Help us in Idea Validation! Build Powerful Ecom Stores and Cool Websites in Just 7 Hours

By Ankit Shukla on June 23, 2014 44 Comments / 3028 views

[Update 27-dec 3:15 am]: All the inputs as comments have been very useful to me, thanks a lot for that.
I apologize for not being frequently active in this community, as this entrepreneurial journey is so fast and adventurous and I am engaged all the time in just catching upto the speed.
We have only completed 6 months in operations and I will quickly share the brief of our journey {I promise to share the complete story once we are done with some cool things we are doing at our end}
1st Week : We have got some leads and after connecting i found that the main driving factor for customers was not 7 hours but was cheap pricing we offered.
I don’t think that cheap pricing is a good way to win in any startup, as you will run out of resources very quickly.
2nd Week : Now we have become choosy in taking the projects as all the team members weren’t equally excited.
3rd Week : We got the opportunity to work for a bollywood movie (Mad About Dance), they needed three web apps on quickly running deadlines and we delivered them so quickly, this made our first commercial work to be launched by The King of bollywood SRK [Happy we 🙂 ]. That was a moment!!
Since then we have many ups and downs but I haven’t look back, and we started helping bollywood movies and brands in creating digital content and developing web apps, we have proudly contributed for tamanchey, zidd, khoobsurat and Action jackson in last 3 months, and presently we are building products to help this industry in a scalable way.
I promise to share the complete timeline and learnings once we are done with our products. I am equally excited to share them with you, till then lets focus on business and get back to work.

[/update]

Hi Doers,

capture

I and some of my friends had this idea sometime ago, I need your help in validation, as to understand the pain in the market, how can we improve our offering, and how can we promote our service.

The Problem:

You want to take your business online, and you don’t have much time using those imperfect DIY things, and custom development and design would require a lot of time and money, as a startup you can’t afford either of them.

Solution:

Our small team has got some hands on experience with web design and some powerful CMS like Magento, Open Cart, WP.
Graphic Designers are also joining us very soon. We can also develop custom web apps with amazing backends and frontends.
We can make your site (Ecom as well) Live and running in 7 hours!!! So you can save time and money both.
We are “Web Development on Steroids”

Your take

Please share your views about the idea, whats wrong and whats right in it, and how can we promote this thing. Please help us in idea validation and recommending some early customers, you can check our website (our cute little domain) here https://in7h.com (Its made in less thn 2 hours). For early customers there will be discounted rates 🙂

Cheers!!!
Don’t Forget to comment below.

Comments

Ankit Shukla

44 Comments

Sai Rodinhood Pothuri June 23, 2014, 1:07 pm

Ankit, Cool idea.. well a small doubt. after completion of website, suppose after 1 week, i wanted to add some more features. so how you are planning to work on costing.. is it again going to cost per hour basis. suppose i am looking for Annual Maintenance. will you take care off? if yes how much ? lot more doubts, less time 🙂

Best Regards

Sai Pothuri

http://www.virtuinfotech.com
Ankit Shukla June 23, 2014, 1:49 pm

Thanks a lot Sai for the feedback.

Every customer/project will get some hours of support at subsidized rates, which will depend on the features requested.

Annual maintainance will be taken care at a fixed price after the site has been made.

We are working on it to make it more crisp.
You can connect with me through PM 🙂
Amit June 23, 2014, 2:25 pm

I am looking for an E-Comm website to be developed for my Co.
Kunal Bihani June 23, 2014, 2:35 pm

Great idea. Basically you are the lean-est version of the existing solutions or people out there. Here are my two cents (I am currently working with a developer and designer for my site)

– How do you plan to take the customer brief? Is it part of the package or outside of it? This would be relevant for e-commerce development.

– Updating customers about handling the admin panel of the server hosting? Also, teaching them about product uploads etc.

– Payment gateway integration? I am sure sellers will surely ask for that.

There are existing solutions like Zepo etc which can give you some heads up on the overall process and the elements required to integrate as part of the offering.

