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Pranay Chulet Son of a government officer & the founder of Quikr.com




Pranay Chulet Son of a government officer & the founder of Quikr.com

Pranay Chulet Son of a government officer & the founder of Quikr.com

Pranay Chulet is the Founder & the mind at the back of India’s largest on line classifieds portal – Quikr.Com!

Like most people already recognise, Quikr acts as a medium to connect the shoppers & sellers of any given product, and is pretty an awful lot just like Craigslist within the US. A portal that become launched with a imaginative and prescient of supplying a platform to the customers and dealers to “meet online, transact offline”, nowadays holds more than 4.2 million listings and also has generated over 150 million replies.

Headquartered in the posh regions of south Mumbai, Quikr gives over 13 most important classes and in 170 sub-classes which includes cell telephones, family items, motors, actual property, jobs, offerings, education, and so on. Additionally, it holds an actual presence in over 1,000 towns in India, and performs a big scale pass-class classifieds business among its extra than 30 million clients.

Personally speaking; Pranay holds an Undergraduate diploma in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi (IIT-D) and an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIM-C).

He these days got married to his female love Tina Chulet, who coincidently is likewise the Founder of Waltzz – a mobile courting app! Together they stay in their condo in Bandra, Mumbai.

A Journey that led to Quikr.Com!

Pranay turned into born in a small city of Rajasthan to a family where his father was a small time authorities officer working in mines as a preferred supervisor and his mom become a homemaker.

Most of his early early life days have been spent in the mining cities of Dariba, Zawar and Maton in Rajasthan. But his dream changed into to come to be an entrepreneur due to the fact day one!

He started out his profession, soon after he finished his commencement from IIM-C! Very few are conscious that Procter & Gamble became his first job. He had joined in as a emblem control executive. But this stint didn’t pass on for lengthy and he end in 1997 itself.

In the same year, Pranay began running for Mitchell Madison Group as a Management Consultant / Engagement Manager. His basic activity profile became to recommendation his clients in economic services and media industries.

He worked with the group for nearly 3 years, and then in 2000, searching on the Dot Com increase in the surroundings, he started out his first mission known as – Reference Check. Interestingly, it turned into pretty plenty just like his present day task Quikr. Reference Check turned into an online medium between Service Providers (Eg: Plumbers, Electrician, and so forth) and Consumers. The business enterprise sooner or later got merged with another larger incubator called Walker Digital!

He went on to paintings with Walker for a brief period to constructed and stabilize the corporation, earlier than he joined PricewaterhouseCoopers (Associate Partner) and then Booz Allen Hamilton (Principal) in 2002 & 2005, respectively.

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His number one roles at both the businesses had been greater or much less, advising or consulting their clients from industries like Investment Banking, Media, and so forth.

After giving nearly five years of his existence, he even started some other organisation of his own called – Excellere in 2007. Excellere changed into all approximately developing net-based totally academic products.

Although, for unknown reasons this assignment of his didn’t feature for more than a year, however all through that phase what he noticed returned in India, modified his existence for all time.

Life at Quikr.Com!

THE IDEA…

The story dates again to 2007! Pranay became dwelling in New York and had became an experimental movie-maker. He required a crew for a movie called ‘Latent Lava’— a online game made in the style of a function film; basically, it used era that allowed the viewer to play a game on stay motion pictures, growing multiple movie situations.

Anyway, he turned into capable of recruit almost 60 actors, one manufacturer and 30 team members thru Craigslist and that is whilst he realised that, Craigslist was a full-evidence business model and didn’t have an life in his domestic u . S . A ..

As he got deep into ideation, Pranay saw that there had been barely any answers for the people to get a just rate for some thing they desired, whether or not it became a used smartphone, furniture or a flat. He desired to remedy this hassle for the masses.

Additionally, this changed into a business version that had proved its fulfillment across the world; be it, the U.S. Or every other European us of a, or for that depend South America or China too. And even though print classifieds nevertheless had a stronger hold in the Indian market, online classifieds had the capacity to out beat it, over the period of time. This boosted his self assurance even more!

And even as connecting the dots, he located the last piece of the puzzle. India is a country that still loves to contact and feel the product before shopping for it and a platform that he had in thoughts, could get the buyer and seller in contact, and would allow them to keep their transaction offline.

This could not on-line make his idea extraordinary from e-commerce sites like Amazon or Flipkart, however might also put it at the traces of classifieds.

Hence, in July 2008; Pranay formally launched Quikr.Com, but as Kijiji.In!

THE EMERGENCE…

Now inside the preliminary phase Quikr become a subsidiary of eBay and Kijiji became Swahili word which intended ‘community’. Soon after the launch of the brand they realized that, the call changed into very difficult to pronounce and wasn’t including to the emblem too.

Hence, together they decided to create a new subsidiary, headed by using Pranay Chulet & Jiby Thomas, and officially renamed it to Quikr. However, Jiby determined to end Quikr in 2012 and started out his own digital advertising assignment known as Webbutterjam.

Moving on! Quikr was born out of a simple but unique idea – to craft a place where people in India can alternate things from every different. But in case you see, the arena of classifieds also crossed paths with many players, from a couple of avenues; essentially, it immediately or circuitously turned into in opposition with multiple corporations of numerous industries. But that did no longer scare Pranay!

