calvin John (Vice President, Marketing), Gurukeerthi (Senior Vice President, Technology), Prashant Chaudhary (Vice President, Offline Sales), and a few more…

To give you a short brief about the founders: –

Mithun Sacheti – Co-Founder & Ceo Caratlane.com

Mithun is a certified Gemologist from the Gemmological Institute of America, California (GIA).

Since he belonged to the family which owned ‘Jaipur Gems’ (a jewellery store headquartered in Mumbai), he was very passionate about jewellery and always wanted to get into the industry. Hence, after he completed his studies, he joined the family business and helped them expand across South India.

While he was at it, he saw the potential of the online retail market, and therefore decided to head towards it. Mithun decided to combine retail jewellery with jewellery technology, and today looks after Business Strategy and Direction at CaratLane.com.

When not playing with diamonds, Mithun spends his time playing badminton and squash, or watches cricket.

He has also been felicitated with the “Next-Gen Entrepreneur of the Year” Award in 2012 by TiE (The Indus Entrepreneur) for his leadership.

Moving on! His vision of selling jewellery on the internet was shared by a man whose expertise turned out to be of a complementing nature in the deal. If Mithun was about Jewellery, then Srinivasa Gopalan was the technology end of the deal.

Srinivasa Gopalan – Co-Founder Caratlane.Com

Srinivasa is an Honours Graduate from the College of Engineering, Guindy, Chennai (CEG) and an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A).

His working experience includes ‘Kinetic Engineering’ (Pune) and ‘Satyam Infoway’ (into the Management team), while his business experience is spread beyond the Indian boundaries including countries like – USA, Singapore, Denmark, UK, Australia and the Middle East. He is also the founder of ‘Lister Technologies’.

His knowledge and expertise, is what gave CaratLane.com its technological edge, and while at it, he makes sure that the site pars excellence in usability and robustness to match the glittering products it offers!

When not working, Srinivasa adores travelling to different and unique places across the world.

What Is Their Business & Marketing Strategy?

As CaratLane manufactures its own diamonds, it earns revenue by making sales, similar to an eCommerce model. But as we earlier said, they don’t manufacture it themselves; instead, they outsource it to their vendor partners across the globe.

Due to this model, they are able to have low overheads and inventory costs, and focus more on the operational end, margins and most importantly offer lower prices!

This was a strategy opted by ‘Blue Nile’ (one of the first ones to bring jewellery online). Their real strategy wasn’t the newness of (Jewellery) product on the online market, but in fact, they were the first ones to bring it online and also cut the price.

The real trick was to get the pricing factor right!

Similarly, CaratLane has shelved their prices by almost 25% lower than other retailers, which again was possible because they didn’t have to incur the manufacturing and other costs, as compared to brick-and-mortar stores.

And aggregating diamond suppliers in India alone was not enough, and to be able to survive they needed to have an even larger base. Hence, they also tied up with vendors in biggest trading centers around the world including – Hong Kong, Israel, New York, and Antwerp, as well.

Now on the other end, to offer the desired look-and-feel, they utilised the interactive Web 2.0 features. Due to this feature, the customers can customise their jewellery using various designs of rings, pendants or earrings from the website.

Besides that, CaratLane also introduced webpages to educate customers on jewellery purchase, offer comparison, etc., to make informed decisions as well. This in a way was a great booster for them. The more people understood what they were doing, the more purchase they made. Awareness!

And the icing on the cake is that, they have also added diamond consultants to guide the customers, making things even simpler for the users.

What many don’t know is that, apart from the B2C model, CaratLane also caters to the B2B segment through its website which is dedicated to traders, which enables them to sell to retailers to add value to its suppliers as well.

Talking about their Marketing Strategies – the company has opted for a number of digital marketing channels such as Paid and Organic Search, Banners, Email, social media, jewellery enthusiast communities, etc.

They also regularly roll out offers and previews of collections, request users and customers to rate their products, write reviews, etc. This largely helps in building the desired credibility.

All-in-All, their marketing largely surrounds word of mouth!

A short while back, the company also introduced an innovative ‘Solitaire Experience Lounge’ in Delhi, in attempts to provide its customers a better experience. To explain it in layman, the Lounge gives you the feel and experience of online shopping, but in the retail environment.

More recently in 2015, CaratLane.com has set aside a total of ₹60 crores for the next one year that will be spent on marketing, branding and opening new stores. Out of the total, ₹40 crores will be spent on marketing and branding (primarily on television, print and radio), while the rest ₹20 crores will be used to open new 20 more outlets.

Explain Their Revenue Model, Growth, Profits And Roi…!

To begin with – CaratLane was started with $100,000 and over the period of time the founders spent a total of about $500,000, before they received any funding.

In their initial days, after going through immense struggle, they had started getting 150,000 visitors on an average per day, but used to end up with Zero conversions. It was only months after the hits that they got their first sale of one solitaire.

This is when the grass started turning green for them, they started getting more business and to look more lucrative they also began adding more jewellery. They had understood that, it was the small value products that were getting them more business; hence, they also focused on adding smaller value products as well.

Doing just this, they ended their first year financial year with revenue of $1 million, which greatly jumped to ₹50 crores in 2010 and further (almost) doubled in the next year. Their growth at this point was 300% CAGR.

They were doing about a thousand shipments a month, which was a good number, keeping n mind the ticket size of each sale.

