Coronavirus outbreak has majorly affected the businesses globally.
Approximately. 71% of businesses, particularly startups and small businesses
are witnessing a slow demand for their products and services due to the
coronavirus pandemic.
When any crisis hits the market, the foremost and significant thing to do is to plan a crisis management checklist for your business. It’s crucial for you and your team members to analyze the situation and then, plan a potential strategy to cope with the crisis. From communication to important messages, your business strategies should be planned and clear in advance.
So, here are a few tips that will help you to reframe the marketing
strategies for your business during the coronavirus outbreak.
1 – Make it a Marketing Opportunity
As the outbreak of coronavirus has led to the downfall of businesses significantly, thus it becomes more important to focus on creating marketing opportunities in a better way. Try to shift the mindset of the people from the coronavirus crisis! Further, add creativity, productivity, and innovation to your marketing that hopefully makes profits.
2 – Keep your Customers Updated
As the coronavirus outbreak is a major crisis globally, thus it is crucial to inform and update your customers on how you will run your business. Whether it’s a voicemail or email, your marketing strategies must include messages that inform and update your customers. Moreover, just make sure that whatever trick or tip you choose should be good enough. You can also add an FAQ section in the middle of your email so that all the queries are majorly resolved.
3 – Lucrative yet Worthy Offer
It’s always a great offer that makes up a customer’s mind to ‘go for it’. In the time of crisis, you can show your customers how much you care about them, by simply offering them great deals and offers. Putting up the right offer in front of your customers is absolutely important and that’s all they actually care about. Therefore, serve your customers with the best of deals and discounts, which make them ponder, how to avail it, when it’s available and how can I get it, etc.
4 – Engage with your Employees
Another essential step to be taken for marketing strategy during coronavirus outbreak is to connect with your employees. You can get your employees either on conference calls or video calls to plan out for further. From brainstorming to think uniquely creative ideas, you can take advantage of the lockdown period due to the spread of coronavirus to engage them into something meaningful.
CONCLUSION
To sum it all up, your marketing strategy for the crisis must include
all the above-mentioned tips and tricks to make it a significant opportunity
for your business during coronavirus pandemic
outbreak!
Not to mention it, your marketing approach is only beneficial when your
business has an emergency cash flow that actually makes the process quite
smooth, easy and quick.
From embracing new sales channels to preparing yourself for the pent-up demand, the marketing approach must be comprehensive and worthwhile. Even if your business gets affected by the outbreaks and crisis, accept them and embrace the opportunities to spring back firmly!
Which business will give them their desirable profit? And due to this commotion, these entrepreneurs spend their time and money as well on doing useless things. However, once you get in touch with the team of Evolvers, I’m damn sure of this fact that you won’t even get a chance to waste your time on such things.
Apart from this, startup business ideas mean a lot when it is the one which is going to be your own business startup. Also, it determines the growth and sustainability of your business as you will be investing almost everything, like your time, energy and money too. This is such a generation, where people, where people are following their dreams and are choosing their passion. They are actually seeking for the happiness over making more money. Such budding entrepreneurs are always greedy for those innovative business ideas that can feed their hunger of passion.
I think this article from Evolvers is surely going to be your one of the most favorites as it wholeheartedly offers some impeccable business ideas that can help them by proving numerous options to choose from as one of their business ideas. So, here we go…
1. Social Media Management
This is considered to be one of the most desirable as well as the best startup idea among others. This is all because, these days, social media is used by numerous organizations to get their deals done in an efficient way. Apart from this fact, social media is the most reliable platform for best startup business ideas. However, there are many cases where companies don’t have enough time to pay attention towards social media management and thus you can now add value to your small business by using social media as a tool for marketing of your business. With the help of social media, you can reach out to your targeted customers in even broader aspects. This is all due to the transition of people from electronic or print to the digital platform, which is social media where they can get every information of their choice. Social networking has become a trend in recent times and is revolutionizing the modes and methods of marketing.
