There are several rounds of financing. The initial corpus or “seed money” is provided by the founders. Normally the founders borrow from their friends or family to start a business. Sometimes Angel funding is available, but not always. Once the business is up and running, the startup owner can make a pitch for Venture Capital Funding.

The amount of funds received depends upon several factors like scalability, barriers to entry, technology available and competitors in the market. There are several stages of funding too: Series A, B, C and D. Outside capital is invested in return of some shares or debentures. There is also something call Bridge or Mezzanine financing just before the IPO hits the market. Finally there is the IPO which is basically the payback time for Venture Capital Fund Owners.

Not many succeed when it comes to raising V.C funds. The ones with a scalable, service oriented model are more successful in making the cut. So build a scalable business, wow your customers with super good services and the good times will roll.

The main focus of this discussion is reducing the emergency response time. Most victims make the big mistake of not trusting their instincts until it is too late. Every minute is precious and one should not delay much before sending a distress call. If you’re going out alone, make sure somebody you know is reachable on the phone. It helps if you have more than one contact on your speed dialing list as it means that more people are in a position to help once they’re cued into your situation.

A personal emergency number can reduce the emergency response time by sending out distress messages to more than one contact at the press of a button. The recorded message can be customized before the journey and sent out to the contact list in the event of an emergency.

Using a PEN is quite simple and quick. In order to register for this service, the number given in the scratch card is entered in the website to activate the account. Once the account is running, the user can record a customized message and add the contacts.

We have to thank the rise of social media for most of these changes.  Now, it is easier, create an advertisement to target “groups of people” with similar “orientation” and “presto” you have more leads than you can handle. Earlier, it was more of an “individual” thing. You created an advertisement, ran it for a few weeks on print or T.V, hoping to drive your leads to a form or phone.  However, the problem with advertisement is the cost. It is very costly to create leads using traditional advertisement.

Don’t worry! There are other options. For example you can use a cloud telephony platform to get high quality leads from your business without busting your bank. It is a simple and non invasive way of new “customer acquisitions”. But, before you shoot that email to your local directory service provider, asking for auto generated leads, you must make sure they have a cloud telephony interface on board.  Once you are sure, you can request for the leads to be sent automatically to your email or phone.

The leads generated above are what you call “hot” leads.  They need very little convincing. You can convert them into sales right away if talk to them right away. From a salesman’s point of view this is somewhat similar to “cherry picking” leads. Even if you don’t win a sale, you have created a favorable impression on a subconscious level. Who knows you may get a sale later on, when the need arises again.

It takes more than sheer passion to gain ground in a new retail segment, especially in an impulsive economy like India. Nonetheless, with their perseverance, exceptional business acumen, tireless labor, and the vision to make it big, three young entrepreneurs have emerged as market leaders in e-commerce home furnishing segment in India, just within 12 months of setting up base.

A tete-e-tete with the Managing Director and one of the Co-founders of FabFurnish.com – Vaibhav Aggarwal:

How did the idea of FabFurnish come to your mind?

Let me share an interesting fact. While the largest organized player is only $200-300 million, Indian home furnishing market in itself is worth more than $15 billion! So there’s a huge growth potential in this segment. Besides, shopping for home in local Indian markets, even in metros, is quite a painful process owing to its largely unorganized setup. This is where the idea of by helping people beautify their homes, by venturing into this untapped segment, clicked to us.

What are the services provided by FabFurnish?

We are a dedicated online shopping destination for designer furniture, furnishings, décor items and kitchenware. Our USP lies in -

1) Large, rare, stylish collection – We have an assortment of more than 7,000 tastefully picked home products, across a varied price range to cater to every customer’s individual needs. Also, we are introducing new categories which are not available easily offline. Name it and we have it – recliners, collapsible storage, bakeware, et al.

2) Thorough product display – We provide nearly 10 photographs of almost all furniture items to help people take an informed decision. A consumer can get a complete 360-view of any product that he is looking to buy. We have also started putting in usage and assembly videos for all the bulky furniture items. We want to set a benchmark when it comes to product imagery and presentation in e-commerce.

3) Convenient payment options - As offering COD (cash on delivery) is not a viable option for furniture items, we have introduced a “part-payment” method, where a customer can pay some amount through cart and the rest is cash on delivery. To facilitate high value transaction, we have also started offering offline NEFT bank transfers.

What were the initial challenges you faced while introducing the concept of online shopping?

Online furniture buying is a very nascent segment and we are proud to be the leader in developing this category. We, initially, had concerns over the touch-and-feel factor involved in furniture buying, especially in Indian market scenario. However, the traction we have seen in last one year has been very encouraging.

