India’s business landscape is going more and more desirable. Every year about 1000 global brands contemplate of entering into the Indian market. With its retail sector alone contributing to 10% to the world’s GDP, India’s B2B e-commerce market is also expected to reach $700 Billion by 2020. With all the great numbers and an enterprising environment on its side, India continues to be the ‘child prodigy’ in the global market.
Innovation in the ‘way of doing it’ has inspired great businesses all across the world. This ‘innovation in method’ has a special significance in the Indian market as it is closely linked to what Indians are world-famous for, ‘Jugaad’!
Here are some of the flourishing ventures that have made fortunes totally based on innovating ‘how things are done!’
Faircent.com
Faircent.com is the leading fintech company in India. A marketplace for borrowers and lenders to connect directly, Faircent empowers consumers who are burdened with high interest rates and lenders who end up with returns that fall short of beating the prevailing inflation. Faircent.com is a P2P platform that allows for both auctioning and reverse auctioning. According to Rajat Gandhi, founder of the company, “The DNA of the company is to provide credit on demand.” Rajat and his team realised how ‘recurrent’ credit is in our lives and they made a venture out of it!
IndiBlogger
For most people, blogging serves as a good leisure activity, or, to make it sound a little better, a platform for discussing ideas. But then, someone thought blogs can be harnessed into making huge money. IndiBlogger today, is a Rs. 1 crore venture. Founded by four young professionals- Ravin, Karthik DR, Vineet Rajan and Anoop Johnson, IndiBlogger is indeed a ‘jugaad’ in the regular system. Here’s how it works: Registering one’s blog is free, but the members must publish at least 7 blog posts to continue to be part of the community. The revenue comes from connecting brands and bloggers via blogging contests and meets, organised periodically. Their clients include Lakme, Appollo Hospitals, Mahindra & Mahindra, Vodafone, Dove, Samsung and Fiat, to name a few.
Gourmetdelight
Getting good quality fruits and vegetables in India is a tedious task. This becomes even more tiresome when you need the less popular organic food items like chevre log or Aloe Vera leaves. Raka Chakrawarti, founder, decided to turn it into a startup! Gourmetdelight is an online organic food platform as well as a retail store, currently operating in Mumbai and Pune. With its quality products and services Gourmetdelight has become a popular name in the business space of the financial capital. The business model is one of the many examples of how going online can boost your business to unprecedented levels.
Inspirock
Founded by Prakash Sikchi and Anoop Goyal, Inspirock is a California based holiday planning startup. The business is simple, it plans holidays for customers. What makes it special is however the high level customisation it provides in creating vacation itinerary based on personal interests, within seconds. The idea was generated on a vacation itself when Prakash and Anoop were discussing how difficult it is for people to have great vacations. They closely experienced a ‘consumer- need’ and converted it into a ‘business idea’. They took charge and turned from consumers to entrepreneurs!
Kyra Natural Detergents: Inverted Business Model
Chennai based Preethi Sukumaran and Srinivas Krishnaswamy, spouses-turned-business partners, opted out of the corporate world on the same day, 31 January 2009. They did not set up the venture in the conventional way of launching the product first and then promoting it. In fact they decided to turn the complete model upside down. After registering the company, while they were looking out for sourcing their product, working on the website design and other back-end issues, they started a facebook page and a blog. By the time the product was launched in May 2011, Kyra had built a potential customer base in a sensationally economical amount of just Rs 6 lakh. In 2013, just two years down the product-launch Kyra boasted sales of about Rs 1 Lakh a month, which is a magnificent amount for any small business at an early stage.
Thinking of starting up? Look up for the opportunities on ‘how’. ‘How’ can something be made simpler, smarter and better?
Happy Venturing!