I have read your articles before and I am sure you will come out exceedingly well in the endevour. Cheers and all the best

P.S – More than happy to be part of the feedback process (as a customer posing questions) in your initial days 🙂
Vijay Khubchandani June 23, 2014, 2:38 pm

Good concept.. Hope it sticks!!

Btw, that quote from Malcolm X needs to be shifted down a little, because your Menu bottom in the top-right corner overlaps its text, on mobile..

Mastering finer details will give you that edge over competition..

Best of luck!!
Yatin Mulay June 23, 2014, 2:46 pm

Sounds cool. Few questions:

Is hosting included or separate cost?

Is premium template included or separate cost?

Is logo design included or separate cost?

Is populating inventory ( non xml csv dump replacing dummy data ) included or separate cost?

How many hours of dashboard training will be provided or is separate cost?

It says Ecomm dev rate at 2K/hr, does that mean that the min price is 2k *7h = 14K?
Mukul Kumar Sharma June 23, 2014, 2:49 pm

Dropped you a mail. Lets discuss. This is about http://www.koimoi.com a 2Win Group Site.
Ankit Shukla June 23, 2014, 3:08 pm

Hi Amit, Drop me a mail at info@in7h.com and we’ll start working on it tomorrow only 🙂
Ankit Shukla June 23, 2014, 3:24 pm

Hi Kunal, Thanks a lot for giving your valuable time for reading my post, your feedback and questions.
Following answers will become more clear in the time to come and with our experience.
The client info will be taken as a traditional web company only,
We have designed some docs which the client will have to fill, and after it we will have a personal talk with the client and take all related information and understand his business. (This all will take one hour and is chargable, while after this if we need to talk to client during the dev. process thn it won’t be counted in paid hours.) .
For educating the customers, we are preparing simple docs for all the CMS we are working on and with hosting as well, These will cover all the basic functionalties and HOW to.We have a good experience with PayU, we will integrate this for client and the charges (if any) will have to be taken care by the client and yes this may take timing as per the normal timeline given by Payment gateway company.
Ankit Shukla June 23, 2014, 3:28 pm

Thanks a lot Vijay for finding it out for us 🙂
Super Sure I had taken the note and will incorporate this in all our projects 🙂

Hope to hear more from you in future.
Sushrut Munje June 23, 2014, 3:38 pm

Hey, showcasing originality might be a great start, especially when you build websites. Avoid using WP template screenshots, especially for such articles. A rookie like me might take pride in installing templates and not customizing them at all. You ought to go to all ends and impress us rookies with your skill!
Ankit Shukla June 23, 2014, 3:39 pm

Hosting charges for one year are included on shared hosting, but we’ll advise all our E-Com clients to get separate VPS hosting, we can arrange for same at separate cost.

We have choosen some templates which we can customize for the client, premium templates are at different rates (as per the rate of the template)

Logo will be also charged by hours (max 2 hours, min 1 hour). (Separate from 7 hours)

We will give a fresh installation and very small dummy data for reference will be included, product upload to be taken care by the client, or take our data entry people for some hours (rate will be lower thn 1k)

Dashboard training will be provided by us at no extra cost with simple DIY guides as well.

Yes, 14K for an ECom site.

I hope the answers are clear.

Thanks a lot Yatin for feedback and questions, these will certainly help us in planning more crisply 🙂
Ankit Shukla June 23, 2014, 3:54 pm

Got your contact, Mukul, Lets connect in the morning tomorrow 🙂
Ankit Shukla June 23, 2014, 4:00 pm

Thanks a lot Sushrut 🙂

Note Taken.
Will surely take care in all future things 🙂
Abhik Prasad June 23, 2014, 5:09 pm

what’s the rush for developing a website in 7 hours…especially in a country where it can take upto a month to get a payment gateway in place for a standalone ecommerce store.

Also, what about A/B testing of variations ?

When we were developing Fin10 we changed the layout and messaging almost every other day for the first two weeks till we were reasonably sure that people were getting the message.