Around 60% of their sales now came from the top 8 cities, they had not only become the first big name in the category in India, but also had increased their revenues to over ₹100 crores annually (2013), which further jumped to ₹140 crores in FY14.

More recently, with a staffing of 300 employees, although the company has been shying away from disclosing their financials for FY15, but it is certain that they have seen a huge increase in the customer base, which has reached to a whooping 300,000. They are also in plans and preparations to increase their revenues to ₹1500 crores by 2019 as well.

Lastly, CaratLane has raised a total of approximately ₹318.31 crores ($58Mn) in four rounds of investments from only one investor – Tiger Global.

Lenskart.com

Lenskart.com : #1 Eyewear Shopping Portal On The Internet!

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According to the latest Government reports, the total Indian eyewear segment is growing at 30-40% per year!

Having said that, more than one-third of our population has a vision correction problem, but only 25% of these use any kind of eyewear.

To solve this purpose, Valyoo Technologies has built “Lenskart”!

What Is Lenskart.Com And What Is Their Business Model?

Lenskart is one of the only online shopping portals for eyewear and also stands tall at the number 1 position.

With a unique physical presence, Lenskart today offers more than 10,000 different styles of eyewear to fit all pocket sizes. It is the only company in India which makes use of ‘robotic technique’ to make the product that delivers micro-precision glasses with 0.00 degree power error.

Lenskart uses 100 latest machines imported from a US-based company Welch Allyn, which has the potential to check the eyesight of a three-month old baby as well.

One can choose to order from a range of eyewear options such as Spectacles, Contact lenses, or sunglasses, for both men and women. They hold products from some of the best makers in the world, including – Rayban, Bausch & Lomb, Tag Heuer, Johnson & Johnson, Sprint, Fastrack, Oakley, Vintage, Ciba Vision, and Cooper Vision etc.

The glasses are custom-made with single vision, bifocal, or progressive prescriptions across all powers, and since, a lot of ‘other’ cost get bypassed, their glasses come 50% cheaper than market average as well.

With a 1 year warranty on all their glasses, Lenskart offers glasses in 3 sizes – small, medium, and large, along with a range of schemes/deals like –

  • First Frame Free – Customers only have to pay for the lens on their first purchase.
  • Exchange old frame for new – One can exchange their old frame with a new one on Lenskart.
  • Try At Home – Customers can choose a maximum of 5 frames and request to try them at home, and if for any reason you don’t like any of them then, you can return all
    of them call for another set – free of cost!
  • Virtual try-on – Customers can use this feature on a model’s photograph, or can also upload their own photo to try different frames.
  • Doctor locator – Customer can search for ophthalmology (with complete) near their location from the company’s nationwide-database and can also book an appointment.
  • Home Eye-check up – Customer can choose to get their eyes checked at home, by booking an appointment on Lenskart, post which, an optical specialist visits your residence along with an eye check machine and 150+ frames to choose from.

The multi-brand eyewear seller has also expanded its reach via the offline medium and today, has over 100 stores across more than 66 cities in the country with delivery in over 100 cities, including tier 2 and tier 3 cities like Agartala, Tirupathi, Siliguri, Raipur, Haridwar and Varanasi as well.

One of the many uniqueness of Lenskart is that, it does not target any market segment or age group in specific, but has designed their product for all the masses in general.

Once ordered, the product to reach the dispatch stage takes anywhere between 5-12 days since the order confirmation date, post which, it takes 2-5 days to get delivered to you.

And if for any reason, the products need to be returned, in such a case, the company has a 14 days return policy. No questions asked. Lenskart has the lowest return rates in the industry of 4% return rate of overall shipments.

The company delivers to 450 cities across India along with majorly all the countries across the world. They have partnered with a range of third party logistics partners like Javas, Blue Dart, Delhivery, among others, to deliver in various cities across India.

Who Is Leading The Brand?

Peyush Bansal is the founder of Lenskart. Other Co-Founders include: – Amit Chaudhary and Sumeet Kapahi. Together, they lead a team of more than 900 employees based in their Headquarters in Delhi.

Peyush has completed his Bachelor in Engineering from McGill University in Canada, post which, he had also worked with ‘Microsoft’ in America as a Program Manager.

After working with them for a year, he moved back to India to pursue his Post-Graduate diploma in Management for Executives from IIM, Bangalore.

After completing his education for good, he then setup his first company called ‘Valyoo Technologies’ in 2008. Under Valyoo, he launched their first business portal – ‘SearchMyCampus.com’. A portal or rather a classified site, through which students could search for jobs, accommodation, books, coaching classes, bikes, laptops, and a lot more.

Although searchmycampus.com was a success, Peyush decided to venture into the e-commerce world and launched ‘Flyrr.com’. A shopping portal for selling eyewear
exclusively, but this was based in the US.

After both of these became a hit, in 2010 he expanded to the Indian market with more-or-less the same idea, but called it Lenskart.com! Unlike Flyrr.com, Lenskart has a larger range of offerings.

What Are The Business Strategies Used By Lenskart?

The success of Lenskart’s as a Business model has largely been because of the following: –

  • Offering freebies and unique services to attract customers
  • Social Media interactions to keep the brand alive in the minds
  • 24×7 helpline service to offer the best customer service
  • Diversity of products and services (eye check up)
  • Effective delivery

Let’s explain their business strategies in detail…

As per their statics, most of the e-commerce companies see around 60% sales from non- metro cities’, keeping that in mind, their focus too remains the same.

