Industry experts say that the Indian startup landscape has been growing tremendously in the past few years. Our country has been positioned the 3rd largest startup community after US and China. What is really overwhelming is the fact that creative and motivating people over the days have come up with unique ideas towards their journey of entrepreneurship.
However, one of the most important things that startups consider is funding. We did already try acquainting you with some of the easiest hacks to secure funding, but a more important point is to gain clarity on whether you should continue bootstrapping your fund or fetch funding.
BOOTSTRAPPING
Funding your own business allows you to focus on scaling the business more and less on the relationship with investors. This helps in making independent decisions about the future of one’s future, thus retaining a high proportion of shares. As and when a company would generate revenue, you realise that it was a good decision on your part to not go for funding.
However, on the other hand, if you are looking forward to scaling your business quickly, getting resources from outside or capital might be beneficial.
Let’s have a look at the pros and cons of Bootstrapping.
Pros:
Enjoy The Complete Ownership of Your Business
If you are a bootstrapped business, you have the freedom to enjoy the complete authority of your business. Even if you have a co-founder on board, the margin of your share continues to remain profitable. There might be chances of getting diluted if funds were being raised.
Focus Becomes More
Impressing investors is a tough nut to crack indeed. Generally, entrepreneurs that focus on growing and bootstrapping their business, spend their entire time and focus on improving their products and services.
Easier Pivoting
When you have a bootstrapped business, you can pivot much easier, considering the fact that there are lesser burdens involved from investors and stakeholders. It’s indeed a blessing to have absolute decision-making power over your project. It’s beneficial till the time you continue getting clients’ feedback that strengthens a brand in the industry.
What to Do?
As we did highlight some of the positive aspects of being a bootstrapped business, however, one of the biggest red flags is the problem of scaling ahead. In case, anybody wants to scale further ahead, then securing funding is advisable.
EXHIBIT:What’s the story behind the name “Zomato”? Deepinder: When we started out in 2008 we were called Foodiebay. One of the reasons why we decided to change the name in late 2010 from Foodiebay to Zomato was that we wanted a powerful brand name. After endless debate over several cups of coffee, we came up with the name Zomato. We decided to keep the idea of food at the center and choose a name that is short, easy to remember and makes people think of food. Zomato’s got a zing to it and is originally a play on the word ‘Tomato’. We also wanted to avoid any confusion with “ebay”; we wanted to be sure that we weren’t taking any chances when creating a brand we wanted to take international at the time. Focusing on brand recall and communicating what we stand for is of primary importance to any consumer internet company, and I think we have got most of it right with Zomato.
EXHIBIT: When did you get your first funding? Was it tough to raise fund or a cake walk for Zomato? DG: Raising funds for a consumer facing product was far from easy back in 2008-10. When we started out, we had initially raised a small sum of money from our family and a couple of friends to ensure we could hit the ground running. However raising the seed round was difficult; we were struggling at the time to find investors who’d write us our first cheque.
We worked at Bain for a year and a half while dedicating weekends to Foodiebay when we started out. By the time we left Bain, we had already launched in 4 cities (NCR, Kolkata, Mumbai& Pune) and had a handful of clients on board. It was getting difficult to manage both and before one could affect the other, we decided to quit and work full-time on Foodiebay; luckily, by then, we had we also had Gunjan on board to work on the tech side of things.In 2010, Sanjeev and his team saw the potential in what we were building and gave us our first cheque of a Million dollars. InfoEdge has been an investor in Zomato ever since, and still owns majority stake in the company.
EXHIBIT: Zomato has travelled a long way since its inception in 2008. What made you come up with the idea? What’s biggest leap of Zomato since then? DG: At Zomato, we started out will collecting menus for restaurants around Gurgaon and put up these scanned menus on the office intranet. When we starting see a lot of traction there, Pankaj and I then went on to build this database and soon we had gone live with menus for 1,200 restaurants in Delhi NCR in July 2008, which expanded to 2,000 restaurants by the end of that year. We have now grown our footprint from having presence in 4 cities in India in 2008, to listing over I million restaurants in over 10,000 cities, across 23 countries.
We have come a long way since we started out 8 years ago and as a technology company we need to constantly build further from where we started. We started out primarily as a restaurant search and discovery service on web, and what we’re building today is 100x more complex. Over the past few years, we’ve been extremely focused on building products for our users, and restaurant partners – to help make dining experiences unthinkably easy.