Starting an online business is a marathon and not a sprint…you might be better of trying to do a staggered model where you charge them a low amount when someone is starting up and they pay you more as the business grows (while you remain a trusted IT partner)

All the best.
Amit Shroff June 23, 2014, 5:24 pm

Ankit forget about going online – get me a payment gateway in 7hrs with live merchant account. So in 14k you can put up an online store, upload 3000 SKU, Get Complex Discount in Place and upload 20 page of content.

I would love to outsource you all our projects.

Look at our eCommerce Packages – tell me can you complete these features in 7hrs.
Sushrut Munje June 23, 2014, 5:40 pm

🙂
Ankit Shukla June 23, 2014, 6:12 pm

Hi Abhik, You are correct as an entrepreneur with a primary web business. There is still a lot of market including people who need to get their brand online, there college fest site online, there restaurant site online, there are numerous other examples. So our customer segment is different.
We aren’t saying that we can develop anything in this time. For a purely technical company i would recommend having an inhouse or dedicated web agency, because thats your primary thing.
And yes if all things/documents are at place the payment gateway doesn’t take much time. (although no one can promise this in less thn a week, nor do we)

Thnks a lot for putting your valuable time in giving us a feedback, looking forward for more 🙂
Ankit Shukla June 23, 2014, 6:16 pm

We aren’t promising any of those things, we aren’t a dedicated e-com helper company. We will create the site, connect you with payment gateway companies, tell you how to upload those products and more some basic things with the backend. We aren’t spoonfeeding anyone, just giving them an online presence faster. And yes if you can help me with your “data entry” team, i can take all your projects 😉
Yatin Mulay June 23, 2014, 7:58 pm

Doesn’t that “product upload to be taken care by the client” defeat the DYI problem that you’re solving? ( potential deal breaker point )

Correct me if I’m wrong, but what a customer will essentially get for 14K would be a fresh install with some dummy data import. Now, I’m sure you know that one can get this done at just $5-50 range these days from freelance marketplaces.

I feel you may want to bring in a LOT of clarity into the deliverables upfront as part of expectation management.

For example: Will you give a development site mirror to the customer where they can learn things before pushing changes live?

How much customization would be covered under deliverables and what would constitute scope creep?

(I’m sure you know how little intuitive platforms like magento can be and I’m sure most customers would struggle to create product with variations in simpler system like even Woocommerce.)

Clarity on SLA? etc.

IMHO, the actual min cost of getting estore designed per your feedback would be significantly higher if you add cost of parts ( Ex: (appox): VPS hosting $25×12 mo + template $50 + 14K your base rate + 1K logo and given the fact that most customers wouldn’t be able to handle the DYI part, it’d be at least 10 hrs extra custom dev/fine tuning taking the net cost to 45-50K INR
Amit Shroff June 24, 2014, 5:32 am

Ankit, whats a point of having an eCommerce store without SKU and Content. If this is what you call delivery we can get a eCommerce Store live in couple of hours. DIY don’t works with non technical store owners since they would always need an help. Even with technical guys to understand, upload and go live. Hence the 7hrs funda will never work.
Roopali Srivastava June 24, 2014, 6:59 am

Hi Abhik, the marathon vs sprint analogy is spot on!

I just wanted to know if you know of anyone or can recommend someone that is just this – a trusted IT partner who offers “a staggered model (charging) a low amount when someone is starting up and (get paid more) more as the business grows”? I am looking for an outsourced partner who can manage our site (including creative updates, uploads, any changes etc) and would appreciate any inputs that can help!

Thanks.
Ankit Shukla June 24, 2014, 8:19 am

You may be right, we think uploading SKUs, updating content is an ongoing process. We are conducting some client interviews on the same thing, and would love to share the results with you 🙂
Ankit Shukla June 24, 2014, 8:22 am

Hi Yatin, All you questions are great and have given us more light, We have starting some interviews with clients, the outcomes will become our FAQs and Policies. Would love to share the same with you once its done 🙂
Amit Shroff June 24, 2014, 9:27 am

Yes Yatin, I too agree with you, delivering a shell to customer at 14k is useless. He/She would not gain anything.

