Start up

As a start-up, you don’t always have the luxury of access or big budgets as some of the more established firms, while building your brand. On the plus side, the fact that you are a young company means that you are nimble, can adapt quickly and are far more receptive to change. In the race towards making your brand’s mark in today’s overcrowded and oversaturated market, it counts to play smart. At Morning Fresh, we take bootstrapping as a fun challenge to push ourselves to create, innovate and constantly come up with strategies and ideas that can give us maximum visibility and impact with a smaller investment. Here are some of our key learnings:

1. TIMING IS EVERYTHING

The world is a diverse place and things are constantly happening. It’s extremely important to stay tuned to news that is relevant to your audience and industry. A simple post on social media at the right time has the capability to ‘go viral’ and spread to 5-10x of your organic customer base and all it takes is a witty line or image to show up, at the right place and right time. Some brands that have mastered this art of timing are Amul; with their forever up-to-date billboards and Durex’s unbeatable ability to come up with tongue-in-cheek one liners!

2. KEEP IT SIMPLE

You might have just come up with a game changer of an idea for your business but if you do not communicate it simply, you have already taken two steps backwards. It’s easy to get caught up in the little details of an idea or the administration in executing one, but this lack in objectivity can result in high effort and investment and very low impact. Whether it’s a brand campaign, logo, packaging or advertisement, ask yourself – How can I explain this to my 5-year old cousin? Keep it simple. Nike’s on point with their “Just Do It” tag line or “Maybe she’s born with it. Maybe it’s Maybelline” Maybelline’s jingle, even the straightforward “I love New York” symbol has become synonymous with the Big Apple!

3. INNOVATIVE POSITIONING

This is a cardinal rule in the game of visibility. While most businesses are present in their traditional/essential spaces, there is a lot of room for innovative positioning or guerrilla marketing strategies to help set the context of your product/service and catch your customers off-guard. Taking time out to think about out-of-the-box ideas can prove to be extremely cost-effective and yield higher visibility. E.g. Fitness companies that advertise on elevator doors, encouraging you to take the stairs / KitKat advertising on park benches.

4. CREATE A DIALOGUE WITH YOUR AUDIENCE

It’s essential to find ways to connect, engage and build a rapport with your customers. The more you get to know each other, the more likely they are to remember you and this plays a crucial role when it comes to differentiating your start-up among other competitors. E.g. Dove’s ‘Real Beauty Sketches’ campaign was a huge success with women as it addresses the issue of difference in beauty perception.

5. BE CONSISTENT

Isn’t it easier to pick a restaurant that’s known for a specific cuisine rather than one that has too many? A simple way to achieve maximum visibility and brand recall is to ensure your messaging and communication is consistent. You might choose to represent it in various ways or spaces, but the more clarity you have as a brand, the more customers will naturally start recognizing it and identifying with it. E.g. Louis Vuitton’s signature monogram print on almost all their products, has made them a globally recognizable and aspirational brand, so much so that their merchandise is one the highest replicated brands.

The purpose of this exercise is to design a single user system, to solve the needs of a startup business. The business I chose is a service oriented, automotive oil change company. This system will need to satisfy the business needs of a small company, including database queries, inventory management, customer tracking, form generating, accounting, and many other functions. This must be accomplished in an easy to use, simple, single user format.

This system should be a point of sale system utilizing separate databases. One for customer tracking used to notify previous customers via postcard printouts. In addition, these should be sent after a three-month period from their last service. There could be coupons issued as well. Accounting and inventory information, such as daily, weekly, monthly, etc. sales, current inventory needs, cost of inventory, profit margins, employee records, sales tax, etc. should also be stored. Another, dynamic database would hold manufacture specifications. This would provide real-time query access for make/model vehicle specifications for referencing filter part numbers as well as other technical information. This would need to be updated as manufacturers change specifications.

This system should contain redundant features as it is business critical, providing dual, mirrored disk drives, as well as an efficient backup device. This would reduce down time due to drive failure. The need for this amount of safety lies in the necessity of maintaining fast, uninterrupted service.

