When Harvard back Sumit Ranka and Ritesh Malik got here lower back to India to join their respective family businesses, they wanted to result in a alternate in the conventional enterprise environment. And via changing the environment I suggest, actually changing the environment!
Being used to getting their every day dose of motivation from Harvard walls embellished with motivational thoughts from leaders along with Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and many others, the dull insipid partitions of their conventional offices appeared a stark contrast. And that’s after they determined to bring that identical daily dose of motivation to their offices, for their groups and personnel.
So, they went round scouting for photos, products, and paintings to enhance the empty walls of their places of work but did now not find something extremely good in layout. Reaching out to Google for assist, they downloaded the free snap shots that excellent appealed to them, were given them published, got them framed locally, called a chippie to put them up, and in 10 days they'd became round their dreary office walls to a mine of motivation! The duo realised that they had made their peace with no longer so wonderful designs and great and there has been a gap that existed – motivation in a terrific design at a first rate price and with the excellent of nice! Thus turned into born Thinkpot, a design merchandising organization catering mainly to motivational products for SMEs and startup places of work that were on the lookout for low priced artwork.
So, in August 2014, Thinkpot began out from Sumit’s dad’s office, peddling motivation within the shape of posters, frames, mugs, and merchandise. As luck would have it, on the second day of their launch, the startup obtained an order from INR 30K from a organization in Gurgaon, with out even having to begin their marketing activities. This made them agree with that there is a marketplace for motivation and happiness and they had just taken their first step in the direction of making a wonderful effect. After that, there has been no searching returned as Thinkpot slowly made its foray from ecommerce area to retail partners.
From Just Ecommerce To 50+ Retail Partners
After launching in 2014 through ecommerce, Thinkpot slowly started partnering with retail companions, who desired to sell their merchandise thru offline channels. Now that wide variety has grown to extra than 50 and consists of retail chains like Crosswords (throughout eight cities) and Landmark (across six towns), and numerous stationery shops, products stores, items shops, and boutique shops.
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The startup now has a panel of six designers and one chief layout officer to supervise all of them. Since a fashion designer has only a set set of developments or patterns he follows, Thinkpot does now not on-board a fashion designer for extra than 20 designs in order to maintain range, flavor and freshness in the goods. Hence, the designers are employed on a contract foundation for approximately 20 designs. Additionally, the designers are hired from one-of-a-kind regions to provide an eclectic mix of thought. For example, the startup has collaborated with designers from the United Kingdom, and Indian cities like Pondicherry, Delhi, Bangalore, Ahmedabad and Mumbai.
The startup’s manufacturing turned into to start with completely outsourced. However, as it grew, it has commenced semi-production the goods. Now the very last assembling, packaging, labelling, and fine check takes place on the warehouse in Mumbai for you to hold a strict control over high-quality. Thinkpot has all the raw substances in place, and assembling takes place best once an order is located. Delivery and logistics is outsourced to 1/3 birthday party companions like Delhivery and Fedex. As of now, the variety includes 1000 SKUs falling underneath 5 foremost categories, specifically wall décor, stationery, accessories, clothing, and drink ware.
Motivation For All
Given the reality that majority of the Indian populace is within the 24-forty age organization now, and approximately 70% of it'll be in this age institution within the subsequent 10 years, Thinkpot sees them as a great target marketplace for motivation and happiness related products. As this may be the population with multiplied strain, extended paintings strain, they could require motivation the most. Hence the startup is seeing lots of interest from clients who need to hold their body of workers positively inspired.
Sumit cites an example of a countrywide radio channel whose corporate PR man known as him to tell that he didn’t know who they were, but each certainly one of his colleagues had for my part sold office products from Thinkpot! So he wanted Thinkpot to layout some thing quirky for the entire office. That caused the startup adding some other class of merchandise below happiness, and design every other variety of effective messages to uplift one’s temper.
50K+ Orders And Counting
Thinkpot now processes 100 orders a day from all channels including the website, marketplaces which include Flipkart, Amazon, Snapdeal, Paytm, and its band of 50+ outlets. In reality, the startup’s first month revenue turned into INR 50K, a discern which has accelerated. Going forward, it goals to manner two hundred orders an afternoon and clock sales to the song of INR 20 Lakh a month in the subsequent six months.
The startup has been completely bootstrapped with the founders ploughing INR 20 lakhs in seed capital. Given the fact that it became operationally worthwhile in the first months itself, it is not seeking to increase heavy budget. However, what it's far looking for is how to gainfully sustain the business with the revenues it is making. More so, it operates with an eight member team, relying much on era, which includes cloud-primarily based automatic stock management, to be powerful and centered on productiveness alone.
Adds Sumit, “When we first started out, human beings concept folks as a new merchandise corporation promoting motivation products. And we had no clue a way to be in retail. From our first retail purchaser in Australia to now, it has been a journey where we've got learnt and analysed the whole lot, from the type of designs that paintings to high-quality that is required. For the primary three months, we caught to 3 stores and forty merchandise. It took us six months to reach 10 stores, every other 3 months to hit 18 outlets after which only a month to attain 50 outlets. Now we recognize the way to be in retail, the way to approach a retailer.”
The Other Motivation Peddlers
Many startups have now arise in the vending area with their quirky services and designs. One of them is Happily Unmarried, which offers quirky products focusing extra on the fun facet. Then there is add-ons logo Chumbak, which does pictorial stuff with illustrations and has now different the portfolio from fridge magnets to cellphone/pc instances, espresso mugs, add-ons, home décor, and recently garb for males and females.
Then there are curated marketplaces like PosterGully, which permits artists, designers & absolutely everyone who can create original visible content material to seamlessly make contributions and products unique designs. It sells a spread of products, inclusive of phone cases, art prints, domestic décor, garb etc. To clients globally. There are many different such marketplaces like Cupik.Com, Paintcollar, Bewakoof, and Freecultr, amongst others. Then there are the has beens like Delhi-primarily based fan products & customisation platform Bluegape.Com, which shut down because of copyright issues in 2014.
However, Sumit contends that what differentiates them is that no startup is focusing on typography and that too confined to motivation and happiness. Additionally, Thinkpot’s proposition is to promote precise designs at low-cost charges. Adds Sumit,
We only desired to stick to motivation as this is some thing we couldn't locate. You may want to find quirky stuff however no longer motivational stuff for workplaces. Secondly, we made it a point to provide specific designs and proper pricing. We have seen six to seven competitors come up in our two-12 months adventure. But they attempted to sell a product, now not a layout. We had been seeking to remedy a hassle, and not push a product to our clients.
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He gives an example of a customer within the hospitality industry who desired something precise in motivation for his restaurant. So Thinkpot designed a poster with the message “careworn spelt backward is cakes”. Hence, going ahead, the startup will even layout enterprise unique merchandise given the call for from healthcare and hospitality industries. He believes that there may be still a lot extra to be accomplished inside the motivation class itself given the demand for high quality messages in places of work.
Editor’s Note
As in line with a current Morgan Stanley report, the Indian ecommerce marketplace is estimated to be well worth $119 Bn by means of 2020. With the growing number of startups and SMEs, India’s burgeoning young people population, coupled with mounting strain in jobs, motivation and happiness look like a developing need. There received’t be dearth of players who will fulfill the developing call for for such products in workplace areas and companies.
With many artists coming on-line to sell their paintings thru curated marketplaces, the competition receives more difficult. Thinkpot’s real test might be in differentiating itself from the multitude of players acknowledged and unknown operating within the vending area on the premise of its exceptional and design, and setting up a brand name to stand out inside the sea of such dealers.