2. Vacation Rental System
In the current scenario, under the hospitality industry, there is one such business which is popularizing with every passing day and it is none other than ‘vacation rental system’. In case you are a resident of any particular tourist destination you can definitely manage rooms for the needy ones on a rental basis who don’t have their own. You can go for many options regarding platforms where you can advertise homes. For instance, you can choose various rental-listing platforms in order to promote more traffic as well as interests of people towards your homes. The better you promote, the better you will grow your business and keep it sustained. On an average, you can expect up to 20 to 40 percent of gross rental rate if you manage such properties an extraordinary way. Henceforth, it can prove out to be one of the best startup ideas for you in 2019.
3. Flipping Websites
Flipping websites are one such business where you can earn endless cash in a short span of time. What all it deals with is just the purchase and sale of the websites on existing platforms. As business is an art, flipping websites completely deal with the research, but once you are done with it, this startup becomes an easy source of making money.
You can also go ahead for the auction of the domains or you can sell whole websites. However, the selling of websites offers more cash to the business starters. You can use various platforms to sell your websites, like, Freemarket.com or Flippa.com.
As it makes more money in a very short time, flipping websites prove out to be the best ever startups from the business point of view.
4. Gadgets Repairing
In the environment of the tech-savvy world, the use of gadgets has revolutionized at an unimaginable pace with the changing time. And as these are technical devices, they may fail sometimes to perform your desired task due to any damage or technical issue. All such issues make people more panic and despair for their loss. And in such a situation they need a helping hand of a professional who can solve their problems related to technology.
This has given rise to a new business opportunity for budding entrepreneurs. They can kick-start their business of repairing gadgets as it possesses large scope in today’s market industry of India. If the using gadgets have become a necessity of the people, then there should be someone who can even solve all the issue related to that may encounter in those devices.
What you can do here is that you can place an order for its parts and instruction kits from various manufacturing companies in order to repair any kind of electronic device. And once, when you achieve the mastery in this field, you automatically achieve success and ensure the sustainability of your business.
5. Tourism Guidance
Especially, India is world famous for its culture and heritage and so the monuments and the tourist spots are. In case you are residing at such a place which is a tourist destination and you too love to interact with different people all around every morning, then you can kick-start your business of tourism guidance. As people who are actually unaware of your place, you can let them know and impart the knowledge of any monument including its history till date.
It can prove out to be one of the biggest opportunities for your business if you have the best communication skills. Furthermore, you can advertise your services on various social media platforms and put a minimal commercial cost to your services. Apart from this, you can also go for the live Facebook presentation in order to allure people from all around the world to use your services. It helps in much more engagement of the people thus, makes your business succeed and remain sustained.
6. Online Educational Course
In the era of globalization, people are more drifted towards the knowledge and information and are much more inclined towards technology. These people are absolutely tech-savvy and can go to ultimate depths of research for their greed of knowledge. And in case you are a good educationist of you keep a desire to impart information to everyone, whether it be school or college students or anyone else, you can start your business of online educational courses’ services. If your modes and methods are loved by your target audiences, then your startup of online educational course can reach up to unimaginable success and it will also remain sustained for a longer duration. What matters the most in this business startup is that you provide quality education which is completely relatable to the target.
7. Online Advertisement Management
Since the moment, the transition has taken its place from paperwork to online media, people are seeking online platform as more than actually what it is. In the case of advertisements too, it has shifted from the electronic media to the web where you can get a chance of promoting services of numerous clients.
In the case of pay-per-click advertising, Facebook, Google, and YouTube advertisement have become dominant faces. In case you achieve the mastery in this online advertisement management, then you can grow your business in no time and in a much effective manner. Once you get an exact idea of how to track your offers of conversion, then you will be able to determine the enhancement of your startup in leaps and bounds. Henceforth, you need to give enough time to learn in a much better way about the whole functioning of the advertisements on Facebook and Google.