Now Lenskart relies heavily on a discounting strategy to lure its customer, and to maintain this you need a strong upsell program as well, for example, when someone buys a phone, they are also displayed with relevant phone accessories.

On a broader scale, Lenskart is trying to evolve itself as a fashion-driven model where customers come to try out new frames, get check-ups done at home and bring awareness about eye care.

Having said that, they follow an inventory based model, wherein they have partnered with a majority of private labelled vendors to provide you with the products. They have teams at Lenskart who selects the goods, their design, stocks them, then put them on the portal and lastly passes them to the customers at the best value.

According to the company, this inventory-led model is their differentiating factor as compared to the other ecommerce portals. Given the fact that, third-party vendors sell to consumers on other marketplaces, they cannot take the responsibility of the quality of the product.

To add to that, no ‘drop-ship’ model is followed and all the shipments are also delivered from their own warehouse, as well.

Other than that, Lenskart also uses a brilliant ‘order rescue strategy’ wherein – say for example, you are performing a transaction and for any reason you are facing any type of error, your order gets declined, or for that matter you’re not able to get through the transaction; in any case, you will automatically receive a call in the next 10-15 minutes, from senior employee of Lenskart to provide you with a resolution for the issue.

Moving on! Now, they often have come across a question – “why would / should anyone buy eyewear online?”

To counter this and all such questions, Lenskart has been going all out and looking at all the reasons why a consumer will not buy from them.

One of the obvious reasons is that they want to get their eyes checked or trial before purchase. To tackle these issues, Lenskart had launched three services – ‘Try At Home’, ‘Virtual try-on’ and ‘Home Eye-check up’.

Other than that, to enable customer have feel of product before buying, they have come out with an even more flexible solution. The company has also introduced physical / offline stores using the franchise model.

These stores are nowhere close to the conventional ones, and are imbibed with state-of-the-art look-and-feel, a trained optometrist to provide you with a free eye check-up, and an access to the full collection of products.

Over the period of time, the multi-brand eyewear seller has also expanded this offline medium to over 100 stores that are spread across more than 66 Indian cities, which include major cities like – Delhi, Chandigarh, Pune, Mumbai, Bangalore, etc., along with tier 2 and tier 3 cities such as – Agartala, Tirupathi, Siliguri, Raipur, Haridwar, Varanasi, and many more…

What Are The Marketing Strategies Used By Lenskart?

Since the idea is new and unique, Peyush has put great efforts to make sure Lenskart is able to change the minds of the masses and that the idea is a success. But overall, he deeply believes in the power of word of mouth, managing customer retention and encouraging them to come back again and again.

Nevertheless, the company has opted for all the mediums to market their product to their relevant target audience.

Beginning with the Digital medium…

Since their beginning, Lenskart has been hosting and still hosts a range of online campaigns with luring offers to keep their customer engaged to their brand.

During their initial days, when Lenskart wasn’t that successful, their main idea, their theme behind a digital campaign was to create a branding of Lenskart. Hence, ‘viralcurry.com’ was hired to do the job.

Over the period of time they managed to gain a reputation, post which, they used their Facebook and Twitter platform to create a campaign hosting a Game, with the Lenskart revamp hashtag.

This led to 1.6 Mn hits on their Facebook page, and 6000+ tweets on Twitter. Due to this strategy, their sales also increased drastically.

Around the same time, they had also launched an ‘Email marketing campaign’, to increase engagement with its customers and to gain their trust and confidence.

They had hired ‘netCORE’ for the job. netCORE’s email marketing experts conceptualized an email marketing campaign – that demonstrated the steps which Lenskart follows, from the time an order is placed, till the time the product is delivered at customer’s doorstep. And the customers were also asked to reply back with their opinion, thoughts or ideas to maximize customer satisfaction.

This transparency helped greatly to gain the confidence of customers. And the replies ensured active involvement, participation, and higher engagement for the email campaign as well.

As a matter of fact, the email campaign was so good that it got Lenskart included in “Create and design E-commerce” category of Marketing Sherpa Email Awards 2014 as “Honourable Mention” as well.

Moving on to the Television Commercials…

Over the period of time, Lenskart has also rolled out a few television advertisements to promote their brand to a wider audience.

Their first ad that came out was based on a simple concept that – proper lenses on your eyes can impress others. This was presented beautifully by focusing on a boy and a girl in a library, where the boy asks the girl out for a cup of coffee, and the girl replies differently based on the type of glasses that the boy is wearing.

Lenskart has successfully shown the audience that even with a low budget, if the right advertisement with the right message can sell the brand well.

More recently, Lenskart has launched their latest campaigns which comprise two new television commercials starring youth icon, VJ / Actor – Purab Kohli.

Explain Their Revenue Model, Growth, Profits And Roi!

Lenskart in simplest terms is just like an optical store, only online. Unlike other eCommerce portals, they have opted for an inventory model and make money on the sale of every product that is sold.

Lenskart.com was founded with a small investment of ₹30 Lakhs. Their lowest range of high quality eyewear can be bought at ₹250.

Starting with selling 10-20 spectacles a day, today the company has grown to make a sale of more than 1,000 spectacles daily. Around 10% of the sales come from mobile.