There would need to be two printers. One, a dot matrix for printing customer receipts, as well as a hard copy for business purposes. The second printer would be for the service personnel. This would print out the work orders with specific information, such as the make and model of the vehicle as well as the filter numbers and quantity of oil needed. This printer would be located in the service area.

This system should be capable of printing and displaying timely accounting reports including sales figures and current inventory quantities. These should be available on screen (a color VGA monitor would be required), as well as in printed form.

All this must be extremely user friendly. With very little training required. The projected employee skill and pay level is expected to be entry level minimum wage.

When researching a business solution to fit this need, one company was mentioned in most interviews and research. Auto Dataa was highly recommended by the independent area shops that provide this service. Auto Dataa provides a complete software system specifically engineered for this market. This package is called POS-I-LUBEa. This is a all-encompassing point of sale software package that provides complete support of an automotive service company. This system provides comparative accounting reports, real-time inventory management, work order creation, reliable specification information via a secured connection, employee time-clock accounting functions, full cash register functions and professionally printed receipts, as well as a complete service history for each of your customers.

This system will provide the ability to check inventory levels anytime. Supply payroll information with their time card feature. Generate accounting reports ranging from comparative sales figures from one period to another, period financial reports, profit margins, inventory costs, personnel costs, withholdings, sales tax figures, essentially all the accounting information necessary to successfully run the business. This is in conjunction to the real-time product specification query function and work orders.

The time that is saved by the vehicle specification query, which previously had to be done through hard copy cross-reference, looking up make, model, engine, options, etc., now can be used to assure that you have a timely customer turnaround time, as this is all done automatically through this menu driven system. The customer history database can be queried to provide essential data for mass mailings and coupons. These are all time saving functions that work to improve customer satisfaction, while maintaining a strong presence in the marketplace.

POS-I-LUBEa utilizes a Fox Pro database for it’s customer history and tracking, as well as its accounting data. For the vehicle specification database, POS-I-LUBEa uses a licensed Check Chart subscribed database available through a secured connection. This is where the monthly fee ($250.00) comes into play. Recommended hard drive size is 1GB by the manufacturer Auto Dataa.

This menu driven package is designed to be mouse driven, with no typing required, offering less opportunity for mistakes. This also make the system very user friendly with very little training required.

This all-inclusive package offers greater reliability than many other products available in the marketplace. The STAR Pro VII @ $ 1847.00, and the Shopman Standard Version 3.0 @ $299.00 are alternatives. While the STAR Pro VII offers much of the inventory, report generating and accounting functions of the POS-I-LUBEa system it does not offer the database query functions to reference vehicle specifications. The budget priced Shopman Standard Version 3.0 only offers the repair orders and invoices. This reliability of the POS-I-LUBEa system is due partly to the fact that it is all inclusive and not pieced together from non-compatible software.

The initial cost of this software is under $2,000.00, with a small annual fee for real-time database queries ($250.00). The hardware is user supplied and can fluctuate in cost depending on the specifications desired by the user.

For the requirements that I desired, Della provided the best solution for the money. I decided on the Workstation 410 with the following features.

Dual 9.1GB SCSI, Ultra2/Wide LVD (7200rpm) hard drives

The dual hard drives add a redundancy that is essential when your business is so reliant on such a system in case of failure on one drive. The Zip drive is for maintaining current backups and off-site storage for disaster recovery. Total cost of Della system is $94.00 per month on their business lease plan. This fully meets, and/or exceeds the system specifications required by Auto Dataa (see operations manual). I chose the lease program as it offers a service agreement throughout the extent of the lease, as well as the option to periodically upgrade due to the moderate terms of the lease (3 years).

In addition to this, there are the required periphrials, as follows.

Okidata Microline 321 Turbo parallel printer @ $451.91

Star Micronics SP322C Printer @ $379.00

3COM 56Kb Internal Modem @ $95.00

Symantec PCanyWhere v9.0 @ 169.95

Indiana Metal Cash Drawer @ $315.00

The dot matrix printer is for the creation of the customer billing record and receipt, while the other printer produces the employee work order in the service area with all the vehicle specifications.

As required by Auto Dataa, all software must be installed and tested by their technicians at their facility at an additional cost of $100. Shipping is not included and runs approximately $25.00.