For furnishing your skills in this field, you can take classes or courses on the topics and discover the best modes and methods of reaching out to your targeted audiences at right time. Once you achieve your goal, there will be no delay and you can quickly bring about the saturation in the market industry of online advertisement industry. As a matter of fact, ad management on online platforms has proved itself to be the best startup business ideas.
8. Web Development And SEO
The arrival of technologies has opened the doors to employment in a much wider sense. And seeking the current scenario, it can be clearly stated that in the near future of 2019, the web development and SEO services are going to take the internet by storm. The world of web development and SEO is often considered as a complicated part of the business and not only this; people also misunderstand this field and scare of it as there are many variables that are at stake. However, it is not surprising as it consists of more than 200 algorithmic classifications of factors and this makes them hesitated before entering in this industry and do it on their own.
However, once you reach the expertise in this field, you can make splendid money. Apart from this, you can also sell your services as an SEO or web developer or else, you can build your own websites along with appropriate links to have an immense amount of cash flow through online media. Henceforth, these are considered to be one of the topmost startup business ideas that can be a good source of income.
Now, these were some of the best ever selected business ideas for all the budding entrepreneurs. However, there is always a risk attached to every single business and it is none other than the risk of failure of business startups. Now, to avoid or minimize the chances of failure of a business, what can be done? Don’t panic, as there are a few rules and regulations that you will need to do that. In this article, the team of experts at Evolvers
has mentioned a few of the rules that can help them take them out of the vortex of all the chances of business failures.
So, here we go ahead with the rules of the business startup that you need to follow that can reduce your chances of failures.
1. Be Passionate
In case, you are doing a particular business just to make money, then hang on and take a pause. Money can be a catalyzing factor of your business but it won’t get you to overcome the losses easily if you are unable to produce desirable results. For avoiding such a situation, you need to be passionate about your idea and a consistent worker towards your goal. As business requires a never-ending task for an entrepreneur, if you are not passionate about it, you won’t be able to make it what you want to. Apart from this, your business would probably sustain in the market industry. Make sure that you are enough to make others in your team passionate about your goal. So, ask yourself what will you be able to go along with your business even after 10 years and if yes, then you can surely go ahead over your ideas to achieve your success.
2. Take Things Simple
Always remember that bigger ideas are always raised and not born. It not about Brian Acton and Jan Koum who woke up one morning and planned to create WhatsApp and make it popularized in such a way that it is today. Basically, every great business ideas are initiated with some simple idea that is further grown and expanded to horizons. You can begin your business with just solving one problem that relates to one product and then expand your feet toward one customer and then reach out to many customers.
3. One Revenue System
You just need to focus on start your business for a single revenue system. In case, if you are unable to identify one revenue system, that can support our business then, you’ll be in the loss in the nearby future. And adding more to it, it will prove out to be one of the bad business ideas.
Generally, budding entrepreneurs make one of the huge mistakes that they fail to recognize their actual target customers. You need to be very careful regarding that. From the very beginning, you need to be very specific to your targeted customers who are desperately in need of your products and services. And for that, you should be clear from your mind that what you are actually. What your product contribution is and what are your plans to move ahead in your future, you have to make a complete calculation related to your business.
6. Analyze The Market
Understand the market where you want to enter along with your product. You need to keep a meaningful vision towards your goal. Apart from this, you need to analyze the future of your business in advance. This will help you maintain the sustainability of your product in the market for years. Get an expert consultancy to your plans from Evolvers as the team of experts will help you make it big even if your idea is small.
7. Sufficiently Large Market
Make sure that your business makes its big in a small market area. And once you make it big in it, you can go further ahead to address more than 10 million customers where your product will get a sufficiently large market. Henceforth, it is suggested to not to go in the graveyard at the very beginning of your business startup.
