Starting up : Challenges behind the scenes
Start up organisations are growing worldwide and Bangalore is the epicentre in India. It's a competitive environment with many ideas becoming viable business models and eventually, being able to find a quantifiable valuations for it. Technology is at the heart of this entire industry. In conversation with Gandharva Bakshi, Co-Founder of Lumos Design Technology Pvt Ltd that designs Solar powered briefcases and backpacks that allow you to charge your mobile phone or laptop on the move. Another product, Aster, is a back pack for cyclists, complete with 44 LEDs that light up the front back and sides of the backpack, along with a handlebar unit that lets you signal right or left. The backpack even gets brighter when the cyclist hits the brakes .It also comes with a mobile application for the various settings you can choose from. Founded in 2012, with his wife Lavina Mahbubani, it sales has reached $80,000 in the past year alone.
Having graduated from IIT Chennai and IIM Bangalore, in some ways you have branched out,and yet you are the norm, as many startups in India are founded by Ex-IITians. How did that impact your decision to start up?
Actually, me and some friends had a startup in IIM itself. Each student had to conduct some research for each course and we basically found organizations that were interested in that research and sold it to them. We actually made around 15 lakh with that. After going to IIM, I started working for Tejas. At that time, Tejas was 150 employees strong and was a well established startup. I was doing marketing at the time. In retrospect, I feel should have joined an even smaller company as Tejas was already a well established start up. When Lavina and me decided to start Lumos, we got initial funding from my ex-boss at Tejas, and later we got 25lakhs from Rajan Anandan (MD, Google India)
Is it an advantage being an IIT-IIM graduate while starting up?
To be very honest, I'm not sure of B-school really helps if you want to start up.
So, do you think it would have been better if you started up after IIT itself?
I don't really know, to really find the truth, there should be two versions of me, one that went to b-school and one that did not. I'm not sure how much the curriculum of B-schools really help in starting up. Would I have been able to start-up without my network at IIM? I don't think so.
What were the challenges you had in making and selling your products?
The main challenge was to actually educate people. The idea that comes to mind is a big bulky solar panel on a bag. We have to educate them that there is a solar fabric that is extremely lightweight and people also had concerns that it will not look aesthetic. We really had to work on our design and also micromanage the manufacturing as working with solar fabric is very challenging, if you stitch into the solar grid on the fabric, it doesn't work. That taught us a lot about how to maintain quality standards for these products and you always be on top of these things. We had to cancel one of our earlier batches because of how badly it was made. We have to import the solar fabric for our solar backpacks and it's quite expensive.
Are there any hassles in importing the solar fabric and exporting the bags outside the country?
The amount of paperwork needed to process these things in itself are a task. With every bag that I send, I have to attach 14 documents. We literally have to hire someone just to fill these out and they have to filled by hand. Importing also is challenging as its a cultural phenomenon to not pay the government. No one declares the right price of the product to avoid paying customs and that makes it harder for us to actually convince them that we are not undervaluing our stuff.
What are the responses to your products in India?
India is not a premium product market. It's highly brand conscious and homogeneous. It's a very complicated market, we have had someone in Hyderabad order our bag from the German Amazon site and paid ₹15000 for it when it was just ₹4500 in India. We actually had to ship it to our German distributor and have him ship it back. It's sounds crazy but we Indians don't believe that India makes high-quality premium products.
Aster is a very niche product targeted at cyclists. Did you start off by targeting specific markets like Germany and Netherlands?
Initially, that's how we started out but actually it was a mistake. We did target Germany initially, but we had some problems. Once, our bag was returned as the logo was off-centre by 1 cm. In India, we don't really care if the logo is not in the centre, over there, if it doesn't look like the product shown on screen, it will be returned. Also, word of mouth does not really work in Germany. People hesitate to suggest products. It's like if I suggest it to my friend,and my friend has problems with his product, I don't want to be blamed for suggesting it. Also, their feedback is also very matter of fact. We had asked a cyclist to review our product and all he said was "it's good" and we were like "that's it?" We then decided to target America as we are culturally much closer to America, we have grown up listening to their music and watching their TV.