We have diversified our product offering beyond just search and discovery to adding a social layer, then expanding into adjacencies such as online food delivery, table reservations, white label apps for restaurants, Zomato for business – a marketing tool for restaurant owners, and now our own point of sales system for restaurants.On the business front – we have had a very successful launch of our food delivery business in India and the UAE over the last year. We operationally broke-even in our businesses in India, the Middle East (UAE, Lebanon and Qatar) and Southeast Asia (Philippines and Indonesia) earlier this Feb. If the revenue growth continues as we expect it to, we aim to operationally break-even as a global business by Dec 2016.
EXHIBIT: What is your opinion about the future of the Food-tech industry in India? DG: For the past two years, the food tech space has seen a lot of activity from both entrepreneurs and investors. We’ve seen a conscious effort and the biggest strides along three fronts.One – rising digital adoption amongst restaurants to help them create great dining experiences. From cloud based POS systems which help restaurants with inventory and menu management, better customer insights to using digital platforms to communicate and reach out to their potential customers, the most successful restaurateurs are able use a suite of tools available to them to enhance customer experience around great food. We’ve also seen dark/cloud kitchens grow in the recent past and the sector today has the capability and infrastructure to see more of such scalable concepts grow.
Two – building stronger communication channels between restaurants and users. Convenience services such as online ordering and table reservation have made the whole ordering in or dining out experience as seamless as possible for both – the users, as well as the restaurants.While we’ve seen a lot of food-tech start-ups mushroom and help grow the market overall over the last couple of years, it is now also great to see an increasing effort on getting the business fundamentals right with more companies and investors largely focused on building the food-tech space in India for the longer term.
The focus on digitisation of discovery, communication, delivery, reservation and restaurant operations overall will help in creating greater dining experiences for users. We will also see convergence of these business models in different forms to provide greater value to both merchants as well as the users in the near future.With more and more players entering the market, what will set one apart from the other is the overall customer experience and unit economics. All metrics of customer adoption of a product, the frequency of use and the end conversion will be driven by the quality of service a product offers. In any business, you are only as good as your customers think you are.
EXHIBIT: What’s the most common trend among Zomato users? DG: We get most of our traffic when users are looking to make a decision about ordering food or eating out, i.e. just before lunch and dinner hours. I think a common trend among most Zomato users is that they are extremely passionate about food, and they like the discovery aspect the product allows for by providing them all the information they need to be able to make an educated choice on where to eat or what to order.
EXHIBIT: Blend of technology and food – that’s Zomato in a single phrase. How do you justify this? DG: Well, that’s rather self-explanatory, isn’t it?
EXHIBIT: Tell us some unknown facts about yourself. DG: My first startup back in 2005, was an online food delivery website called Foodlet. It was probably the first online food delivery business in India.
EXHIBIT: Tell us about some inspirational books that you have read and would recommend. DG: The last book that I read and was inspired by was Leading by Sir Alex Ferguson. The other two books that stuck a chord with me at different points of my entrepreneurial journey were Peter Thiel’s Zero to One and The Hard Thing About Hard Things, by Ben Horowitz. On a personal note though, I enjoy collecting the Classics for my home library.
EXHIBIT: Inspirational tips to the startup founders who are trying to come up with innovative ideas like yours. DG: I think when you start building something for the right reasons – you have identified a gap that you want to bridge, or have identified an even more efficient way of doing something that already exists; if you can do this with focus, on the right foundation, and can build a good team around your idea that shares your vision – that’s half the battle won.
The modern customers and businesses rely heavily on the internet to find products and services they need, and people will love a service if it makes their lives simpler. Multiple players will definitely continue to emerge because of the massive potential and reach of the internet. However, what’s going to set a particular player apart is not just a unique product and service offering, but also a real and sustainable business model built around sound unit economics.
EXHIBIT: Talking of India, and adjacencies – how big do you think is the food delivery market? DG: While the food delivery market in India is huge (between the organized and unorganized segment it has been pegged between $1.4B – $2B), the online food delivery segment still has a lot of room to grow. The normal human behaviour for ordering food is still to pick up the phone and call. So our largest competitor in this segment is still the phone.