So, these were, some of the special tips provided by the team of Evolvers which are helpful enough for all the small and budding entrepreneurs who keep big dreams in their eyes and desire to make it even bigger in the market industry. However, in case you want to get further specialized information regarding your startup, then you can reach out to the team of Evolvers at anytime and anywhere.
Fintech is a well blend of Finance and Technology. All over the world, many fintech start-ups are evolving. It’s a big industry with a good scope of growth and profit, but it is tough to survive in this fast-growing sector. There are various challenges that a fintech industry faces and some of them are described below.
Challenges Faced by Fintech Startups in India
• Regularity bodies
Red-tapism and the immense number of laws slow down the market, but strict regulations are inevitable when it comes to a financial or technological company. A Fintech faces a lot of challenge in coping with all these regulations that it has to comply with.
Networking sites like Evolvers and Linkedin have a pool of subject matter experts, having strong knowledge backed with experience in several fields. As a new leadership, you can take their guidance and learn from their experiences to overcome roadblocks. You need not have to search for your solutions from various consultants.
• Cybersecurity
Fintech companies handle exceedingly sensitive information of the customers, and thus as the emerging leadership, you must be well prepared to fortify your organization against any challenge posed by the internet. The more the financial data of individuals and companies become available digitally, the higher is the risk of cyber security breaches.
• Accumulating capital
Fintech companies require huge capital, not only to pay off the salaries of the employees but also need funds for a secure infrastructure.
The first step of fund accumulation starts with a good sales pitch, and at times in spite of possessingexcellent leadership skills, some falter here.
· Complex Industry
The complex working model of Fintech makes it a challenging task for them to maintain a healthy and smooth partnership with banks. Many fintech companies fear the loss of identity and autonomy amongst the vast landscape of large banking organizations.
On the other hand, banks find it risky to work with fintech innovators as they fear of losing reputation. These complex situations become the obstacles to the growth of fintech organizations.
· Lack of Consumer Trust
Providing financial services in the unbanked market is a challenge in itself due to the lack of trust of consumers, especially in India. People still relate these services with digital scams and are also not yet ready to accept the involvement of digital technology in financial services.
• Finding clients is a tough challenge
A business cannot run without customers and clients. Getting a client requires the support of a good platform. However, professional networking sites with a global reach, can provide the new leadership with the much-deserved podium and help you to take your business to newer heights.
With the advent of technology, the challenges faced by fintech start-ups has increased, but if the same technology can be utilized properly, it is a true blessing for any leadership.
Technology can be used to reach out to more people, and we all know, networking has a vital role in every endeavour. Evolvers networking site can rescue you by providing this networking platform that you might lack and help you to reach beyond your known limits to accomplish targets that might otherwise seem impossible.
Booming Startups in Fintech Industry
Today, everywhere and in every field like health tech, Logitech, Edtech, Traveltech, Enterprise, and Fintech, people use latest technologies and work by implementing the technologies in their business to get the best results. In India, still, there is a need for more technological strategies in the banking sector. Over 19% of the population still remains unbanked. Here Fintech startups come in.
Since 2015, the finance sector has undergone many changes like a change to move towards a cashless economy. The government is proactively using technologies to make India cashless – the launch of India stacking including UPI, digital wallets, e-KYC, Aadhaar, and BHIM are the Indian financial sector.
Demonetization is another factor that played an important role in the rise of the Fintech industry. According to the report of NASSCOM and KPMG, India has currently more than 500 startups in the Fintech industry, whose vision is to attain financial inclusion. In the ecosystem of startups, there are some wallets like FreeCharge, MobiKwik, and Paytym.
According to the co-founder and CEO of Microsoft-
“Digital technology provides a low-cost way for people in developing countries to send money to each other, buy and sell goods, borrow and save as long as the financial-regulation environment is supportive.” – Bill Gates, co-founder and former CEO of Microsoft.
So, digital technologies play an important role to change the traditional business model in the digital business model.
Startups are working in various sub-sectors of Fintech such as mobile POS (mobile-based point of sale), in loans and insurances, and alternative leading among others.