In addition to these costs, there are also the costs of printer cables, forms, multi-jack surge and phone line protector, or small UPC system with active system protection. This is figured into the cost as a miscellaneous expense of $400.00. The initial total cost to this system is under $4,200.00. With a monthly expense of $345.00 plus costs of forms, backup tapes, printer maintenance, etc. Overall, this is a very cost effective solution that can be written off as a tax deduction as a cost of doing business. The initial startup expense is very low due to the leasing program offered by Della.

All systems testing should be completed when system is completely installed, less the inventory information, as preliminary testing has been done at the time of the software installation. This testing should consist of entering vehicle specifications while cross- referencing returned data with a known, reliable source, verifying printouts to both the service area as well as the customer billing form. Upon successful completion of testing, all inventory information must be inputted into the database, along with cost figures. After the inventory data has been inputted, more testing will be required in order to test the inventory tracking procedures and cost analysis.

When the system is tested and proven, the training of employees may commence. Auto Dataa provides, at an additional cost, remote training, although with this menu driven system this is not usually necessary. The employees will be prompted for the information required in the service process. The accounting information is available for management and will require additional training. This will be the final step in the implementation process.

Maintenance should consist of no more than servicing the printers and running the backups.

This is the most complete as well as cost effective solution I have found, utilizing off the shelf hardware and materials at an affordable cost. The hardware is common, providing easy replacement in case of failure. This is important in such a service-oriented, time-based company. For more user information, please see the accompanying user’s manual.

Carbon, a Silicon Valley startup that is developing 3-D printers to produce medical devices and car parts on demand, said on Thursday it had closed on $81 million in funding that brought the total it has raised to $222 million.

“We wanted to go find investors that share the scope of our vision and realize what we are talking about here is industrial re-invention,” Kirk Phelps, Carbon vice president of product management, told Reuters at the company’s headquarters in Redwood City, Calif.

Founded in 2013, Carbon said the funding round was led by automaker BMW Group, industrial conglomerate General Electric Co., optics and imaging products company Nikon Corp. and chemical manufacturer JSR Corp. They joined earlier investors Google Ventures and top tech venture capital firm Sequoia.

“They did an incredibly good job in getting investors,” said Terry Wohler of Wohler Associates, an additive manufacturing consultancy firm based in Colorado.

However, Wohler said “the jury is still out” on whether Carbon’s technology can match the durability of injection molding, the current industry standard for producing plastic products, or come close to its price point.

The company’s first commercial 3-D printer, the M1, is available for a $40,000 annual subscription. It uses software that controls a photochemical process that balances the way ultraviolet light and oxygen react within a pool of polymer resin to print plastic objects.

Carbon has developed various resins to diversify what can be printed. It uses heat-resistant hard resins for exterior automotive parts and soft elastic biodegradable resins for medical devices like heart stents.

The company says it can print up to 100 times faster than rival 3-D printing companies. That would be a selling point to the manufacturing industry, which until now used 3-D printing primarily as a prototyping tool.

“You can imagine that if we give clients a great on-demand manufacturing tool, it’s not just the product that changes,” Phelps said. “It’s the business that changes.”

Carbon said it would use the proceeds and newly formed partnerships with JSR and Nikon to fund its first push into international markets and to develop its technology further.

(Reporting by Ben Gruber in Redwood City, Calif.; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

33 million gods, around 10 lakh temples with more than double the number of priests, up to 40 lakh kilogram of gold treasures, annual donations worth above Rs 3,000 crore from India’s 10 richest temples, around 50 major festivals and probably less than 100 assorted pujas – performed daily to annual basis – for different good and bad occasions, right from birth till death, in fact even after death! Need to say more why Indians blindly splurge on gods?

No, but there’s certainly been a need to standardize the vast unorganized market that a handful of start-ups have already been doing, sitting on around $40 billion eye-popping pile of market opportunity.From home delivering ‘prasad’ of various temples to selling spiritual products and items required for different pujas, booking priests, conducting pujas, booking tickets and hotels to various pilgrimages etc., these start-ups are fast filling up the market wherein demand is immune from any price fluctuations all year round.