In FY2013, Lenskart had booked revenues worth ₹32 crores, and when we look at them today, the company receives about 45,000+ visitors every day, of whom about 400-500 spend roughly ₹1,200. They have massively grown by more than 200% (YoY) and are now valued at $100 Mn!

Lastly, talking about their funds; overall, the company has completed three rounds of funding which include – $22 million in January 2015, $10 million in February 2013 and $4 million in October 2011, from investors including – IDG Ventures, Ronnie Screwvala-led Unilazer Ventures and TPG Growth & TR Capital.

MAG-NIT

Mount Your Phone Anywhere With MAG-NIT!

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So we hear that we have reached to point where we are now literally surrounded by technology. Evidently, that is true! From your computer to your cell phone to any machine that makes your life easier, they directly or indirectly contribute to the development of technology.

Having said that – at one end we have people who say that we are reaching a saturation point, while on the other end, people like Boris Ignatov come from nowhere and prove the former wrong.

Allow us to introduce his latest prodigy – Mag-Nit!!

What Is MAG-NIT?

Mag-Nit is an all-in-one iPhone magnetic mounting system that also can be used as a stylus, kickstand, wall dock, mount, car, tripod mount, time-lapse stand, taking selfies and pretty much anything that your imagination can take it to.

A combination of various gears like – ferromagnetic stylus, universal magnet mount, high performance 3M adhesive pads, and four slim mini-docs for attaching the device to non-metallic surfaces, makes Mag-Nit.

To tell you a little bit about the device, it is compact, comfortable, versatile, and feels great to hold. Additionally, it is also imbibed with a ferromagnetic steel core and standard ¼ inch camera treads, along with some soft coating and a replaceable nib as well.

And for all those worried about the design and the strength of the device – have no fear, because Mag-Nit uses a thin and very strong nickel-pleated magnet in the middle, and is also laser cut and engraved in their workshop.

Be rest assured that, after 11 months of designing, building and testing a range of prototypes, the makers are 100% sure that there is nothing on your phone that is built on the lines of magnetic technology or for that interferes with magnetic field.

Moving on, the Dock of Mag-Nit sticks to the non-metallic surfaces and provides a strong mounting to your phone, but the real beauty of the device is that, it is both minimal in look-and-feel and high in functionality, and is also compatible with any model of phones or tablets as well.

You can swiftly change the position of your decide to virtually any viewing angle without any hassle or fear of damage.

The Standard set usually contains one of each Mag-Nit Mount and Mag-Nit Stylus, along with four Mag-Nit Docks (provided for using at home, office, car and gym).

At this point, the device is available in two metallic finishes of Gold and Silver, but more options may be made available in the future.

And believe me when I say this – such a stylus has yet not been released in the market yet!

Lastly, the device has very recently been launched on Kickstarter, and has already received 12 backers who have pledged in $553. Their goal is $10,000. The kickstarter campaign shall be available till 28th of December 2015.

As an early bird offer, the standard set of the product (1 Stylus + 1 Mount + 4 Docks + 8 Extra 3M Pads) is presently available for $21, post which, it shall be made available for $25.

They also have other sets such as the Couples Set for $45, Family Set for $79, and Team Set for $200 available as well.

Other than that, the makers have also launched a Special Set called “Kickstarter Patron” for $65 which won’t be offered in retail. Its uniqueness is that, one would be able to get their name or any other text of their choice, custom engraved (max 50 char.). The estimated delivery of either of the packages would be Feb 2016.

Creator Of MAG-NIT

Based in New York, ‘Boris Ignatov’ is the brain behind this gorgeous piece of technology.

Born and raised in Bulgaria, Boris holds a Masters degree in architecture from Columbia University and Sofia University of Architecture, and has also worked for some of the top notch architectural firms which include “Perkins + Will Architects”. Additionally, he is also a licensed architect in the state of New York and Bulgaria as well.

He also runs a mobile architectural called ‘Ignatov Architects’, and is known for state-of-the-art and equally unique smart furniture, making gadget design, and sustainable architecture. Some of his best works include the Equinox House (2012) and the Conservatory House (2010).

The man also accounts for a list of awards, some of which include: –

  • Received the Grand Prize of the Biannale of the Union of Bulgarian Architects (2010)
  • Awarded with the Prize of the Search Architectural Review (2011)
  • Received the Best Residential Architect Award by Stroitelstvo Imoti magazine (2010)
  • Collected the Grand Prize of the Biannale of the Union of Bulgarian Architects (2010)
  • Conferred with the Grand Prize of the Chamber of Bulgarian Architects (2010)
Indian Railway Catering And Tourism Corporation

IRCTC – Indian Railway Catering And Tourism Corporation

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The Indian Railways (IR) was founded in 1853 and today, it proudly stands as the second-largest railway network in the world. IR is also known to be one of the largest rail networks in the world which spreads across over 100,000 kms. It carries more than 23 Mn passengers, and also accounts for over 12,000 trains, 7,000 stations and 72,000 miles of track.

Indian Railways is also known to be the world’s largest employer that also transports a mind-boggling 6 billion passengers annually!

In an attempt to modernize its functioning and along with a whole new range of modifications, extending the legacy ahead; the Indian Railways entered the digital world in 2002 with – IRCTC, Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation. And today it has grown on to become not just India’s but also Asia Pacific’s largest e-commerce portal.