How did you cope with the challenges?

Our detailed product explanations (material, dimensions, reference shots, and more), 360-degree product views, usage/assembly guidance videos, and 12-months warranty on several furniture products, has helped us address some of the touch-and-feel concerns of Indian shoppers, and establish ourselves as the market leader in online furniture segment.

How did you form your core team?

We have a highly qualified team running different functions. I and my two colleagues – Vikram Chopra and Mehul Agrawal – are the company’s Co-Founders and Managing Directors. Each of the team members was handpicked by us after rigorous screening, as the initial team members define the culture and future course of the company. One year down the line, today, I can say that we selected the best people for FabFurnish (smiles).

How do you deal with your staff and how do you keep them motivated?

Ours is a close-knit team wherein all the departments work closely with each other in pursuit of a common goal. We organize regular team outings/dinners, weekly samosa sessions, and given our team size – end up celebrating someone’s birthday almost every third day!
How do you see online shopping industry in India and abroad in the future? What is the market size?

Online shopping in India is just getting started. Still we have only 12% internet penetration in India and only a small fraction of that population actually transacts online. So, there is a lot of headroom to grow. Variety, access and convenience are three fundamental drivers of e-commerce, and they would continue to drive the industry northward. Plus, Indian women have just started to shop online!

Who are your major competitors? How do you deal with the competition?

Any e-commerce player dealing in home furniture or furnishings is our competitor. We prefer healthy competition as more competitors would help us in developing this nascent online market faster. We differentiate ourselves with our niche and carefully curated collection, our product imagery, multitude of payment options offered, and superior customer service. Moreover, we are very innovative when it comes to marketing, and that has given us an edge in this competition.

What is the business model?

We are a dedicated online shopping destination for furniture, furnishings, decor and kitchenware.

Qualities an entrepreneur should have.

As per me, essentially 4 key qualities -  ability to build a AAA team, being innovative when finding growth hacks, persistence, and ability to prioritise work among many options always available.

Vishal Saxena

What about the Indian market? Is our market prepared for the next wave of disruptive technology? Do we’ve the infrastructure needed to provide services of the highest order? Luckily yes. Thanks to initiatives taken by the government, infrastructure is not a limiting factor. We’re not lacking in manpower either, with our engineering institutes churning out thousands of well trained engineering graduates every year.

Similarly the market is very interested in cloud telephony as it is cost effective and scalable. It is just not about costs. Cloud telephony is a superior platform compared to conventional telephony as it provides additional services like call management, call forwarding, call recording, IVR and CRM. The superior services provided is one of the biggest reasons why cloud telephony is disrupting the telephony segment in India and abroad.

The future looks bright for cloud telephony services providers in India. In the next ten years it’s going to be in such widespread acceptance, that we won’t really have physical telecom infrastructure in our offices anymore. This cloud migration is already underway as businesses are shifting their communications to the cloud every day.

As with all disruptive technology, cloud telephony will usher in the next generation of solution providers. The ones that see the opportunity and can best adapt their solution and business models will benefit while the laggards will be left playing catch-up. The notion of customer service center will not change, it will still be there. However, the look ‘n’ feel will evolve as business use cloud technology to take their customer engagement processes to the next level.

Pallav Pandey

In 2011, the British oil and gas firm entered into an initial agreement with India’s state-owned Gujarat State Petroleum Corp to explore supplying as much as 2.5 million tonnes of LNG per year.

The Financial Times reported that BG will sign a final deal on Wednesday confirming the full value of the contract and the date of its commencement.

The deal could be worth $20 billion although the ultimate value would depend on the fluctuating price of LNG, FT said citing analysts.

We were celebrating the first anniversary of our website when my wife exclaimed, “I wish you huge success so much that one day may your model be placed at Madame Tussuads museum in London”.  Appreciation and that too from your wife can be alarming sometimes but fortunately it was genuine.

Next morning I was browsing the website of Madame Tussuads museum and suddenly screamed “Hey! Do you remember the board, giving out direction towards the Celebrity Wax Museum at Lonavala”? “Yes I remember and I know that you have got another story to work upon”, replied my wife.  “Well! yes you are right. I really want to see the work at Lonavala museum”.

The very next morning I packed my bags and was on my way to Lonavala.  A mere 3 hour drive by road from Mumbai, beautifully landscaped Lonavala and Khandala are famous for their seemingly innumerable varieties of chikki.  Apart from that they also offer many sites worth visiting.  Trekking is a good way to get around, but having a vehicle (even a bicycle) is still better, as some points of interest are quite some distance from the main towns. While driving I reflected upon my determination that I would go places to dig out the entrepreneurs from every nook and corner of our country to know their stories and make them known.

