Applying Theory of Constraints to find your Growth Model
While we often keep hearing about startups that lap up glorious rounds of funding and then resort to massive discounting to show hockey-stick growth for their VCs, rarely do we hear about startup founders who not just believe in their idea, but never give up even when the going gets tougher, keep their heads down in building a profitable business from day one without luring customers with offers and create a niche market for their products globally, sitting out of India.
Craftsvilla.com, an online marketplace for Indian ehnic wear and goods, is one such startup that has created a name from itself in a very niche, ethnic goods market, competing against the best of the e-commerce players in the segment. Craftsvilla is known for it’s frugal but creative marketing campaigns to drive traffic and scaling rapidly at growth rate of 6x YoY, becoming the 6th largest ecommerce player in India and plan to reach a GMV of $500 Million in next 12 months. They recently acquired a shipping service provider, Sendd, for $4.5 Million.
Outline/Structure of the Experience Report
Story telling session.
Learning Outcome
"Build your company for your customers, not VCs" is one of the key mantra that Manoj Gupta (an Ex-VC himself), the Cofounder & CEO of Craftsvilla came to learn the hard way and believes it led Craftsvilla to the growth trajectory it is seeing today.
In this talk, Manoj will share his experiences and insights from his entrepreneurial journey of 6 years in scaling Craftsvilla since it's humble launch in 2011, early scaling mistakes that led to downsizing the team from 100+ hires and 5 offices across India to a tiny room and a team of 8, but all of whom strongly believed in the idea and kept the fight even when the market was adverse and fuelling growth was getting tougher. As he quoted, Our three dimensional differentiation - Unique Supply of Ethnic Products, Profitability of Business, and Global Appeal of Our Products - differentiates us from others who bask in the glory of the "Great Dollar Swamp" created in India currently.
Target Audience
Founders, Engineers and People planning to start their Entrepreneurial Journey
Naresh Jain
Joel Tosi
Ravi Kumar
Anish Cheriyan
Venkatraman Lakshminarayanan
