Journey from an Idea to ipo

Journey from an Idea to ipo

• 1.
  wwww.digitalerra.com Journey From AnIdea To IPO At the recently concluded eTailing India Expo 2017 – “India’s Flagship Conference & Exhibition on Retail, eCommerce and Mobile” (http://etailingindiaexpo.com), leading thought leaders shared their perspective on “Technology Services for Retail & eCommerce”. This article summarises the session for KEYNOTE: JOURNEY FROM IDEA TO IPO. (The session is not verbatim here) Why do we need Entrepreneurs in the country? This country needs a generation of entrepreneurs because there is an acute shortage of resource, mobilization and utilization to drive out problem of unemployment. 19 crore youths are in need of jobs and every year, 4 crore more people are getting added. Our president said that India is in need of 115 million non-farm sector jobs. So, the youth of India are looking up to entrepreneurs to provide them employment.
• 2.
  wwww.digitalerra.com So, how tobe an entrepreneur and provide jobs without shelling out money from one’s own pocket? To build a company, you need to do constructive things:  Value proposition: You need to have a value proposition that demands strong pricing and gives you strong profit. For example apple which has a strong value proposition can get high amount of money for its product. You need to identify what builds and drives your value proposition.  Need to have a continual stream of business: In etailing sector, despite being one of the world’s largest consumer markets here, if an etailer stops marketing this morning, the sales go down. Why is that happening? If etailer stops discounting, sales go down. How can you get continuous business opportunities? You need to think what can get you a continuous stream of customers. Etailing is all about that. Today you have numerous tools to gauge metrics such as marketing, re- marketing, emailing and many other growth hacking techniques. You need to continuously and effectively convert leads into a paying customer. For instance, all the subscription based company has a high customer acquisition cost. Tata sky is monetizing every avenue of its marketing space while displaying channels.  For an entrepreneur, you need to have a dream; you need to have a vision. How to put things properly to get it accomplished? You have to be a storyteller that conveys the message people want. Remember these 4 qualities (Dream, Vision, Purpose and Mission). Pursue your Supreme Moment “Pursue your Supreme Moment; everything else will conspire to make it real for you”
• 3.
  wwww.digitalerra.com Your sole purposeis your supreme moment when you get identified by your organization. Generally the problem with entrepreneurs is that they get caught up with day to day life. So empty yourself with all the distractions, concepts and sufferings and start your journey to the ultimate supreme moment. A beginners mind is like a blank piece of paper. Be open, empty, interested and curious. Create a new mind, create a new vision and start your journey to the supreme moment. Decide whether your idea is a signal or a noise  What is your business model? Have you validated your idea?  If there are customers looking for that idea? Are they looking up to it? There are two ways to go for it.  Either you create a habit in customers to buy your product or you want to tap an already existing habit of people in a better way.  If you are going to create a habit, it is going to be a very difficult business model. But if you can tap an existing habit in a better way (e.g. Patanjali), it can be a success for you. The next step is introspecting launch of a minimum viable product through which you can go and test your product. Once, it is done, you apply design thinking by the available processes through which you can filter your ideas to a solid product. Now you move to prototyping and validation and here you are required to have a seed funding. Remember, today no one is going to give you time just by looking on your power point presentation. You will be asked about the prototype and its scope. Importance of a Solid Team
• 4.
  wwww.digitalerra.com  You willbe required to build a have team of professionals. You need to think of a co-founder. Go and find a person who fulfills the 4 entrepreneurial qualities (Dream, Vision, Purpose and Mission).  An important thing is to find a pilot customer or an anchor customer. There are thousands of businesses shutting down because they don’t have a pilot customer. So find that.  Then when you move on to product where you require mentoring. There are thousands of good platforms available today where you will find true mentors. They will help you correct lots of things and guide you all along the way.  The next step is to go and find funding and you need to find again the anchor. Today Amazon has created a big platform that is Amazon Launchpad and they are giving marketing push to showcase innovative products from startups to its customers. Just alike, you can find an anchor customer where you could put up your stuff.  Then, when you scale up, you require a management. Why the need management? If we are not aligned with the 4 things that we spoke (Dream, Vision, Purpose and Mission), it will lead to problems.  Then you will need a Series A funding where later on, you can think of a strategic exit or think of an IPO. That journey is around 10 years.  To run a business, you need an idea, team, business model, funding and most importantly timing. These are the most important factors for building your business. Starting up a business is a process not a procedure. The process starts from mindset as in what you need as an idea to go from entrepreneur to IPO. You require a mindset, techniques for ideation, structure, strategy and checklist. You have to be a real problem solver of customer to make your business grow. Live you passion and not love your passion. The difference between successful and unsuccessful startups is preparation, so chance could favour them. You need to create customer interest rather than
• 5.
  wwww.digitalerra.com investing money inpremature scaling of business. The fact of the matter is everyday more businesses are closing down. For that not to happen, you need to know the journey. If you don’t know the journey, how can you know the destination? (Honorable Speaker: Ishwar Jha (Founder & CEO: Appetals)