Fireside chat with Sanjay Sethi hosted by Startup Grind was an amazing event and of great value to all the attendees. Sanjay shared with us how his career moved from being a mechanical engineer at SAIL to the Co-Founder & CEO of Shopclues. Prior to Shopclues, Sanjay was with e-bay as their Global Product Head at US. He was never the entrepreneur sorts during his early days. But, the bug to do something different and the desire to get out of his comfort zone was how he started thinking on the lines of Shopclues. He with his colleague, Sandeep Aggarwal had thoroughly studied the e-commerce market in India before venturing out.
We all know that there is a market for the mall crowd (say Ambience Mall), there is something for the street shoppers (say Sarojini Nagar masses) and a flea market populace (say Surajkund mela) also exists. In each of these places, the shopping experience varies and is unique to each of its target. The Indian market is very fragmented and unorganized in its trade. They were quick to understand that there is a lot of potential in the online shopping space in India. A managed marketplace model is what is needed they realized. At a time when e-com players were inventory based, Shopclues decided to adopt marketplace model. With a marketplace model, many of the small time merchants also get their fair share in the online space. And, today, they have 65k+ merchants including one from Lakshadweep selling 1 million products!
He adds that, in the e-commerce space, on one end of the spectrum lies the classified listers and on the other end are the players who control the terms of the buyers and sellers on their site. Shopclues exists in between these two extremes. Today they boast of handling about 30 lakh transactions on their site and also laurel the fact that about one third of their market is from Tier 3 cities.
When they first started out in late 2011, they launched initially on Facebook. Beginning with people whom they knew, the message spread and their FB community grew to 1 million likes in 13 months. Sanjay attributes this to the human/ personal touch and their honest messaging that was very apparent with everyone they interacted on their page. It was this community that gave them the deeper insight of what they expect that helped them grow magnanimously within one year of operations.
Key points of Risk vs reward for an entrepreneur that Sanjay shared –
# If you can live with the worst, then there is only the upside for you. So before you venture out, calculate what could be the worst thing that might happen with you post starting up. If you feel you can live with those horrors then it’s definitely worth the try.
# When starting out, there will be many naysayers within your trusted circle and outside of it too, but remember if it’s not scary then it’s not worth doing.
# Before you don the entrepreneurial hat, mentally work out the number of years you are ready to give. Don’t say I quit before that period. Sanjay, recalls how as soon as he landed at the T3 airport in Delhi, he had seen Snapdeal ads everywhere in the airport. The TV Commercials were also full of them. It came as a big challenge to him, but since he had given himself four years he knew that he wouldn’t be distracted by anything.
# Building a world class business takes at least a good 5-8 years, know this fact, believe it and accept it.
Sanjay’s thoughts on #theperfectteam – Key takeaways
# After a choice of co-founders is made, remember you become a family.
# The perfect team is one in which each of the core members are complementing each other.
# A person is never whole; but teams can be made whole.
# The core team should be such that though they may fight endlessly amongst themselves they still are friends. Despite the fact that they may hate each other like arch enemies, they have a common vision and proceed to achieve that single mindedly.
He finally closed by saying that there is ample scope for more and more players in this industry. And, that he firmly believes that Today’s solutions are Tomorrow’s problems.
Destination is a big mirage; so it’s the journey that you should enjoy. Therefore it’s nothing but passion that can keep you going. There are bound to be hard times but nevertheless dealing with it is what sets apart the winners from the rest.
Lamba hain safar iss mein kahin raat to hogi. All ye entrepreneurs don’t let the testing times tire you, instead stand up and fight back.
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Editor’s note: If any rodinhooder would like to cover an event in any city for trhs – pls get in touch with me at asha@rodinhood.com
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