We also targeted Mexico and that was a surprise. Mexico City is about 30 million people with around 200,000 cyclists. it was a huge market and we have sold quite a few bags in Mexico City. In fact, it's our second largest market after the US.
What about the competition from other players in those markets?
Competition? It's such a small market worldwide that we really don't look at each other as competition. There are a few other players and we are constantly sharing knowledge with each other.
How hard was it to convince your family about your decision to startup?
Indian families that way are very homogenous that way, and it did take a little time convincing my mom and my dad about my decision. They were a little nervous with the idea. But as time passed and things started moving forward, they became more convinced. Also, me and my wife take just ₹35,000 a month which is good enough. I don't own a car and I don't want to buy a house and pay the EMI. It's highly inefficient to pay EMI. We have one family house and that's more than enough. We both have cycles and cycle a lot or otherwise we walk. Our family car is used to transport our bags from the workshop to the office. Im not sure if that's the lifestyle that my parents had in mind for me, but they are OK with it.
It did take some time, initially it helped that we gave our parent something they could talk about us to their friends like our photos or interviews coming in the paper, and a few bragging rights like having the Google MD's phone number .
You are a unique position where your business partner and your life partner are the same. How you balance that dynamic?
It was hard in the initial days, but over time we found a way to overcome that. We have date nights that where we talk about everything except work. It's very important to maintain that balance. We try to ensure that most of the work related talk happens at the office and not at home. It's complex, but you figure it out.
Do you support the government's Make in India initiative?
We do make in India currently, but we don't really put the Make In India logo on our product as we are supposed to because that can change. Right now, our volumes are fairly small and we can make it happen in India, but as our volumes increase, we might just shift base to places like Vietnam as they have a well established and competitive accessories industry including bags. It's easier to import and export products from those countries and also requires lesser micromanagement of the production. Vietnam is actually a realistic possibility for us, but we also assemble the LEDs and circuits after the bag is made so to move the entire tech assembly team there might also be challenging, but we are open to moving base outside India.
-- Interview by Saurabh Ketkar
Start up organisations are growing worldwide and Bangalore is the epicentre in India. It's a competitive environment with many ideas becoming viable business models and eventually, being able to find a quantifiable valuations for it. Technology is at the heart of this entire industry. In conversation with Gandharva Bakshi, Co-Founder of Lumos Design Technology Pvt Ltd that designs Solar powered briefcases and backpacks that allow you to charge your mobile phone or laptop on the move. Another product, Aster, is a back pack for cyclists, complete with 44 LEDs that light up the front back and sides of the backpack, along with a handlebar unit that lets you signal right or left. The backpack even gets brighter when the cyclist hits the brakes .It also comes with a mobile application for the various settings you can choose from. Founded in 2012, with his wife Lavina Mahbubani, it sales has reached $80,000 in the past year alone.
Actually, me and some friends had a startup in IIM itself. Each student had to conduct some research for each course and we basically found organizations that were interested in that research and sold it to them. We actually made around 15 lakh with that. After going to IIM, I started working for Tejas. At that time, Tejas was 150 employees strong and was a well established startup. I was doing marketing at the time. In retrospect, I feel should have joined an even smaller company as Tejas was already a well established start up. When Lavina and me decided to start Lumos, we got initial funding from my ex-boss at Tejas, and later we got 25lakhs from Rajan Anandan (MD, Google India)
Is it an advantage being an IIT-IIM graduate while starting up?
To be very honest, I'm not sure of B-school really helps if you want to start up.
So, do you think it would have been better if you started up after IIT itself?
I don't really know, to really find the truth, there should be two versions of me, one that went to b-school and one that did not. I'm not sure how much the curriculum of B-schools really help in starting up. Would I have been able to start-up without my network at IIM? I don't think so.
What were the challenges you had in making and selling your products?