Let’s dissect IRCTC in detail!

What Is ‘IRCTC’ And What Is Their Business Model?

Commenced in 2002; IRCTC or Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation in abbreviated terms, is the subsidiary of Indian Railways, which as a whole manages the catering, tourism and online ticketing operations for the railways.

The entity is mainly led by Dr. A.K. Manocha (Chairman & Managing Director), and is followed by his team which includes – M. P. Mall (Director, Finance), Shri R. N. Kalita (Director, Customer Service), Mrs. Amritbir Kaur Brar (Director, Tourism & Marketing) and many others as well.

IRCTC has often been referred to as the marketing wing of the IR as well, which has successfully managed to change the complete look and feel of IR, along with the way they were serving their customers by offering all-round solutions.

It primarily had been setup by the Ministry of Railways with the basic purpose of boosting and capitalizing on the catering and tourism activity of the railways, and also to professionalise and upgrade these services with public-private participation.

But on a broader note, IRCTC has been initiated by IR to upgrade, professionalize and manage the catering and hospitality services of the system at stations, on trains and various other locations in general.

Other than that, IRCTC is also taking care to make sure that, the environment benefiting in some or the other way. In a similar attempt, IRCTC has launched – ‘Green Marketing’.

Beyond all that, to offer better services to its customers, IRCTC had also introduced their mobile app, some time back. Most of the services one may find on the website can also be availed using the app as well.

Due to its numerous advantages, the app has picked up really quickly and is now being used many as well. Some of the most basic benefits that the mobile app offers to its customers include – Convenience, Doorstep delivery, Easy to use, Secure payment gateway, Versatility and Payment options.

Anyway, as a part of the renovation and innovation, IRCTC has opted for a business model wherein it offers a range of services via website and mobile which include: –

1. Ticket Booking: –

IRCTC are the pioneers of internet-based and mobile phone-based railway ticket booking service through their website, and had initiated with the same in 2002.

‘E-ticket’ as the name itself suggests is the ticket that one books online, while ‘I-ticket’ is a service which is basically the same like regular tickets except that, they are booked online and delivered by post. The portal also caters to all kinds of other requests like Tatkal tickets for urgent booking, Concession tickets for senior citizens and students, Season tickets, etc., as well.

Over the period of time, they also launched quite a few programs for the benefit of the masses in general. Some of which included the loyalty program for frequent travellers called ‘Shubh Yatra’, and in an attempt to make it even more easier for the commuters to book e-tickets, they also launched a scheme called ‘Rolling Deposit Scheme’ (RDS), which allowed passengers to reserve seats against advance money.

2.  Tourism: –

Since the time of inception of IRCTC, they have opted for a dynamic marketing strategy of partnering with major tour operators and State Tourism to provide exclusive tour packages across the country.

To boost domestic and foreign tourism across India, IRCTC also arranges for budget and deluxe package tours, with options like ‘Bharat Darshan’, special luxury trains such as ‘Buddhist Circuit Train’ and ‘Maharaja’s Express’, etc. are offered depending on the package one opts for. One can also customise their tour as per their requirement as well.

Other than that, they also provide various adventure tourism packages that include water sports, adventure and wildlife treks, etc.

IRCTC has also recently introduced ‘station-based’ e-catering service at 45 stations, which will leverage travelling passengers to order food of their choice from leading private caterers to be delivered at these stations (not moving trains).

Going ahead; IRCTC is in preparations to set up around 100 budget hotels across all the cities that are known to be tourist hotspots, be it an international or a domestic tourist.

3. Tatkal Booking: –

Basically, Tatkal scheme is where commuters can book tickets at short notice. Although, this scheme has always been there, but only after IRCTC introduced it under its wing, it has gotten a lot better.

Tatkal E-ticket on IRCTC can be booked for selected trains only one day in advance which excludes the date of journey. The booking for these E-tickets start from 10:00 am onwards for AC coach and 11:00 am onwards for NON-AC.

4. Online Hotel Booking and Catering: –

IRCTC not only helps the passengers or tourist with traveling tickets, but it also offers online hotel bookings and even cab booking options, to help make the journey even more simple.

Other than that, IRCTC also offers catering services to the commuters in ways like – Stationary passenger stalls, Mobile units or the pantry compartment, Base kitchens that supply food to trains, Food plazas, etc.

Additionally, in a recent development, IRCTC has also introduced ‘Jan Ahar’ that offers quality food at very reasonable price. Moreover, they have also partnered with a range of private food brands and food delivery entities to offer good quality and different variety of food.

IRCTC also provides pure drinking water bottles at all stations throughout the country by the name of – ‘Railneer’, at a rate as cheap as ₹12 per litre.

What Were The Challenges Faced And What Were The Solutions Opted By Them?

Challenges

Even with the introduction of E-ticketing system, the user experience of IRCTC was still a nightmare, and was filled with problems which were pending to be tackled.

Some of the major issues the site faced included – Crashing at many intervals, extremely slow browsing and performance, unreliability, and many more…

On the other end – ‘BroadVision Inc’ was a provider of enterprise business portal applications based in California and working out of Bangalore. They used to run the IRCTC site on their e-commerce platform, and a huge challenge for them was the integration of the two systems.