So what kind of value for money is Ankit trying to bring on table. Can he deliver extensive features like Discount, BOGO, Payment Gateway Integration, Wishlist, Inventory Management, Filters etc

Ankit look at our plans and tell me what is included in 14K. Please be specific with your Scope.

https://www.72interactive.in/packages/ecommerce-website-packages.html
Amit Shroff June 24, 2014, 9:28 am

Hi Amit, we are too a technology company based out of Noida. Let me know what is your requirement.

https://www.72interactive.in/packages/ecommerce-website-packages.html
Ankit Shukla June 24, 2014, 9:54 am

Hi Amit, Thanks for it, we are in process of making table of our features, which will surely help our clients in understanding the deliverables.

Thanks for guiding us 🙂
Kunal Bhusare June 24, 2014, 11:22 am

Hi Ankit,

You have been bombarded with questions and you have answered all of them patiently. Just goes to show how touchy aspect of the Web development business you have targeted. Some have even taken offence of your proposal. So buddy, you are on the right track !

Being a fellow Web Development company, i can completely understand the pain point that you are trying to solve. Though, there are many many questions, i just wish they had simple answers.

Would love to hear your experiences (from another blog on Rodinhoods) and changes to the plan based on client inputs. Would certainly help us tweak our business model effectively from your learnings.

All the Best.
Robin Dhanwani June 25, 2014, 6:20 am

Its a very interesting proposition but solving this problem with scale will be very difficult and here is why:

OnCall Development – In a model like this where you are doing rapid development, lets assume for a 7 hr development cycle, you might have to be on call with the client for at-least 7-8 times in a day and overall around 2 hrs of time. I would personally hate developing websites like a call center where the clients tells me on phone/skype to change colour, font, image etc. continuously for a few hours.

Scale – An approach like this needs working very closely with client and hence you might not be able to scale it since talking to clients is a skill not every developer in your team might have specially ability to understand the requirements clearly, make suggestions on templates etc.

Cost – You have set a hourly rate and a 7 hour time but in many cases, things might not complete in that time and need much more time and thats where you will have a expectation mismatch issue. People who are coming to you will primarily come for a 7h=7k/14k cost and when it reaches 50k with customizations and features, you will have serious issues with clients and they won’t be willing to understand & appreciate the time based billing, specially in India.

But go ahead and give it a try and do share your experience of how it works with this model with fellow rodinhooders 🙂
Ankit Shukla June 25, 2014, 8:36 am

Thanks a lot Kunal for appreciating our efforts. All the comments have given us more knowledge, and we are crafting a list of FAQs and process design for our team. I hope we will come up with something worth sharing 🙂
Ankit Shukla June 25, 2014, 8:44 am

Hi Robin, First of all thanks a lot for appreciating our efforts 🙂 .

We are building a team so that client facing side is given to an experienced person, who won’t handle development, its not that one guy will work on one project, multiple people will work on one project to complete it on time, like graphic designer, developer, data entry will work in parallel after getting instructions from our lead.

We are documenting the whole process and finding some more team mates for it. And yes during the very first hour of our call with client, our experienced lead will tell if the project could be completed in 7 hours or not, if it can or cannot be we will tell him accordingly, if we have told the client that his project would be completed in 7 hours and we are unable to do it, in such case we won’t be charging for any extra hours from the client and will complete his work.
The great response in this post and hinest feedback from fellow entrepreneurs have indicated that may be this path is difficult but is worth taking the pain 🙂
Yatin Mulay June 25, 2014, 10:29 am

@Amit,just to clarify, I never said it’s useless. There are perfectly legit scenarios wherein the OP can deliver a fully functional ecomm site in 7hrs IF the client is savvy enough to give ALL the necessary data in an organized manner.