The main challenge was to actually educate people. The idea that comes to mind is a big bulky solar panel on a bag. We have to educate them that there is a solar fabric that is extremely lightweight and people also had concerns that it will not look aesthetic. We really had to work on our design and also micromanage the manufacturing as working with solar fabric is very challenging, if you stitch into the solar grid on the fabric, it doesn't work. That taught us a lot about how to maintain quality standards for these products and you always be on top of these things. We had to cancel one of our earlier batches because of how badly it was made. We have to import the solar fabric for our solar backpacks and it's quite expensive.
Are there any hassles in importing the solar fabric and exporting the bags outside the country?
The amount of paperwork needed to process these things in itself are a task. With every bag that I send, I have to attach 14 documents. We literally have to hire someone just to fill these out and they have to filled by hand. Importing also is challenging as its a cultural phenomenon to not pay the government. No one declares the right price of the product to avoid paying customs and that makes it harder for us to actually convince them that we are not undervaluing our stuff.
What are the responses to your products in India?
India is not a premium product market. It's highly brand conscious and homogeneous. It's a very complicated market, we have had someone in Hyderabad order our bag from the German Amazon site and paid ₹15000 for it when it was just ₹4500 in India. We actually had to ship it to our German distributor and have him ship it back. It's sounds crazy but we Indians don't believe that India makes high-quality premium products.
Aster is a very niche product targeted at cyclists. Did you start off by targeting specific markets like Germany and Netherlands?
Initially, that's how we started out but actually it was a mistake. We did target Germany initially, but we had some problems. Once, our bag was returned as the logo was off-centre by 1 cm. In India, we don't really care if the logo is not in the centre, over there, if it doesn't look like the product shown on screen, it will be returned. Also, word of mouth does not really work in Germany. People hesitate to suggest products. It's like if I suggest it to my friend,and my friend has problems with his product, I don't want to be blamed for suggesting it. Also, their feedback is also very matter of fact. We had asked a cyclist to review our product and all he said was "it's good" and we were like "that's it?" We then decided to target America as we are culturally much closer to America, we have grown up listening to their music and watching their TV.
We also targeted Mexico and that was a surprise. Mexico City is about 30 million people with around 200,000 cyclists. it was a huge market and we have sold quite a few bags in Mexico City. In fact, it's our second largest market after the US.
What about the competition from other players in those markets?
Competition? It's such a small market worldwide that we really don't look at each other as competition. There are a few other players and we are constantly sharing knowledge with each other.
How hard was it to convince your family about your decision to startup?
Indian families that way are very homogenous that way, and it did take a little time convincing my mom and my dad about my decision. They were a little nervous with the idea. But as time passed and things started moving forward, they became more convinced. Also, me and my wife take just ₹35,000 a month which is good enough. I don't own a car and I don't want to buy a house and pay the EMI. It's highly inefficient to pay EMI. We have one family house and that's more than enough. We both have cycles and cycle a lot or otherwise we walk. Our family car is used to transport our bags from the workshop to the office. Im not sure if that's the lifestyle that my parents had in mind for me, but they are OK with it.
It did take some time, initially it helped that we gave our parent something they could talk about us to their friends like our photos or interviews coming in the paper, and a few bragging rights like having the Google MD's phone number .
You are a unique position where your business partner and your life partner are the same. How you balance that dynamic?
It was hard in the initial days, but over time we found a way to overcome that. We have date nights that where we talk about everything except work. It's very important to maintain that balance. We try to ensure that most of the work related talk happens at the office and not at home. It's complex, but you figure it out.
Do you support the government's Make in India initiative?
We do make in India currently, but we don't really put the Make In India logo on our product as we are supposed to because that can change. Right now, our volumes are fairly small and we can make it happen in India, but as our volumes increase, we might just shift base to places like Vietnam as they have a well established and competitive accessories industry including bags. It's easier to import and export products from those countries and also requires lesser micromanagement of the production. Vietnam is actually a realistic possibility for us, but we also assemble the LEDs and circuits after the bag is made so to move the entire tech assembly team there might also be challenging, but we are open to moving base outside India.
About Lumos Design Technology Pvt Ltd
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