As I entered Lonavala I saw the board of Della Amusement park stating it as India’s largest amusement park and I had decided upon my next another entrepreneur. India is full of entrepreneurs and bright ideas and it is really inspiring when you meet them and hear their success story. After a ten minutes drive I reached Celebrity Wax Museum. I asked a man sitting in a cabin “I want to meet Mr. Sunil Kandalloor (founder of the Museum)”. “Yes I am Sunil”, he replied. He was sitting comfortably in a blue sweat shirt and jeans with a properly trimmed moustache complementary to his well groomed hair.

I introduced myself and he advised me to have a look at the wax models before the interview. I entered the museum and the first wax model I came across was of our Bapu Mahatma Gandhi. I was awe struck at the precision of model. It gave me a feeling that Gandhiji himself was sitting in a calm pose. Then I came across Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Kapil dev, A.R. Rehman, H.H. Sri Sri Ravinshankar and many more. It housed wax models of Innocent, a famous actor of Malayalam films too.

As I was lost in the world of wax I suddenly screamed when one of the models moved. “Sir, don’t worry I am one of the staff members”, said the girl. “Gosh! I thought you were one of the models”, I replied. After the eerie experience I entered another room and found Jackie Shroff leaning against the wall and staring at me. Every inch in me was ready to scream once more but I reposed myself. Then I came across Saddam Hussein, Adolf Hitler. The pictures of wax models have been posted along side.

After having seen the collection of models I felt as if I have met all the personalities personally. With that feeling I came out to meet the man behind it. We chose his cabin for the interview and I began with my first question.

“How did you start the museum?” I asked. “As an artist I had an idea to do something special and creative. I have diploma in finance. I wanted to do something very different. This was totally a different profession. There is no prescribed syllabus for wax work.  I struggled a lot to find out the techniques for making wax models. Behind every wax model one artist should be there to give a human touch to it. Each wax model has its own specifications. Through a London based magazine I got to know that artists use original hair and original dresses to give it a personal touch. I spent eight years on my hobby for experimenting on certain factors like the type of wax to be used, shades of color to be used, the type of hair and clothes to be selected. My first experimental wax model was the upper half of Lord Krishna in which fixing up the eyeball was the most important part and my first full figure model was of the Honorable chief minister of Kerala. I opened up my first celebrity Wax Museum at KanyaKumari with twenty five wax models. In the year 2000 we opened up a museum at Lonavala and my dream is to make it big in Mumbai as Madam Tussade in London. For making a wax model of personalities we need to contact them first. It was not possible while sitting in Kerala. But after having opened a museum at Lonavala I met many of them as we need to take permission from these celebrities to have the specifications of their figures for that they have to spend two to three hours with us in order to complete this process. Likewise we met Kapil Dev and we made his wax model in a month’s time and it came out perfectly. We have thirty five models in Lonavala museum. I have plans to complete fifty models in another six months and then we would shift base to Mumbai”, he replied.

I was full of praise at the simplicity and determination of Sunil.  The way he described his journey itself was telltale of the hard work that he has put for the museum to be set. He gets chance to meet celebrities and to make their wax model which is revenue generating too. Well that’s what we call passion being converted into profession.

A phrase that I had read somewhere started playing in my mind “The most difficult thing comes from the most simple man” I broke my chain of thoughts and asked “What were the initial challenges”?   “When I entered this field no one knew about wax models. It was only after Amitabh Bachchan’s wax model was unveiled in Madame Tussuads museum, Indians came to know about this concept but even before that I had Amitabh’s wax model at my Kanyakumari museum. Money was an issue as my plan was to set up a museum having at least fifteen to twenty wax models. I met all the expenses from my own pocket and with the help of friends and family. The cost per model is around Rupees One lakh fifty thousand. So for the first ten years it was only expense. We started the museum at Kanyakumari with sixteen models and no revenues were generated in the first year but when we opened up a museum at Lonavala we got support from people. On an average one thousand two hundred people visits the museum daily”.

Yes! it is a hard fact to digest. Even I had overlooked the museum for almost a year and it was only when my wife gave an indication I remembered of it. It is human tendency, we fail to recognize talent next door and search for it worldwide.

“What is your Team size?”  I asked after recollecting myself. “We are three brothers involved in this journey.  Subash looks after marketing and Sujit looks after administration. I am involved in the sculpting part. Moreover I have one assistant Harish who helps me in making the wax models. We have twenty employees at Lonavala museum”, he replied.