He believed that a marketplace with many players could be very distinct from a market with noise. Anyone can start a internet site, but it now not every body has it them, to build a classifieds business.

In reality in keeping with him, Quikr became very extraordinary, clearer and extra bang on, than the maximum; as it supplied extra listings, greater responses to listings, and a cleanser, less difficult revel in than others. And moreover, just like it call says – offered a quicker way for human beings to transact compared to other marketplaces.

But the high-point of Quikr, in contrast to the relaxation changed into that, it had a specific revenue model in area. The organisation might make money from three verticals – top rate listings, lead generation and advertising.

Apart from the various different things; what made precise the maximum changed into that – every city had a distinct Quikr. Udaipur, as an example, Jeeps had been quite well-known here, in order that they had open Jeeps on the market, in addition, Punjab can also have ploughs set up on Royal Enfield bikes, Kolkata might have women entrepreneurs promoting home-made puchkas (panipuri), and so on.

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Basically, they segregated the portal very strategically, relying at the target market. To add to that, Pranay made certain to spend most of their price range into advertising.

And that they had a very easy but innovative technique to track their P2P (People-2-People) sales as well. All they used to and still do is that; while human beings used to come to delete their advertisements, that time they used to invite them if they were able to sell their product.

THE RISE…

With such a completely unique model (in appreciate to India), in conjunction with such innovative techniques, in all elements, the increase and upward push of the employer become eminent!

In the next few years, not best did the business enterprise grow on the pace of fire, but additionally was now getting converted right into a general logo in terms of classifieds. Some of the most distinguished traits are referred to beneath: –

2012 –

  • By now, Quikr had crossed quite a few milestones, like achieving from 1 million to 4 million, then to ten million and has now ultimately reached to factor wherein it had a monthly person base of more than 22 million unfold across sixty five Indian towns, and had also end up India’s biggest horizontal classifieds organisation.
  • Additionally, their first ever tv campaign become released and had additionally tied up with large brands like Nokia wherein Quikr apps could be available for customers.

2014 –

  • In the final 3-4 years, now not handiest had their visitors doubled, but they had tripled their consumer engagement and had also grown five instances in terms of sales – which now become touching somewhere around Rs. 200 Cr.
  • They had now reached to another stage and were catering to at least one-in-every six net customers in India i.E. 32 million users more or less, and were not handiest foreseeing a high growth in visitors and engagement, however also monetisation at the identical time.
  • With an increase in role, Quikr turned into largely spending on advertising efforts and improving its records analytics and algorithms as nicely.
  • Their staffing had also improved to around 80-90 members, of their quick yet lavish headquarters of South Mumbai.
  • This shortage of area had additionally brought about the discovery of an progressive concept. Quikr also started out one-of-its-type – ‘neglected referred to as centre’. To get to Quikr, all a consumer had to do turned into, supply a missed name to Quikr, and a person might name them lower back. That way, the enterprise become additionally able to reach out to a larger section of cellular users who, to this point were hesitant to spend money and make a name.
  • And finally, they also had every other exceptional instantaneous messaging (IM) feature named Quikr Nxt – which enabled the users to speak with multiple customers and proportion photographs.

Talking approximately the trends of 2015; Quikr with a electricity of 1,two hundred-1,300 humans, now reports 15 lakh (1.5 million more or less) transactions every month, which are valued somewhere around $five billion.

Today, the portal has a presence in 900 towns throughout India and addresses the wishes of many across 12 categories & over one hundred forty sub-categories which range from – Mobiles, offerings, automobiles, real property, enjoyment, jobs, fixtures, electronics and many others.

Quikr is likewise in the method of launching a brand new classifieds internet site for real property referred to as quikrhomes.Com. This would permit B2C (Business 2 Customer) in addition to C2C (Customer 2 Customer) discovery of homes. At the instant, Quikr has over 2 million listings in real estate, one-1/3 out of which might be for condominium rentals.

Quikr might additionally be launching new micro-websites underneath separate domains like QuikrHomes, QuikrAuto, etc, to surely commercial enterprise for its users.

And lastly, considering that inception, Quikr has acquired a total quantity of $346 Million in funding from various investors such as – Steadview Capital, Investment AB Kinnevik, Tiger Global Management, Warburg Pincus, Omidyar Network, Norwest Venture Partners – NVP, Nokia Growth Partners, Matrix Partners India and eBay.

Also Read:- Mukesh Ambani Astonishing Expedition To Success

These rounds include $150 million (2015), $60 million (2014), $90 million (2014), $32 million (2012), $8 million (2011), and $6 million (2010).

Achievements

  • The handiest classifieds platform to be featured in top ten ‘Best E-commerce Brands in India Amongst Youth’, in BAV (a Brand Asset Valuator) by means of Rediffusion-Y&R (2013)
  • Received the ‘Best Classifieds internet site of the Year 2012’ award at the WAT Awards (2011 – 2012)
  • Recognized as ‘certainly one of India’s hottest internet agencies for 2012’ by Young Turks Awards (2010 – 2011)
  • Awarded as selected ‘AlwaysOn Global 250 Winner’ by AlwaysOn (2009 – 2010)
  • Listed as Red Herring Asia 2010 & Global 2011 Top a hundred finalist (2010 – 2011)
  • Received the Certificate of Appreciation with the aid of Harvard Business School (2011 – 2012)


Date

08 Mar, 2023

Author

CrowdforThink

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