While at it, they too faced huge problems like –terrible traffic jam on the site, crashing of payment gateways, near-to non-existent internet connectivity, etc.

Due to so many complaints of failed transactions and multiple bookings, they had to position extra people only to refund money, which costed about 20% of their total transaction.

Solutions

Since, the system had become outdated and could no longer justify the growing demands; in 2013, the management decided to re-architect the whole e-ticketing system and hired CRIS -Centre for Railway Information Systems. Overall, they pumped roughly ₹6.5 crores.

CRIS added a completely new application along with the incorporation of a new technology to swiftly manage the new e-ticketing system, the huge recurring workload, balance the load during peak hours, and migration of 3 million users.

This application was placed on ‘Pivotal GemFire’, a distributed in-memory database which is part of Pivotal Big Data Suite.

The system was designed in such a way that each of its layer provided high performance, scalability, availability and a lot more at the backend, that would support the smooth functioning of the system smoothly.

And due to such great features, the system is now easily managing sales of more than 10,000 per minute and 150,000 per hour as well.

What Are The Business Strategies Behind Their Success?

Today, the success story of IRCTC is by far an inspiration for the entire collection of e-commerce portals in India. However, behind their success too lies a well-strategized business plan, near flawless execution, and a dedicated team.

Apart from the timing of entering into the dying railway industry, below mentioned are some of the main reasons why IRCTC was able to pull off the biggest profitable success in such a short span: –

  1. Web Interface: – By making the web interface simple, self-explanatory, decent looking, and a one-stop-solution; IRCTC has managed to win the hearts of many!
  2. Economical: – Since a wide range of “other costs” were now not applicable in online booking, they managed to drastically reduce the ridiculously high prices, and also succeeded in at the same time, also maintained its look-and-feel. And who would mind trying out a cheap and easy-to-use medium.
  3. Delivery: – A masterstroke move indeed – IRCTC has managed to win the whole game by asking only one Courier Company to manage the whole ticket delivery, thus giving IRCTC more control over delivery. Their delivery is so good that, every single ticket be it to consumers living in remote locations across the country, reaches on time.
  4. Payment Options: – Offering multiple payment options comes off as an added benefit, and when options like online payments which require bank details, highly secure payment gateways (the site is VeriSign certified) makes it even more safe and hassle-free to use the platform. As of date, the portal has a tie-up with 18 major banks for Payment Gateway services.

What Kind Of Partnerships Has Irctc Entered In The Recent Times?

To begin with – IRCTC has partnered with a list of empanalled parties for premium trains, these include – ‘M/s Otik Hotels & Resorts’ (New Delhi), ‘M/s Tirupati Associates’ (Bhopal), ‘M/s Sunshine Caterers’ (Mumbai), ‘M/s Golden Caterers’ (Bangalore), ‘M/s PK Shefi’ (Chennai), and many more like such to manage different needs of the customers.

Other than that; IRCTC has also partnered with a range of other Internet companies for different reasons.

Since they do not compete with any of the online marketplaces in India, IRCTC has partnered with ‘Amazon’ for two years with an annual guarantee of ₹18 crore a year.

They have also partnered with ‘Foodpanda’, Online Food ordering platform to deliver food to passengers on train. Using Foodpanda’s aggregator model, consumers would be able to order meals of their choice from a variety of options. Customers will have the choice to order meals at least two hours in advance of the travel, and will also have various payment options.

Foodpanda would be deploying their own delivery fleet to fulfil all deliveries. In this initial stage, they would be starting with New Delhi Railway station, but will soon roll out the same for Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune and Chennai as well.

Next, IRCTC has also tied-up with ‘Hello Curry’ to offer in-train dining for passengers.

They have imitated this project at Secunderabad station, and will extend their services to other cities such as Delhi, Bengaluru, Vizag, and Pune in the future.

Other than them, IRCTC has also partnered with ‘PayTM’, ‘Vodafone’ and ‘Mydala’ as well. While, they have tied up with PayTM and Vodafone to use them as a payment option, through PayTM wallet and Vodafone M-Pesa (for mobile bookings of tickets), Mydala would be providing deals and offers to customers.

Going ahead – IRCTC will also be introducing the participation of reputed food chains like KFC, McDonald, Haldiram, Bikanerwala, Nirulas, Sagar Ratna, Wangs Kitchen, Saravana Bhavan, Subway, Domino’s, Pizza Hut and Kelloggs, to their present kitty in some form.

Explain Their Revenue Model, Growth And Profits!

The major source of income for IRCTC is taking a ‘Service Charge’ on selling tickets, but largely speaking, the organization works on a ‘Commission-Based Model’ otherwise.

Their model is quite similar to online marketplaces in general, where their sales don’t actually include actual goods sold, but instead, they take commission from sellers and also make money from advertisements on their ecommerce sites.Other than that, IRCTC also makes money by online bidding options for banners in railway stations as well.

Talking about their profits – IRCTC was launched with a very small capital base of INR 20 crores, and had managed to make sales of only 27 tickets on the first day and 3,343 tickets in the first month. This was less than nothing.

This number drastically grew by 2009-10 when it sold more than 7.20 crore tickets, which further increased to INR 9.69 by the next fiscal year. By now they accounted for more than 45% of all visitors to travel websites in India and 19% of total Internet audience as well. And by 2013, IRCTC had about 6 lakh registered users.