“What is your message for budding entrepreneurs?” I asked my final question. “An entrepreneur should have something different in his or her mind. Some unique technique or an idea should be there. There should be a stride for exploring this idea or technique. An entrepreneur must have a positive mindset”.

At the end of the interview he said “I will make it big in South Mumbai (The so called SOBO) just watch”. I wished him good luck and said ‘Amen’ in my mind. I returned back with total respect and awe for this simple next door man.

Vishal Saxena

The acquisition will enable ValueFirst to execute media campaigns on its opt-in consumer base of more than 25 Mn.

Clk2c’s mobile video greetings offering will be integrated with FullOnSMS. com, a Valuefirst website that allows users to send free text messages to any mobile phone user in India.

To begin with,the Future Group will announce a deal in the life insurance JV, where Mumbai-based non-banking finance company Industrial Investment Trust (IITL) is picking up a 22.5% stake for.280-300 crore. IITL will also have the option of buying an additional 1.5% stake within the next one year. Since 2007,the Biyani-promoted Future Group has had two partnerships with Generali for life and general insurance. While the Future Group owns 74% in both, the Italian financial conglomerate owns 26% the highest permissible limit under Indian laws. Of the 74%, Biyanis flagship Pantaloon Retail owns 50% either directly or via special purpose vehicles while the promoter family owns the remaining 24%. 

Ambarish Gupta, Founder, Knowlarity talks to Vishal Saxena about the success story of his venture. Ambarish has global work experience in business strategy, marketing, technology and organizational effectiveness. He worked for McKinsey & Company in US as strategy consultant and Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics, Germany as researcher. He graduated from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur with degree in Computer Science in 2000 and MBA from Carnegie Mellon University, USA in 2007

How did Knowlarity start?

After passing out from IIT Kanpur I worked for three years in Silicon Valley in Australia. I came to India in 2004 and started an online real estate brokerage company but it didn’t work out as it was not a good time for online business and no venture capitalist was there to fund the business. I went back to U.S and did my MBA and worked with McKinsey.

In the year 2008 I sensed a revolution in telephony industry. I was watching this industry very closely and I observed that it was for the first time that you could reach masses in an automated fashion. An enterprise could use this technology for customer support and marketing.

The idea was to build a platform which was flexible enough and which could provide hardware facilities without any worries. I approached naukri.com and other companies and told them that I can give them a phone number with a welcome message and that too without any hardware and that too at a low cost. That’s how Knowlarity was born.

What were the initial challenges while setting up Knowlarity?

The main challenge was of funding as the investors were still recovering from sub-prime crises. We approached Mr. Naveen Patnaik, Chief Minister of Orissa and offered to help him out in his election campaign with the help of SuperCaller. With just seven days left for the elections, he was planning to visit every place in a chopper. We told him that we can make a call to everyone in Orissa with an automated voice message saying, “I am Naveen Patnaik, please vote for me”. He approved the plan. We worked three days at a stretch without sleep and built up the system. We made seventy lakh calls in a week and earned one rupee per call. Mr. Naveen Patnaik won the election and then we approached him again and suggested that he should thank everyone in his constituency for electing him and that was done with the help of SuperCaller once again. So another seventy lakh calls were made and we earned one rupee per call once again. We used the revenues to build a high technology platform and Knowlarity was established.

What is the team size and how do you keep your employees motivated?

Around two hundred people are working with Knowlarity. We have 2 lakh customers using our facilities out of which 5 thousand are paying customers. We recruit young and energetic people. We connect with the employees personally and that helps in keeping them grounded and motivated.

 What are the services provided by Knowlarity?

We provide Super Receptionist, Smart IVR and Super Fax. With Super Receptionist, the callers can be diverted to multiple departments. Even if the office is small, multiple departments can be created to give the impression of a bigger company.

Every Super Fax account comes with its own dedicated phone number and that’s just for the client’s use. There’s no need to share a fax machine with other departments or offices. We give a personalized phone number.

Smart IVR gives a completely new way of handling calls and automates the business communications – whether internal or external. Customizable call flow logic, cloud-based calling capability and database integration keeps customers happy and employees connected.

How do you manage competition and what is the market size of this industry?

There are lots of small players in this field. We have created a market and other players are joining us in the competition. We have no worries as we are confident of our high quality services. The market size of this industry is one billion dollar.

Is there any difference in the working style of Indian entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs abroad?

Entrepreneurs in India are more flexible and persistent. They find one way or the other to solve their problems. Indian entrepreneurs are willing to compromise but they lack discipline as compared with the entrepreneurs abroad.

‘Message’ for budding entrepreneurs

Start a company, don’t think too much. Work with integrity, passion and be persistent in your approach.

Vishal Saxena