As you may know, such clients are incredibly rare so my suggestion to the OP was that he could work on the clarity on the deliverables as part of expectations management for his service (and I must say he takes the feedback in the correct spirit)

The rodinhood spirit is to simply help a fellow entrepreneur improve his offering thro’ constructive feedback & suggestions rather than being discouraging. Cheers!
Ankit Mahindru June 25, 2014, 4:33 pm

Sounds interesting, I am building a marketplace for hiring developers, maybe we could work something out to help each other. Lets Connect.
Mukul Kumar Sharma June 26, 2014, 12:36 pm

Ankit,

Haven’t heard from you as of now.
Amit Shroff June 26, 2014, 5:04 pm

Hi Ankit,

Lets connect if you are interested. We have a ready market place which we wish to launch soon and looking for partner.

For more details visit :

https://www.72interactive.in

Some of our projects:

https://www.printawallpaper.com

https://www.theboxerstore.co.in

https://www.kapoorlampshade.com

Regards,
Amit
Amit Shroff June 26, 2014, 5:15 pm

Hi Robin,

Yes I totally agree with you. In India most of client doesn’t understand scope and would always have difference if the project value goes beyond the agreed cost, even if the scope of project is clearly defined in the contract.

We have personally faced these issues. Even the deadline thing don’t work, since they don’t understand that in order to complete the project in a given time frame they need to provide approval at various stages, hence delay in approval means missing the deadline.

Above all Indian client would look at cost instead of functional requirement, but after you start working on the project they would try to force you to implement functionality which were not originally part of scope and if you argue they would say, these are standard eCommerce features and but natural features.

Hence, Ankit you should check your activities. Since i believe you would hardly find a client who will buy your standard product and each one would required customization and at time as mentioned by Robin customization goes beyond the scope.

This is the reason why our plans are so details. You will not find such details in most of the ecommerce platform being offered in market. We want to ensure we are as transparent as possible so that we don’t run into trouble with any client.

https://www.72interactive.in/packages/ecommerce-website-packages.html

One last quick tip – Don’t bend your terms for any client, even if you are working for Microsoft or Apple. Let the client bend if he wish to work with you.

I have learned this and now we don’t bend our terms for any client.
Ankit Shukla June 27, 2014, 11:49 am

Hi Mukul, I called you on tuesday but you were unreachable, I had inboxed you, please go through it 🙂
Ankit Shukla June 27, 2014, 11:51 am

Hi Ankit, would love to connect,Just sent you a friend request here on therodinhood, you can also find me on facebook here https://facebook.com/ankythshukla
Abhik Prasad June 27, 2014, 12:53 pm

Hi Roopali,

If you are coming for the Delhi Meetup tomorrow, then maybe we can discuss this there.

Else, could you share your email id or phone no at abhik@experiamedia.com and we can catchup.

Cheers

Abhik
Karan Ahuja June 27, 2014, 4:56 pm

Why would anyone need it in 7 hours
asha chaudhry September 2, 2014, 7:11 am

hey ankit,

are you guys still on steroids?

we’d all love to know whether this model worked or not? what are your learnings and what’s happening on this next??!
Amit Kumar Chattopadhyay September 2, 2014, 7:23 am

7-hour delivery seems to be the core value proposition of your service. Does it resonate with your customers ? In other words, would your customers pay for fastest delivery or they would consider other factors such as price, promotion, traffic etc. If you can develop a business model that guarantees traffic (x visitors/page views etc.) in addition to 7 hour delivery – I believe that will be more attractive for business customers whose primary reason for investment in website is monetizing traffic.

Best Regards

Amit
Ankit Shukla December 26, 2014, 9:48 pm

Apologies for the late reply…
Our steroid worked really well, but in a different industry :D.
We are doing some more cool things, I have updated the post and will share the complete story soon 🙂
Ankit Shukla December 26, 2014, 9:53 pm

Thanks for the great advice Amit.

We have pivoted ourselves exactly the way you have mentioned here, now we are into digital marketing space as well, and help create campaigns + web apps for businesses, celebs etc. so that they can get the maximum ROI.
Thanks again.