As of now, our online food delivery business is growing at a healthy 30% month-on-month, we recently crossed 33,000 orders a day across India and UAE – and this is with only 2.5% of our active user base searching for restaurants having placed orders online.
Did you know, Creeper was most likely the first computer virus developed in 1971, of course since then there have been many malware including Melissa, Blaster, Slammer, Nimda, Code Red, The Morris Worm, Elk Cloner and even ILOVEYOU which did not spread any love but screwed up your computers. More than 10 million computers were in ‘love’. So, as techies, we seriously thought that viruses were something which happened to computers and smartphones until the deadly coronavirus entered the scene, which has shaken the world. It has pulled the carpet in one sweep from the feet of travel, business, economy, stock market and everything with thousands suffering and many dead. We stand with China as it fights the worst of epidemics and still gripping and because we live as global citizens its cases are reported everywhere now. Also, it shows in our integrated global economy where China is the manufacturing hub, supplying components or finished goods in almost every sector is now crippling.
The rumour mills are doing its rounds with some saying it’s a bio war, its an experiment gone wrong, and the Yuhang province known to be eating all kinds
of things including bats. Yes, the flying bats. The Tech industry is going to be affected the most, with everything being manufactured there. We already saw Mobile world congress being called off, Geneva Motor Show and many such events shaking up the ribs of commerce. In India, lots of big launches had been delayed including Note 9 from Xiaomi. Things are not looking good, and no one has an answer with the global sentiments down. But nothing lasts forever and just like we have hot water springs in Iceland, water wells in scorching deserts and morning sunlight tearing apart the darkness and the COVID-19.
In China, the auto sales are down 92% and in India, the auto sales are going through its worst phases with the only good news being BBC Topgear Magazine is back in India with an Exhibit Signature on it and is standing tall on stands now.
The optimists might say, the show must go on, maybe with masks on and hands constantly dipped in sanitizers. Travel if it is necessary, and let’s make use of all the technology for communication VoIP, chat meetings and stay alert till the Corona rests in peace. Forever that is!
After chasing his dream with conviction and staunch perseverance at 31, our cover boy Vicky Kaushal is at a good place in his career. It’s been the start of an incredible year in 2019 with his breakthrough and larger than life persona in ‘Uri‘ which didn’t just strike a chord in the box office rather marked the making of a superstar in the industry. But we would be lying if we say that we didn’t see the actor had worked his smouldering way almost about 4 years ago through his cinematic debut in ‘Masaan‘. The fans have only witnessed cerebral craft considering his work with India’s finest filmmakers like Rajkumar Hirani in ‘Sanju’, Meghna Gulzar in ‘Raazi’ or Anurag Kashyap in ‘Manmarziyaan’.
The actor walks in with his 6 feet tall charisma for our shoot greeting with the most humble smile. As I walk up to him and say ‘Hi, I am Krishti Khound from Exhibit Magazine, and I am here to interview you for our cover story.’ and he replied with his fathom ‘Oh! Surely we will have a long chat then.’ And believe me, it was one.
Exhibit: Your journey from Masaan to Uri of four years in the industry has seen the rise of a maverick star, how do you recall the feeling when you looked at yourself on the screen for the first time?
Vicky Kaushal: The first time I saw myself on the screen was for a film called ‘Luv Shuv Tey Chicken Khurana’ that I had done much before ‘Masaan‘. It was just a cameo; a small part where I was in the film for about 2-3 scenes. That was the first time I saw myself on the big screen. And it was awkward (laughs). You’re highly critical when you’re watching your own work. I never watch my video interviews. I can watch my work or me playing another character but watching me talk about myself? I can’t. That is a very weird feeling. The first time I watched myself on the big screen I had gone there with my family and it was not an industry screening, it was a ticketed show that we went for. So it was special.
Ex: Do you remember your first audition? What was that like?
VK: Absolutely! My first audition was for the film ‘Bhaag Milkha Bhaag‘. It wasn’t for Farhan Akhtar’s part, but for his friend’s role which eventually got heavily edited from the film. That was the first audition I gave after I got done with assisting Anurag Kashyap for ‘Gangs of Wasseypur‘ and started doing theatre. Honey Trehan, the casting director, was very sweet and encouraging. He gave me about 3 hours to try and make me act but I couldn’t deliver anything. That night I couldn’t sleep thinking that maybe I had taken up the wrong work. I had finished my graduation in Engineering, I had a job letter in hand that I had torn because I wanted to be an actor. And then this is how your first audition goes, where you feel like you don’t know how to act. There are so many things you still have to learn. It was really frightening and it’s an audition I’ll never forget.