“There are around 80 crore Hindus in India that spend uninhibitedly in the name of god and religion. There are low-cost items like incense sticks, and ‘ghee’ used on daily basis and god idols that are often used for gifting purposes. From birth to death, Indians are engaged into spiritual activities of one kind or the other which makes it a huge market.

Also the market is recession proof. So, we are a niche platform offering services and products for any kind of spiritual needs,” says Tapas Mallick, Founder and CEO of Delhi-based Pujashoppe – an omnichannel store selling puja materials, puja kits, and offering services including vastu, fengshui, corporate gifting etc. Started in October 2015 with offline stores, Pujashoppe has set-up WiFi in 20 major temples across Delhi, Gujarat, Ranchi, etc. The start-up makes products through contract manufacturing under its own brand called Arghyam.

In The Name Of God

The market is fairly large given the presence of Hindu-community across the globe who wants to stay connected to their religion and motherland. “It is a high potential market given that Indians are present globally. For those who want to connect back to their roots,

these start-ups help bring that spiritual connect to these people. The demand is there but there has been a lack of supply of right content about different religious sites and products required for different pujas under one roof which is what these start-ups are enabling,” says Ajay Ramasubramaniam, Director, Zone Startups India.

Mumbai-based accelerator’s womenonly six-week accelerator program ‘empoWer’ that concluded in August 2016 had Shubhpuja, which organizes various online pujas and offers different astrology and related services on its platform, as one of its winners receiving Rs 5 lakh equity-free funding. The idea of launching one of its kind e-puja platform came to Saumya Vardhan (founder, Shubhpuja), Ex-KPMG and Ernst & Young transaction services consultant, in May 2013 when her best friend’s father passed away.

“I realized that 13-day post-death rituals were highly elaborated and technical. I had no clue how all that needs to be organized in such a situation. So I took the risk of leaving a high-paying job in London and launched Shubhpuja in December 2013,” recalls Vardhan, who put around Rs 10 lakh initially.

Religious tourism is another pocket of disruption hard to be ignored in the online space even though travel portals like MakeMyTrip, Yatra etc., have been offering pilgrimage packages. Religious tourism unaffected by changing travel market dynamics have helped online travel portals sail through economic slump. Rachna Gulati who launched operations for a similar travel portal only for religious tours and travel bookings called MyHolyTour in January 2016 says the content or information that it offers about various religious sites is a significant differentiator for them from MakeMyTrip and Yatra.

“These portals don’t provide you complete information such as the temple’s historical significance, nearby places to visit, how to reach, etc. So, the information is scattered online. This will be the big differentiator for us along with the fact that we offer flight and hotel booking services at the same price of Yatra and MakeMyTrip. The market is growing by more than 30 percent annually with lot of inbound travelers of different religions for e.g. Buddhists that come from countries like Japan, China, and Singapore,” says 42-year-old Gulati with 18 years of finance background. MyHolyTour offers information for more than 650 sites of different religions across India. It has divided states and famous temples in circuits like Ujjain circuit, Vaishno Devi circuit, Jain circuit, Sufi circuit, and Varanasi circuit.

Mixed Blessing

Contrary to the belief that elderly people are more engrossed in spiritual and religious activities, these start-ups surprisingly have the younger lot as their ideal customers. “People who buy from us are all under 30, some of them are even college kids,” adds Mallick. Vardhan echoes similar numbers. “There are lots of mid 20s and 30s people who have relationship and career related problems.

In fact our ideal clients are between 30 and 48 years of age.” Shubhpuja even aims to invoke the almighty to sway away any sort of ‘negativity’ through pujas for black magic, ‘Kalsarp dosh’ etc. “People often come up for aura healings and healings through mantras if they feel bit negative within themselves. For this, they can seek spiritual help from us through respective pujas,” says Vardhan.

The challenges of bringing the spiritual market online is akin to what existing retail and travel markets went through in their early days – lack of awareness among people to buy and transact for such services online. While social media and word of mouth happens to be the way out for this nascent market, it is not easy to establish authenticity among people about such platforms for spiritual needs neither people are willing to swipe their cards online for gods to make offerings.

