The e-commerce landscape is rapidly changing in India & there has been an interesting set of companies built around Design, Portfolio Development, Logistics etc. Today we have a Q&A with Akash Kalra, co-founder of a startup Pungraffiti based out of Pune which has a single mantra – “Spread Happiness via T-Shirts”. We discussed with him about Pungraffiti, Startup & e-commerce landscape in India & many aspects of Entrepreneurship.
Can you give a small background about you, your start-up and it’s founders ?
Some may call us as a T-Shirt selling startup. However, we do not just sell T-Shirts, we spread happiness with it. The idea is to bring smiles all around using our creative ideas on the T-Shirts 🙂
We are 3 of us, namely, Akash, Gagan and Varun. We are all school friends. I am Akash. I am an economist by education and Gagan & Varun are engineers.
Apart from us, we have another couple of friends, Meetali and Vivek, who have invested and entrusted upon us to do the job.
Every idea is born out of a problem/inspiration, what was the trigger of starting Pungraffiti ?
Well, in our case, there was not any problem as such but there was a realization, a common realization I would say. I had quit my job with KPMG in Pune and had joined a startup in Delhi. Gagan and Varun were here in Delhi. Gagan was working with Mitsubishi that time and Varun with a shipping company.
While discussing about the fun times we have had in school and discussing about how our careers have progressed after that, we realized that the only thing that all of us are actually good at is to make people happy, and that in turn gave us happiness and satisfaction ourselves. We then discussed that making a career out of this would be great. And thus, came the idea.
Pungraffiti looks a very peppy name, how did your team zero in on this name ?
Thank you. That’s how we wanted it to be. 🙂
It took us quite a lot of time to come up with it. It is more to do with the designs on our T-Shirts. We have tried to present a certain thing in a different, creative way. It takes you a couple of seconds to think over it and when you realize it, you smile or laugh about it. That’s where pun came from. Graffiti stands for the designs.
Thus, PunGraffiti
Does your startup have in-house designers, if so do you plan to move to a “crowd-sourced designer model” ?
Yes. Varun designs these for us. Me and Gagan sit down and think of ideas to put on the T-Shirts. The next very important step is determining how to present those ideas on T-Shirts and then, Varun takes over from there. He starts working on the designing software and we assist him in whatever we can.
While, crowd sourced designer model is an interesting model, we do not have any immediate plan to get into it. We trust our creativity to be able to relate to our target audience. 🙂
How does Pungraffiti stack up against the other competitor’s that are also in the same space ?
Our value proposition will have to be the designs. Now, the reason we believe that we stack up against the competitors is the creativity we use on these T-Shirts, the way we present what we intend to.
To be comparing ourselves to the competitors, it is important to understand our target audience and the business model. These T-Shirts creatively derive emotions from people and if those people would want to show these emotions, again creatively, to others, they will wear it.
I can explain this with the following example from our collection:
We have a Rahul Dravid T-Shirt for his fans. Now, we could have just written Rahul Dravid or made his picture on the T-Shirt as our competitors would do, but we instead presented this in a different/creative way. We made a wall with his name on it and wrote “Not just another brick in the wall”. This is where we differ from our competitors.
Somebody who would want to show his/ her love for Rahul Dravid and show it smartly/ creatively will buy this T-Shirt.
What are some of the issues [still] faced by e-commerce startups ?
While e-commerce has given businesses the luxury to cater to the entire world as their market, there are challenges that come alongside. I think the major challenge that this e-commerce boom has got is that it has made getting recognized amongst your target audience a little slower and expensive. Even though I personally believe, if a certain business has the commercial potential, it will be successful eventually.
With almost every merchandise business now being online and already existent businesses investing heavily on online marketing, a deserving e-commerce startup could face a lot of problems to be recognized initially.
I think what is important in this market scenario is patience, a lot of it. If you have the business confidence, you would be able meet your goals, sooner or later.
How according to you, should a startup deal with a disgruntled customer ?
I think the kind of competitive market we are into, a startup cannot afford to have a disgruntled customer. I will try expressing my views on how to deal with one from one of our experiences. Recently, one of customers bought a T-Shirt with us. However, due to some bug on the server, he did not get the order confirmation on the e-mail. He then wrote us a mail complaining about this.
First thing that we did in this case was quickly reply to his mail, addressing his concern. Secondly, I personally called him to explain him the issue and ensured my personal attention in his order.
Thirdly, what we did was apart from the T-Shirt, we sent him a cake at his address in Bangalore with “Sorry :)” written on it. And he gave us a nice feedback to us not just for the T-Shirt but also for the kind of attention we gave him for his order.
We cannot afford to have any unhappy customer, especially when we say we spread happiness with the T-Shirt.
What are the major changes that you experienced when you moved from an Employee to an Entrepreneur ?
I think the biggest change that I have experienced is that as an employee I used to actually work for around 5 hours a day and as an entrepreneur, that is how much I sleep. 🙂
Working as an entrepreneur keeps you on your toes. You are responsible for anything and everything that goes wrong. Your hard work can be seen getting converted into results. And the happiness and excitement that you experience when something works out is just incomparable.
What are your key advice(s) to people who want to start-up ?
I think it is very important to understand the business potential of your idea. While there are many creative ideas that one can come up with, having an audience for that idea is equally important to really sustain.
I also think that the market for startups has become very challenging. The big players are into everything these days. Thus, it is very important to have a USP. A USP that is efficient enough to derive enough audience towards your product/service.
How much does social media channels [Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc.] contribute to marketing in startup ?
Immense. We can say that from our own experience. It has not even been a month that we have started and just through social media publicity, and that too unpaid, we have sold over 100 T-Shirts all over India, starting from Jammu-Punjab-Delhi-Gujarat-Mumbai-Pune-Hyderabad-Bangalore-Odisha & even Siliguri.
We have over 1700 followers on Facebook and we have got a very encouraging response on Instagram as well. The number of site visits is another encouraging reason we can really say that.
Any parting words from you for budding entrepreneurs ?
According to me, believing in your idea, having the courage to execute it and having enough patience are the 3 key things in this startup market.
It is certainly not a comfortable and an easy ride but it has enough thrill and joy to make your life exciting and happening. 🙂
If you have any questions for Akash or about Pungraffiti, please let them in the comments section !!