Ex: What was the first time you faced any rejection?
VK: The first audition itself I felt rejected (laughs). What I can remember at this point in time are the rejections I have faced during the audition rounds. I have given a lot of auditions, specifically from late 2011 to 2014. ‘Manmarziyaan’ and ‘Uri’ are the only two films that I got without giving a screen test. Apart from that, my selection in a film has happened only after I have given an audition. So yes, I have gone through my fair share of rejections but you don’t really take it to your heart or take it in a way that pulls you down. At that time, you’re so fragile and tender that an opportunity to work can mean so much.
Ex: Does acting liberate you?
VK: Yes it does, so much that sometimes you are not prepared for it. Acting liberates you, it gives you happiness, it gives you sorrow, it reminds you of your past but the most important thing that it does is that it makes you understand different perspectives. Sometimes you get to know of that perspective by chance in real life but here, it’s our job to understand the perspectives of all the characters we play, believe in them, not judge them and then live them. So what happens for me as Vicky Kaushal is that after every experience, after playing every character and being a part of every film, my horizon of understanding the world and people around me keeps extending, keeps getting pushed and that is great for my own evolution, my own growth as a human being. That, I feel is one of the most beautiful things about being an actor.
Ex: Did your father’s profession play an influence on you when you were growing up?
VK: Not really, my career choices were never dependent on his profession. Maybe subconsciously because I have heard those terms from childhood about films and cameras. I was fascinated by it on a subconscious level because I was active on stage. It was always a hobby that I never really thought could turn into a profession. And how my dad being in the same profession, at least as a technician in the film industry, helped me was that I was never delusional. My reason for entering the industry was not that glitter and glamour because I know the hardships that go behind it. I was prepared for the obstacles and the hardships that were to come my way.
Ex: With an experience of 11 films, you have managed to play diversified characters. What validates your choice of scripts?
VK: I follow my heart. My gut validates my choices. I feel, for any artist especially those who pour their heart and soul into their job, it’s very important to really feel a ‘yes’ about that project. I can’t dive into a project with a doubt in my brain or heart. For me, firstly I go by the instinct of me as an audience; if I read something and I really want to talk about it to people who are near and dear to me, it’s a yes. If it moves me in a certain way, it’s a yes. Then comes the consequent interest in who the director is, who the producers are and where the set up is; all of that stuff becomes secondary.
Ex: Out of the characters you’ve played on screen, which are the characters that come closest to you?
VK: I think there are two and they are quite different from each other but both were characters I could explore inside me. It would be ‘Deepak’ from ‘Masaan’ and ‘Vicky Sandhu’ from ‘Manmarziyaan’. Both, I feel those are two shades I connect to. At some times I connect to the ‘Deepak‘ and at some point, I really connect to ‘Vicky Sandhu‘. But I don’t know when which one comes out but yes, I could understand them.
EX: Biggest milestone in your life. HIM: We started BankBazaar with a vision to make digital online personal finance the de facto choice for millions of Indians. In FY-19, BankBazaar completed 10 years, and today, we are not just the biggest financial products marketplace in India with 163mn unique visitors in a year. 2018 was also the year my daughter was born, and becoming a father has been the most memorable and rewarding experience of my life.
EX: Book(s) that have influenced your life. HIM: Ramachandra Guha’s ‘Gandhi: The Years that Changed the World 1914-1948’.
EX: An unusual app on your smartphone. HIM: As a father, my baby is on top of my mind. I have an iMega Cam app on my phone which makes it possible for me to see her wherever I am in the world.
EX: 3 habits you think are most important in order to be an effective leader. HIM: Focus, persistence and team spirit.
EX: The best tech innovation according to you. HIM: Technology has changed the finance sector immeasurably. The potential for speed, convenience, and transparency is unprecedented. Today, technology makes it possible for lenders to evaluate, underwrite, process, and deliver a loan or a credit card to a customer in as little as 30 minutes.
EX: Your ideas and views on sustainable technology HIM: Technology can be a huge enabler for tackling several problems we face. Technology offers us clean energy, optimized recycling, and conservation solutions. We need to think of technology as an asset and make best use of it to help remedy the problems we face today.