Increased access to the internet, have helped efficient and automated financial services solutions. Well, it seems that the Fintech industry is a fast-growing industry and there are so many leading startups that are working very well and provides many financial solutions to the industry. Let us look towards some really innovative ones.
Faircent is a lending startup that connects lenders with borrowers. It is a P2P model which means person to person. The startup was launched in 2014 and offers a variety of advanced tools such as Auto Invest. This is a type of tool with a great feature that matches criteria of lender’s investment with the requirements of borrower’s and automatically sends proposals to the borrower based on the amount, risk profile, and loan tenure.
The initial aim of this startup is to help people avail easy and fast personal loans at an affordable cost. This is one of the top startups that was also selected for the first batch of NASSCOM and was also a part of the BizSpark program and Microsoft Accelerator Winter Cohort.
With the help of latest technologies this emerging player from Fintech industry is working on to reach the larger group of professionals in this sector and looking for the businesses so they can tie up and can borrow online.
This is an online payment instrument and was launched in 2015. The customers can purchase and settle their payments online. This is one of the fastest data-driven platforms that help to reduce the payment flow, improves client’s product experience, and gives a payment model to the user’s that is faster and more convenient than cards and wallets.
With the help of this, the customer can choose to pay one bill instead of making the payments individually. There are many merchants that currently work with Simpl including Nykaa, DocsApp, FreshMenu, BookMyShow, Faasos, Licious, Drivezy, Dunzo and others. The spending limit for customers is between $11.7 (INR 750) and $78 (INR 5,000). The startup also has a partnership with a number of NBFCs and banks to make a robust product portfolio.
The startup was launched in 2015 and is a Mumbai-based startup that allows users to make purchases both offline and online. They provide instant credit and through this app users can buy items like jewelry, electronics, mobiles, laptops by opting EMIs even without a credit card.
This is the platform where you can see in-app merchants or choose whatever the customer wants to buy from the Kissht store. Users can also upload the documents and make the payment easily online. You can also see the limit of your credit and amount of upcoming EMIs. This is one of the top startups who also provide cash loans for construction of your loans, renovation of your homes, holidays, purchase of consumer durables, for traveling, short-term loan for equipment purchase and for other purposes.
The company has a fixed rate of interest on the monthly basis. Users can also pay their return amount in installments and can avail flexible return tenures of up to 60 months.
The FTCash startup is founded in June 2015 and provides many excellent solutions for micro-merchants to accept the payments through many payment mediums like credit cards, debit cards, and mobile wallets.
In 2016, the FTCash startup was selected as one of the 12 finalists of IBM Smartcamp for Fintech Challenges and also was one of the six winners of iSPIRT-organised Great Tech Rocket ships Initiative 2016 (GTRS) and UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) India.
The startup also provides short-term loans to the merchants and empowers SME’s and Merchants by offering easy access to credit usually range from $1000 to $20,000, with interest rates somewhere between 18 and 30%.
This is a Pune-based startup and first mobile lending platform which is founded in 2015 by Ashish Goyal and AkshayMehrotra. It provides smart risk scoring system instant cash loans, and salary advances. The startup has their operations in various cities including Hyderabad, New Delhi, Jaipur, Pune, Chennai, Bengaluru, and Mumbai, among others. This is the startup that provides advance salary up to 50% of monthly salary to its users and 70% of the loans are given in 10 minutes. The startup has also made the partnership with SMEs and with other corporate for advance salary purposes.
The average size of the loan that the company provides is between $125-$1,500 (INR 8,000 to INR 1 Lakh) for a period of up to 30 days. The app has many subscribers for both Android and IOS mobile app platforms.
Today, with the help of experienced, professional team, and funding from investors like IDG Ventures India, IFMR Capital, the Fintech startup wants to expand the entire business and work across tier II and tier III cities in the country.