They were also known to be the fastest growing e-commerce site in the whole of the Asia-Pacific region.

And more recently in 2015, the portal jumped up by 34% from last year and crossed the INR 20,000-crore mark or roughly $3 billion in terms of revenues through only online ticket sales. This was nearly a double the turnover of Flipkart – the largest online retailer of India.

They also made a new record of selling nearly 1100,000 tickets in a day.

What is even more interesting to know is that, unlike all other marketplaces which are still loss-making, IRCTC also posted an increase in their profit after tax (PAT) of INR 130 crores as compared to the figures of last year of INR 72 crores.

Overall, IRCTC also saw an increase of 19% or roughly INR 1,141 crores in their income, which mainly included income from tickets, sales of Rail Neer water, onboard catering services and licence fees from outsourced catering vendors, etc.

Aditya Birla Online Fashion

Aditya Birla Online Fashion Private Limited

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To give you a short intro – the Aditya Birla Group (ABG) was founded in 1857 and with more than 1.2 lakh employees, it currently operates in 40 countries worldwide.

The group that is presently Chaired by ‘Kumar Mangalam Birla’, holds interests in sectors such as metals, cement (largest in India), branded apparel, chemicals, financial services, telecom (third largest in India), BPO and IT services, etc., and many more…

As of the previous Fiscal year (2014), with a gross revenue of $45 Bn, ABG is known to be the third-largest multinational company in the Indian private sector, which is just behind Tata Group and RIL (Reliance India Limited).

Now as per reports; e-commerce is said to be the fastest growing sector in India, and having said that, the Indian online retail market is estimated to grow from $2 Bn in 2013, to $45 Bn by 2020.

And since, online retailers are beginning to drive more customers than the traditional formats; Aditya Birla Group has also decided to enter the e-commerce space with abof.com (All About Fashion) as well.

What Is Abof.Com (All About Fashion)?

Born in October 2015 – Abof.com (All about fashion) is an online portal that offers some of the best in trendiest apparel, footwear and accessories, along with fashion shopping, news and trend watching as well!

This webstore claims that it holds some of the most trending looks of the season from across the globe, and offers them via its curated collection of products that are handpicked from brands which also includes their own brand ‘Abof’. One may find products ranging from INR 300 to INR 4000.

On Abof.com; the first thing you will find is a proprietary fashion feed on the landing page ‘What’s Hot’ itself. It includes fashion content, style tips, trends, and fashion news, etc., all of which is combined by a strategy that is similar to, the picture-led approach of Instagram or Twitter-like shopable stories.

abof

And what is even interesting to know is that, it uses a unique style quiz which helps them understand their customer’s preferences and accordingly shows only the relevant personalised content.

To elaborate a little more, these personalized shopable contents is based on the information customer inputs, real-time behaviour and their preferences. This would only help the brand even more to connect with their customers better.

Now this strategy may seem messy to a mature audience, but it fits well with their target audience, who actually prefers such a module.

Other than that, what makes them even more lucrative is that, the webstore has also been equipped with India’s first 3D virtual trial room. This is very similar to an actual trial room, expect, it is a virtual model that customers can use to instantly view themselves in any product, just by giving their basic body proportions.

And going by the company’s analysis, these 3D trial rooms are said to be 95% accurate. They not only estimate the right hip and waist size, but also give the flexibility of one inch, which further helps the customers to pick the right size for every brand.

Talking about their packaging; the company uses premium packaging, to ensure the safety of the garments during transit. They also use a high-tech, world-class and state-of-the-art supply chain infrastructure, and also hold a superior delivery service as well. At this point, the company caters to more than 5000 pin codes spread across over 400 cities in India.

Lastly, one can also very easily return or exchange a purchased item within 30 days of receipt of the item, or can also use the first of its kind, ‘spot exchange’ option, wherein, their delivery person will come with the new garment at the same time itself.

What Market Segment Are They Targeting?

Going by the look & feel of the webstore, and the company statements; evidently, Abof is targeting the youth of today belonging to the age group of 18 to 25 year-olds.

The purpose of targeting the so-called ‘millenials’ (people born between the year 80s and 90s), is simply because these are the people who would be in a better position to relate to the current trends, fashion or style.

This is an age group which wants everything fast and personalised, and that is exactly what Abof aims to offer. They want to address this gap in the market.

Simply put – this is the age group which best defines fashion and are also the largest shoppers.

Going ahead; Abof would be sharply focusing on providing what they have committed, and at the same time, would also be seeing how this business is growing as well. They would be keeping a track of the consumer behaviour, what they are buying and consumer feedback, and if everything goes well and as planned, then they would also be adding other sections, and would also be expanding their target audience.

What Kind Of Brands Are They Selling And How Are They Different From Their Existing Range?

As many of us already know, ABG already has a range of other retail fashion brands such as – Louis Philippe, Allen Solly, Van Heusen and Pantaloons, Peter England, etc., which are more mature and established than Abof.

So then why compete with your own brands?

Abof being a fashion-oriented brand for youths, is targeting an altogether a different set of audience than its other peers, and the medium of trade (online) is not the same as well.

Hence, their overall purpose is only to fill the need of the hour, give the youths what they want, and leverage from the segment and the online medium in general.

Moving on!