“Spirituality is very close to people’s hearts in India, so they would want to have the touch-and-feel factor in spiritual goods and making offerings in cash unlike in other categories,” believes Mallick. PujaShoppe gets 90 percent of its revenue from its 15 offline stores, out of which five are franchised. Online spiritual market will certainly take time to take off. None of the existing players in the market have been able to raise any decent amount of funding (Bengaluru-based ePuja $3 million raise from Brand Capital in June 2015 was the largest deal announced).

Moreover another Bengaluru-based start-up OnlinePrasad backed by venture building platform GrowthStory founder and one of India’s most prolific angel investors, K Ganesh, is looking to pivot from its existing model of home delivering prasad from more than 50 temples after various temple authorities raised objection of the start-up collecting prasad every now and then, says one of the investors in OnlinePrasad requesting anonymity. Nonetheless, it does seem that these start-ups will have to seek some divine intervention for themselves to get their economics right even as they try not to succumb to heavy discounting.

This type of foreboding statistic is becoming more common in business conversations, but have you ever stopped to think about the reasoning behind such dire figures? Often it’s because the startup skipped a vital step in the process: idea validation.

In other words, most startups fail because founders assume their idea is golden. They develop a revolutionary concept (or so they think) and work like crazy to launch it. But they don’t spend time consulting real-life customers to validate the idea itself.

The failed investment-aggregator startup Monitor110 provides a classic example of an unvalidated idea. In investor Roger Ehrenberg wrote the company was “not close enough to the customer” and “slow to adapt to market reality.” Instead of rolling out a rough-around-the-edges version and getting customer feedback, startup leaders opted to spend their time and money creating what they believed was the most compelling product possible. They never validated their bold idea, and that error proved to be a factor in their demise.

Related: 

Monitor110 and too many other defunct startups fail to realize the importance of soliciting early feedback from users. Most companies never ask the basic question, “Are people actually interested in our product?” It’s simple almost to the point of being insulting. That doesn’t change the fact it’s also extremely vital to your success.

Done correctly, idea validation can let a startup know if an idea has real market potential, needs tweaking or should be completely scrapped. While customer feedback is invaluable throughout a startup’s life, it’s especially important early on. At this stage, you can use feedback to mold your product into a solution for your customers’ pressing needs. 

Related:

That said, you can’t simply conduct a survey for a few days and rely on that. Idea validation thrives on a wide variety of customer feedback. Your product stands to see the greatest improvement if you get detailed opinions from a large group of people. Ask them what they need from the product. Then, analyze common trends and modify your product to fit those needs.

Here are a few ways to validate your idea the right way.

1. Conduct beta testing.

Send your product out in the world and into the hands of its target audience. You’ll get invaluable feedback from the right people. Their impressions and input will enable you to mold the product to meet your users’ needs. That’s more than any market research ever could accomplish.

2. Embrace the lean philosophy.

Eric Ries’ seminal book,  proved rolling out your minimal viable product (MVP) early will create a vital feedback loop. Don’t focus so much on product development that you neglect customer engagement. Create a working prototype and launch it, even if only to a small group.

3. Validate everything — even your brand.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking only your product needs validation. Examine everything from your brand to your website copy. Observe how users react to every aspect. Making changes based on these suggestions helps you improve not only your product but also your brand as a whole.

Related: 

The best startups aren’t made in a bubble. You need feedback from the flesh-and-blood customers you’re targeting. If your idea is no good, you’ll be able to abandon ship much sooner and suffer fewer losses. Validating means finding the best product/market fit and shaping your startup around your customers’ needs. The ultimate result is a better brand for you and your product.

Three enthusiastic  and experienced executives from Sridhar Vembu’s decided to graduate as entrepreneurs in 2015 and got together to form Zarget – which is a SaaS-based web optimization and marketing platform that provides comprehensive solutions for small- and medium-sized businesses.

The Chennai-based startup has recently raised $6 million Series A round of funding, led by Sequoia India, with participation from current investors Accel and Matrix Partners. Zarget also counts as one of its angel investors.

In a telephone conversation with Entrepreneur Media from California, co-founder Arvind Parthiban took us through the team’s steadfast journey and experience as entrepreneurs.

The triggering point for Zarget was at a cricket ground!