Rubique is one of the leading Fintech startups that launched in 2014. The startup is an online marketplace for all type of financial products that offers loan products and end-to-end loan fulfillments to MSMEs and to individuals.
With the help of new online business marketing strategies and unique algorithm, this online platform facilitates up to 235+ products such as home loans, car loans, credit cards, business loans, loans against property, personal loans, healthcare loans, education loans, construction equipment financing, among others.
The startup is trying to fill the gap between lenders and borrowers with the help of various financing options and it has two verticals. First, the startup provides curated, well-aggregated, and digitized collection of products to the users. Second, the user can apply online after comparing and selecting the products.
The startup has also a credit score- Rubique’s Magic Store- that can be developed with the bank’s lending system. This is the startup in Fintech industry who has clocked revenue of over $2.6 Mn (INR 17.5 Cr) in just three years.
MoneyTap is a Bengaluru-based consumer lending startup and India’s first app-based credit line. It also provides flexible loans for personal use. By targeting the country’s fast-growing middle-income group, the team of MoneyTap solves the problems of insufficient consumer credit line and of the people who need money for rent, weddings, paying school fees, shopping, sending money to family and so on.
This is the only platform where users can borrow anywhere between $50-$7,500 (INR 3,000 to INR 5 Lakh) and offers the repayment time of two months up to three years. The app has more than 300k registered users across 14 cities in India. Recently, the startup is working with seven NBFC/Banking partners including RBL Bank at different stages of integration.
MoneyTap app charged over a 1.5% interest rate. In recent times, the consumer has become more demanding with the demanding consumer internet companies. So, this is one of the booming Fintech startups.
This startup is started by IIT Bombay alumnus Rajeev Aggarwal, as the manufacturers of wireless hardware systems manufacturers in 2002. The advanced solutions of this startup help businesses to reduce the cost of processing digital payments. It supplies hassle-free working strategies that help in the growth of other small businesses.
The payment platform of Innoviti includes Indigo, Walmart, Titan, Reliance, Reliance Retail, and several others. Banks like ICICI, Axis, and HDFC also uses this platform to access customers for loan distribution.
The company’s aim is to focus on building and implementing new technologies that give reliability, speed, and flexibility.
So, these all are the booming startups of Fintech Industry and achieved their goal by a lot of hard work and dedication.
Now, in the next article, we will take a look at the booming startups of the Education industry.
A mentor is like an experienced friend who will teach us and guide us along. A mentor will build the trust and will model the positive behaviors. The best mentor will understand that the role will be knowledgeable, effective, dependable and engaging.
Anyone can be a mentor but they have to be successful in whichever field and will have to use their strength to their advantage. So yes it is true that if you have the right mentor then your career will surely go up.
How would you meet the right mentor? The answer is, through Evolvers. Read out to know how you can choose the best mentor for yourself.
Gather up all that you need while choosing the right mentor in the growth path.
Write down the questions you need to ask:
Do I require help with my present part or with how to push forward to another part?
Do I require bolster from my guide for a specific test or for my whole vocation?
Improve abilities from my tutor or should my guide disclose to me what aptitudes I have to create?
What is your mentor’s way to deal with helping you?
What is the idea of your association with your mentor is it formal or casual?
Is your mentor helping you with nothing or would you say you will pay him/her?
How regularly might you want to communicate with your mentor?
Now you will have to find the mentor keeping all these questions in mind. You might have someone in mind, if not, and then this might help you.
Join Evolvers and you’ll quickly be acquainted with more individuals with differed encounters.
Contact senior administrators who have exceeded expectations at their employment.
Are there renowned industry pioneers who motivate you?
There is no point to lie on the lower side and not ask for any help from your mentor. There should be a need to build a strong relationship with your mentor and it is important that you and your mentor should share the same values and leadership style.
This is important because if you don’t match with your mentor quality-wise then you and your mentor will have conflicts. It takes time to build a relationship with your mentor, so it is advisable that one should not give up so easily.
