I once pitched my specific startup concept to an investor and he advised me, “I see at least 10 startups with the equal concept each month”. But nonetheless we don’t see everybody remedy the nightlife or nearby trip hassle. Most young humans need to exit almost each weekend and that they face this problem “What to do or wherein to go out?”
There are already dozens of list websites and infinite blogs, but isn’t someone crushed with too much records already?
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We decided to resolve it via building customized recommendation merchandise. After trying more than one particular merchandise and two years of bootstrapping, we've got shut down StrollUp.
Here are the number one reasons why:
Low Consumer Need And High Existing Competition
The price created with the aid of such apps on top of current answers which includes Zomato, BMS and many others. Could be very little. Not many consumers are searching for sports or occasions in the town. Going to an occasion is a completely social pastime, and people are locating activities through Facebook. You ought to compete with Facebook activities. Soon Google Allo could be there in the list. And then you need to compete with dozens of apps providing offers and reductions. In all this mess, having an amazing revel in can without a doubt no longer be a differentiator or something Indian patron values nowadays. It’s both that they don’t care a good deal approximately where they would pass, or they want first rate cheap offers.
Low Supply
There are not many exciting matters happening in a city. It’s no longer like Coldplay is coming to play tonight. DJ Bobby Deol is playing tonight, he could be gambling next week and the next to next week too. There isn't always a great deal of a hook for the person to go out or as a substitute search currently.
Indian customers could in the end need to pick between Movie, Eat out, or Drinks. This is changing as many new activities are opening up including Escape rooms, Air Safaris, Indoor Skiing and many others, but might as a minimum take -three years to attain a enormous stage.
(Courtesy: All India Bakchod)
Partnerships (Chicken-Egg Problem)
To accomplice with any eating place, you need to have users. And to make bookings for the customers, you need partnerships. This is the classic chicken-egg problem most startups face.
We hacked this by way of doing bookings on behalf of users with none partnership with any vicinity. Once we start getting a first rate number of bookings for a place, we went for partnerships.
Another manner to go become to companion with an existing desk booking platform. But the amount of sales they're ready to proportion is laughable. You ought to make 8-10 instances the money if you cross for partnership to your own. So we never went for partnerships and determined to take the operational load (which obviously is still a challenge). You need to persuade each and every place and ensure that they honour the variety of bookings you send at the cease of the month to receives a commission.
Revenue Generation And Unit Economics
It’s now not an unknown reality that it’s tough to get cash from restaurants. Most agencies paintings with a fee-based version, you ship customers to the place and get paid in line with person. Nightclubs would be willing to pay round INR one hundred fifty per character for couple and INR 300 for a stag. Restaurants and different locations would pay INR 75-INR a hundred according to character, and paintball/cross karting locations might pay you round INR 50-INR one hundred in line with individual.
We used to have a median group length of 4 humans, and average commissions turned out to be INR a hundred. We ought to probably be earning INR four hundred consistent with reserving.
But there are cancellations. These bookings are only a click on of a button without any payment. So we used to have 50% cancellations. We didn’t have enough bookings to have a commission-based partnership with each location, and had been able to associate with round 10-15 places. So with a reserving conversion of 6%, we should just make INR 2.4 consistent with person. Try getting a person for INR 2 these days, whilst groups are giving INR 250 off to e book through them.
Even if we helped the user choose the nice place, sometimes they used to invite why must I e-book thru StrollUp? “Coz you could simply click and get it booked, you loser, instead of calling them and wasting any other 5 mins!” Wish I may want to say that to them instead of a polite solution. Anyways, it's miles nevertheless a exceptional business model at scale. At around 7,000 bookings a month, we may want to have performed efficiencies which would help us earn 10 times the modern margins.
In Conclusion
Please note that these are merely my non-public perspectives based totally on experience of strolling a startup in this industry. I mean no disrespect for the alternative startups in this industry. Also, I haven’t mentioned other demanding situations together with tech adoption among locations, problem to scale up as you require quite a few facts for every metropolis, maintaining the records present day and so on.
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Another way to address this trouble could be to go the B2B course and sell PoS, desk booking and other related software program to eating places first. So you are into their system and might constantly have up to date information, and restaurant can push offers in your customers.
It also guarantees your bookings and commissions could also be set exceptionally effortlessly. But this is also less complicated said than executed. There are at the least 20 groups selling PoS systems to restaurants in recent times.
Even in case you resolve the partnership and sales sharing hassle with this, the low-supply facet and purchaser need might take as a minimum two-three years more. So these are the number one motives, we've decided to shutdown StrollUp.
I renowned that maximum marketers might have to face such challenges and a person might in the future resolve these better than us. I admit that we couldn’t do it, we failed. I wish someone succeeds. I might additionally like to thank every body who worked with us or helped us on this adventure. Thanks to you all (you realize who you are).