EX: Your upcoming career goals HIM: My dream is to take the personal finance industry one big step ahead and make it completely paperless. Digital is the future, and we are actively working on developing end-to-end processes that is completely paperless. Over the next few years, I hope to see 100% paperless products that are accessible on a mobile phone. This will go a long way in democratizing finance.
He is an alchemy of talent, hard work, passion, and effortlessness. Aditya Roy Kapur started his career as a VJ was very content with his job, had no plans of getting into the movie industry, yet has earned all his praise as an actor of this generation. His 2013 musical romantic hit Aashiqui 2 proved that surely a star was born for which he garnered most of the acting awards. Aditya’s upcoming movie ‘Kalank’ with Dharma production promises nothing less than a spectacular experience for his viewers. And believe us, we cannot wait to see him on the big screen again. Aditya Roy Kapur on our April cover spilling the beans of stardom and more.
Ex: Congratulations and good luck with your upcoming movie Kalank. How does it feel when the movie is due to release in less than 2 weeks ARK: Kalank will be in the theaters in 2 weeks and I cannot be more excited about it. I have prepared very hard for the role and cannot wait for the audience to give their love to this movie.
Ex: The cast in Kalank is quite a diverse one. What was your fondest memory from the sets of the movie? ARK: I think we were a bunch who used to take our work very seriously. We used to go to set on time, give our shot and leave, we were damn boring that way.
Ex: Social media has become an inseparable part of an actor’s life. Was there any reason that you thought of before joining Instagram? ARK: I am less on Instagram now, that I am on Instagram. I don’t spend so much of my time in it. It is a crazy place to be. It’s obviously nice to be in here but I like it best when I connect and disconnect to it automatically.
Ex: You are aware of the pros and cons of the social media world, how much does it affect you as an actor? ARK: I don’t like to think so much about social media. I get to post a lot about my movies or projects and I appreciate the responses from my fans be it good or bad.
Ex: Are you a fitness freak? What is your current fitness regime like ARK: I won’t call myself a freak but yes I am very careful with what I am eating. The motto is to ‘shut your mouth’ (laughs) by that I mean you have to control your diet. The challenge is to consistency and discipline on your diet with an hour and a half workout every day is necessary. And I tend to follow it quite religiously.
Ex: The world is slowly progressing towards tech. How do you think technology has affected film-making in recent times? ARK: Film-making and technology are intertwined. It has changed with the evolution of technology. We are being able to make films at huge scales more effectively with lesser time and budget. Filmmakers are able to fulfill their imagination, now you can say ‘if you can think it, you can make it’.
Ex: Do you think the days ahead are going to be technology dominated? What do you think? ARK: If you look from outside technology has changed everything in the world. In the film industry from your cameras to special effects. Tech is going leaps and bounds improving every year. Technically our industry is at the best place it has ever been, our films are looking better than ever before.
Ex: We know of your undying love for cars. If you had to drive down where would you go? ARK: Yes I love cars and driving but Mumbai is not the best city for a drive in. But yes I took a road trip to the West coast of America, it was beautiful.
Ex: Are you into gaming? ARK: Yes of course I am but not an addict. I own a PS4 and I absolutely enjoy it.
Ex: India is becoming a hub of startups. Have you ever considered investing or mentoring in any? ARK: It is something that has a lot of potential to grow considering especially in India because of our youth with so much talent and a fresh mind. I would definitely consider investing in it.
Ex: What would be your piece of advice for struggling actors, who are still trying to make a mark? ARK: Just keep giving your best and put out your best shoe forward. Sometimes just working hard and getting experience leads to one thing from another because after a certain point you can’t plan anything. It is very difficult to expect that you will get a perfect start or launch at the beginning of your career but you have got to push yourselves no matter how much failure pulls you down.
QUICKIES
A gadget you are currently in love with? Apple airpods
Whom do you stalk the most on Instagram? Everyone eventually
One fashion trend you follow religiously? I create my own trend
Your current celebrity crush? No one actually
If you had a superpower what would that be? I would love to fly or to teleport myself
A book that you want to read again? Asterix
The idea of a perfect vehicle? Something very light that can move around easily in the traffic
A rumor about you wished was true? That I was some Prince