Now that you have got a mentor, you should be clear about your expectations and the relationship you will have with them. Just like you give an interview, your initial interactions should be done in the same way.
They should be able to give you enough time and sufficient contribution and should expect the same from you. The mentor should know about the strengths and weaknesses of yours. Remember that you should not hold anything back as this relationship will make your career.
The mentor you chose would be the best and will guide you well but there might be a chance that you might need more than one mentor. All you have to do is try.
In the previous blog, we discussed the SEO point of view which Muruga followed to rank his website. How Muruga took the ascended content marketing and why was the need to create the HappyMarriage.com. While creating HappyMarriage.com, Muruga faced some challenges and the thought behind the strategy was important too. Muruga executed the plan based on the communications, referrals and that was how the outcome was shown. They created offline marketing channels in which the hosted events like Mega Swayamvaram, speed dating, special meetings, retailing and finally the results were shown.
MULTI-BRAND STRATEGY – DIVERSE MARKETPLACES
Muruga saw the accompanying focal points of utilizing a multi-mark procedure –
It was anything but difficult to duplicate these commercial centers utilizing the same back-end innovation
Scalability wasn’t an issue
Also, marital clients aren’t deep rooted clients. The lifetime estimation of a client is typically 3 a year. They just remained on the stage until they got hitched. Once the pursuit is finished, there is no purpose behind them to return to the site. This made it basic to differentiate.
Keeping the structure of innovation set up, Muruga took an official choice and chose to dispatch the accompanying commercial centers successively from 2006 to 2008 i.e. 8 benefits in a traverse of two years. The enhancement helped pick up the piece of the overall industry and these stages were beginning to see development –
com: The No.1 Property Portal.
com: Help individuals with individual, property and vehicle credits.
com: The Online Automobile Supermarket.
Mobile 5050: Latest news on telephones, contraptions
com: The Online Classifieds.
Clickjobs: An occupations entrance
Indiapages: The Online Yellow Pages
BharatBloodBank – a non-benefit, non-business interface
The focus shifted completely towards the matrimony space in 2008. This was the time when the credit crisis led to a global recession. The entities like Bharatbloodbank.com, clickjobs.com, indiapages.com, indiaautomobile.com, indiaproperty.com and loanwala.com were shut down due to the recession.
Distinctive pricing strategies – Geographies and Net Worth
It was in 2001 when Muruga offered the paid version along with the free version of the BharatMatrimony to keep the revenue alive; this was done after the dot-com crash.
Rs 200 per year, was the cost of the paid version and when Muruga felt that this has picked up so he decided to scale the revised version that took the geographies and the net worth of the users into account.
BharatMatrimony was gratifying to the Indian audience, globally with different spending powers. This was considered the best move by Muruga as distinctive pricing based on geographies is not that common when it gets down to a subscription business.
This type of strategy is used by some companies today also. For example, Byju’s is a learning app and it charges differently on the basis of class. Also, for the age group of 18+, the charges would be different which will depend upon the courses. They provide a trial or free sample initially but to get access to the full course, the student has to purchase the course.
Experimenting
Generally what happens is that people are afraid to experiment, especially when they are starting new, but Muruga had some different stuff in mind. The only reason which made BharatMatrimony standing solidly for almost 20 years was the experimental ability like launching new products, hosting events, and launching new properties.
Muruga focused on matrimony on the basis of audience preferences but the initial idea was launched with 15 regional domains under BharatMatrimony.
Not just matrimony but he also launched properties which were not related to matrimony services like com, Indiaautomobile.com etc.
The main focus was Matrimony and this was the reason that it was launched over more than 300 websites which were related to matrimony and the niche categories and also which organized different event either they were 100 meets in 30 days or huge offline events.
It’s not easy to start a new business and run it in a simple way. Muruga solidified his feet with the changes he made on a regular basis. While some of the features fell flat on the face but some won and Muruga learned something from each of them.