“As a marketer in Zoho we did a campaign for one of the products I was handling. So basically to market a product we already had I had to completely depend on my product manager for every single thing. We happened to then discuss about a product with the existing tools on a cricket ground with my co-founder Naveen Venkat at that time. In the process this discussion of how to handle the project became serious and then he said we can achieve this with a Chrome plugin.  We then started to look at this solution (plugin) very seriously as it could address many problems. That was the triggering point for the whole idea of starting Zarget,” he said.

With Zarget’s all-in-one platform, any business owner has an easy and affordable way to become an effective digital marketer and improve performance of their websites instantly, without learning how to code or hiring an expensive IT department.

The best part being, businesses gain access to the industry’s first Chrome plugin that lets you make changes instantly from within the browser. This eliminates the kind of complexity and costs that are typically only available for large enterprise teams.

Convincing investors from the word go

In a very short period of time, Zarget has managed to win some of the best investors in the business. Arvind said that this was mainly due a decade’s experience the founding members had in the SaaS industry wherein they were aware of the business model, strong market opportunity and started out with the right team. Within a very short period of time, Zarget has managed to clock in more than 1000 customers, 200 percent growth month-on-month and win some big, international customers.

The Zoho Exposure

Zarget was founded by three SMB entrepreneurs, Arvind, Naveen and Santhosh Kumar, who spent a decade at Zoho building business productivity tools and customer relationship management software.

Speaking about the founding team’s experience Zoho said, “Zoho is definitely a reason for where we are today. One thing that Zoho definitely added value was the exposure it gave us in the product management category…For the past 20 years, Zoho has been building products in India. We were fortunate enough to be a part of Zoho’s product journey to learn how to build a world class product from India for international markets,” Arvind said.

As per Arvind at Zarget, the team was very clear on not going to the market in a hurry and not try to get revenue out of the product without figuring out the sole purpose of the product. “One thing we were very sure of was not to build yet another tool wherein the market was crowded with plenty of other competitors. We wanted to solve a real point!” he said

Internal target is to onboard 20,000 customers in the near term. 60 percent of its customers come from North America, while India being its second biggest market. Brazil is another important market for the company.

The authors clearly show how high-tech is applied to different areas of marketing mix and supply chain logistics to help meal-kit delivery companies create competitive advantage and have high customer satisfaction and retention rates. Unfortunately the authors are not able to provide us with the numbers for those rates, as they only state opinions of meal-kit entrepreneurs. The importance of computer applications is emphasized in a creation of the product to model recipes, measure prospective demand and stay connected electronically with producers and supplies of meals ingredients.

According to the authors, it allows companies more planning and agility while working with seasonal or variable ingredient supply and at the same time pursuing a goal of losing less than 1 % of perishable inventory, which would seem surprisingly low to the reader, comparing to produce waste and spoilage In other food businesses. Internet, Mobil and social media technologies are the main methods used for promotion of the product to the target market of Americans who want to order fresh food online.

This Is an Important aspect for growth, as young generations will probably appreciate mime saving and convenience of Internet ordered fresh meals, despite the fact that at $10-12 they are more expensive then store bought frozen dinners, for example. At the low-tech end companies outsource the delivery to the 3-d party, which reduces capital Investment, but at the same time, the authors note, Involves risk of putting customer experience out of companies’ control.

Computer technology also plays Important part In a supply chain Integration. While technology can’t always help In all aspects of business, the authors argue, by presenting the example of a meal-kit pending on its ingredients, they indicate, that another company plans to create their own warehouse management software to help track orders and productivity of each of its workers. I found this article relevant to the subject of our class, as it discusses many different aspects of marketing.

It also combines feature which are important and interesting to me as a part of my Bal studies with its emphasis on importance of computer technology in elements of marketing mix, supply chain management, logistics and building business competitive advantage. As the future of the Internet grows so do the opportunities for business success for companies that utilize high-tech in their customer relationship management.

Technology and sophisticated process of data mining allows innovative businesses to focus on details and customer experience and satisfaction by providing the products and services that their target audiences demand. I consider The Wall Street Journal a credible source as the newspaper is well established, has the largest circulation in US and a reputation of credibility. It has special emphasis on business and economic news.