Abof, in an unlikely move, does not stock many products from Aditya Birla Group’s existing fashion retail brands, for one reason being, they are already sold through the group’s physical stores, as well as ‘Trendin.com’, which is their existing online venture for their in-house brands.

But yes, they will be offering a selected range of in-house brands, but there would a wider range of external brands and Abof. And from the selected external brands, many will have merchandise exclusively with them as well.

The company will be very selective in choosing the product listing, and would be handpicking the products that would be listed. These would be on the lines of higher fashion quotient, superior products, in trend, should not be regular plain vanilla merchandise, etc…

The portal will be offering a list of 7,000 products which would be a mix of all brands initially, but in the next few months this number would increase to 20,000.

Overall and initially, they will be listing stocks of 55 brands some of which include external ones like Jack & Jones, Levis, Fila, United Colors of Benetton, Being Human, etc., and eventually, would go on to increase this number to 100 brands in the near future.

What Kind Of Partnerships Does The Company Have?

As of now, the company has refused to disclose in detail about the partnerships that it holds for its multiple channels, but it is certain that, Abof has created a team of best-of-the-breed partners to manage different sections of their business including – technology, fashion brands, marketing and operations.

For last mile delivery and logistics, Abof conducted detailed evaluations, post which they have partnered with different companies from the fashion space.

Other than that, the company has also a two year contract with ‘Metail’ – a British fashion technology company which holds base in Cambridge, London and Singapore as well.

Metail will be developing a ‘try it on’ online shopping experience tool for Abof, which will enable customers to create a customized 3D model of the person himself.

Using this tool, Abof would be able to photograph and digitise over 200 garments a day, and on the other end, by just entering a few simple measurements customers would be able to generate a 92-96% accurate (to their size) model of themselves. The technology is such that it can be easily instilled into any e-commerce platform as well.

This partnership would be of great help to the company to understand the previously unknown customer data, which Abof would be able to use for better fitting and apparel design.

And not only that, but Metail would also be able to guide them with vital information such as – cutting items to fit better, making more garments their consumers want to wear, and a lot more…

What Kind Of Approach And Promotional Strategies, Is Abof.Com Opting For?

To begin with – the makers aim to place the Abof as the “Apple” of online fashion retail, thus implying that, it would only be catering to the niche crowd and not the masses.

In sync with this viewpoint; we often see today that, mostly all the online retailers offer various kinds of deep discounts on products to attract customers, hence, setting themselves apart, Abof also won’t be offering unreasonable discounts and would maintain their difference in the market.

Anyway, talking about their promotional strategies – they believe that good content, marketing and products, would be a perfect mix to attract customers, even while staying away from deep discounts.

Hence, they have opted for a multi promotional strategy which would be a mix of Digital Marketing through various platforms, Offline marketing via Print media, TV advertisement, Advertisements through YouTube, etc.

But their initial stages of marketing would be consumed majorly by the digital segment, than print or television, and the same would be visible within the present six months.

Who Would Be Leading The Brand?

Aditya Birla Group has created a brand new team of around 200 people which are mostly based in Bangalore. Over the last nine months, apart from making the product, they have also put in an equal amount of time in building the team, which consists of people from a range of online players such as Snapdeal, Myntra and Zomato. Other than that, for their logistics end, they have tied up with third party vendors.

Beginning with the top boss, the management team with be lead by – ‘Prashant Gupta’, who will be acting as the President and CEO. He had joined ABG in 2011 and presently also leads Aditya Birla Group’s overall e-commerce portfolio.

An IIT (Delhi) pass out and IIM (Ahmedabad) Gold medallist; Prashant has a working experience of roughly 12 years, before he joined ABG, and has also been listed on the Business Today’s list of ‘Top 40 Executives Under 40’, as well.

Prashant will be leading a management team of almost 9 people, which includes – Kedar Apshankar (DEPUTY CEO), Sukanta Das (COO), Ashim Chatterjee (CMO), Mahesh
Tiyyagura (CTO), Sharad Agarwal (CFO), Vikram Bhat (CPO), Abhishek Kumar (HEAD – HR & Administration), Vipul Mathur (Chief Buying & Merchandising Officer – Branded Business) and Rashmi Shukla (Chief Buying & Merchandising Officer – Own Brands).

Why Did They Get Into The Online Retail Business And What Kind Of Roi Are They Expecting?

Evidently, the e-commerce sector is a highly lucrative sector from an investment and business point of view. Agreed, many players have entered and now control the market, but that does not mean that others cannot come in. There still, is a lot of space for more to happen.

Elaborating further, Aditya Birla Group is already India’s largest and well-renowned fashion player through Madura Fashion and Pantaloons, and holds a set of expertise in this field.

Therefore, it only makes more sense for them to enter into the fashion e-commerce sector. Using this fashion e-commerce medium and business venture, Aditya Birla Group intends to stay focused on seeding and growing their grip and strengths even further and deeper into the business of fashion in India.

And as a whole, with Abof, they want to provide a wide yet curated range of products along with a unique, not seen or heard of and world-class shopping experience, only to become the most admired player in online fashion within the next three years, and to be the next billion-dollar business of the Group in this space, on the longer run.

Now the company although, has been shy to disclose the extent of investments made, but according to them, there is enough fire power in the company to make this initiative a successful one.

Lastly, since this is a business where an estimation of profitability is very difficult, but the company on the long-term is targeting a 15% share of India’s online fashion market by 2019-20.