HIGHLY DATA DRIVEN
It was only the data that helped Muruga to make right decisions during the time of the expansion of the site. For the Day 1, the information was collected but the company was not able to draw any insights. Then in 2006, Muruga decided to process the information and use it accordingly. He made a data collection team which would ensure that the data was collected and it was being used efficiently and it was searched relevant. The analytical tools were set up and data scientists were hired, these would make sure that the reports were made on regular basis.
ACTUAL PRODUCT UPDATES
New communities – BharatMatrimony expansion was assumed on the basis that the matrimony requirement for the different communities will be same as that of the Tamil and Telegu communities as the common part is the language part of all the communities. On this basis, Muruga created the matrimonial services to Kannada, Gujrati, Kerala, Hindi, Sindhi, Marathi, and Bengali. Later, he expanded it to the communities like Parsi, Marwadi, Assamese, Marathi, Oriya and local languages of India. If we look at the success stories, we can clearly see that the idea worked.
New devices – Initially, BharatMatrimony was available on the desktop only; later Muruga saw that the people living in the remote areas were not having a way to access the site as they did not have any desktop. But they did have a phone and this is why Muruga created a mobile-friendly version of the site for those people so that they would get alerts on their phone as well.
This is to be noted that it is important to keep an eye on the demographics of your target audience, the limit of the device usage, and the online payments habits determine which platform a business should go for to ease up the navigation and the use of online user interface.
Always look for the soft qualitative data i.e. reviews, customer feedback, conversation over the calls, and their expressive views about their product. Look for the hard quantitative data too i.e. the number of customers, ratings, time spent on the site, mostly the things which are measured as a quantity. It is important to look at these types of data to make better decisions.
Keen eye on the optimization process
The optimization was done after the processes and tools were placed well in the company, well mainly around the product and marketing related development. The question raised was that how we can get more customers by spending less on keeping the existed ones. The traffic was calculated based on the ads, channels, keywords, creativity, and how that translated into revenue. The whole array of communications from the principal touch point to a held client was nearly inspected in all cases. Properties and campaigns that weren’t contributing as much were discarded and the concentration was moved to ones that were flourishing. There was a need to enhance which prompted the company’s size being definitely decreased, making it a great deal more slender and focused.
Ideas are a way to innovation and openness. We came across so many ideas from the customer representatives and the tech teams that led to the creation of new products for the BharatMatrimony. If someone came up with an interesting idea then we gave the liberty to them to design the strategy and to build up the team to execute the plan.
Work towards progress
At BharatMatrimony, we follow a genuinely vigorous deft process. The daily meetings were held for 15 minutes where we would discuss about the things that were done yesterday and if there were any encumbrances then those were considered and the things that were to happen on the next day was planned according to that. Key metrics were mostly the part of these discussions.
Motivating people
Our employees are with BharatMatrimony for more than 10 years and our first three employees are still with us. We boost the morale of our employees and motivate them by keeping them enclosed with the company’s growth and the direction in which the company was heading.
Understanding the value system
The value of the company and a marriage go hand in hand with an organization and this makes our mission bigger than all of us. We inculcate these values from the beginning among the people of BharatMatrimony.
In 2017 BharatMatrimony decided to go public and the IPO was launched in September 2017 and was oversubscribed 4.41 times. The company raised Rs 500 crore through the issue that contained new issue of up to Rs 130 crore and an offer available to be purchased of up to 37.67 lakh value shares.
We have seen that how Muruga stood tall above despite all odds, he took chances and risks, some of them played well but some of them backfired, but he never gave up. Still, this question arises that why most of the startups fail and do not recover from their failures? Is it because of the lack of disruption or the inability to access the product or they are not able to fit into the competitive market. This time they would switch the idea while seeing that the previous one will not be working anymore now.
If we take the above points into consideration, then Evolvers show the entrepreneurs the right direction. Be it a mentor or an investor, Evolvers will facilitate all your business needs and all of this you will get on the Evolvers Platform.
