· India is emerging as one of the largest startup ecosystems in the world
· India has been recognized across globe for successful startups
· Investors from all over the world are always hunting for Indian Startups as they see a huge growth opportunity here
Are you not satisfied with the performance of your startup
despite giving your best efforts? Are you still thinking what went wrong in the
financial year 2019-2020? Are you looking for some tips to fast track your
startup in 2020? Don’t get disheartened and start preparing for the new
financial year. The research shows that 20% of the entrepreneurs, who
previously failed, succeeded on their next attempt.
The household name Swiggy started its operations with just 6
delivery boys covering a small region near Bengaluru in 2014. And by 2019 it
was operational in over 500 cities.
Flipkart was founded by Sachin and Binny Bansal in 2008 with a
mere investment of Rupees 4 Lakhs. It went on to become one of the largest
ecommerce startups in India. In August 2018, Walmart acquired a 77%
controlling stake in Flipkart for US $16 billion. There are hundreds
of success stories in India be it big players like Byju’s, Paytm, or relatively
small but successful startups like Country Delight and MilkBasket.
Keep the motivation
level always high
You already own the startup and by now must have experienced
that it is a laborious task to make it a success. You need to be determined,
focused and willing to continue to overcome all the difficulties and challenges
that you faced in the last financial year.
Keep the level of motivation among your employees very high.
The employees should be as motivated as you are to take the organization to the
next level. Only your motivation level, energy and vision for future can help
you keep them motivated.
Use of Social Media
Social media is one of the most powerful tools to spread
awareness about your brand. You can have a dedicated social media team that can
consistently through various SM platforms can spread the achievements and
testimonies of your brand. The team needs to make sure that each and every
happy client of yours writes a positive review on social media. It is highly
likely that an unhappy customer will immediately give you a bad rating. However
Most of the he content customers generally do not write reviews. Here the
social media team has to take a lead and convince them for good ratings and
reviews. Social media is definitely
helpful in creating an overall brand perception.
Analyse and fix the
past mistakes
Many entrepreneurs we spoke with emphasized on working on
the conversion rates. The leads are enough in the market but the team struggle
to get them converted into sales. When we asked them how they overcame this
hurdle they told us that in the last financial year their conversion rate was
just 5%. The business development team was asked to do only two things to
increase the conversion rate. Vigorous should follow-ups and generate more
leads. The simple steps worked wonders and the sales increased leaps and bounds
in just 3 months.
Research has also proved that the more you follow-up with
the clients the chances o getting business is high. Also need to check the target audience and focus on the
markets where the demand of your brand or product is high. There’s an old
saying, ‘Fish where the fish are’.
Marketing via Blogs
and Websites
Make sure that you have a good website/blog that you keep on
updating frequently. Use of SEO is also
very important to attract organic traffic to your site or blog. You can also keep some budget aside for content
marketing, content development promotion of your blogs and social media pages.
This will definitely give visibility of your startup resulting in more leads
for your business and to build your pipeline.
Retain the loyal
customers
Make sure that you keep in touch with your clients by asking
your team to pay courtesy visits, send souvenir during their anniversaries or
birthdays and remind them that they are special to you. If you have sufficient
funds you can have your own customer service department to take care of the
clients.
SWOT Analysis
In this day and age
the markets are very dynamic, and you need to be abreast with the latest market
trends. SWOT analysis at regular intervals is very important for you to stay
alive in the cut throat competition. One of the startup owners told us that
every Monday they have a meeting and they call it ‘LESSONS LEARNT’. The team
discusses the weekly performance and the focus is on the lessons that everybody
learnt during the last week. The 7 members of the team when share their lessons
learnt, mean all of us has 7 lessons learnt in that particular week.
If you keep some of these points in mind then nobody can
stop your startup from reaching new heights. Remember that overnight success is
a dream. Only perseverance, strong determination and hard work lead to success.
Keep on investing in skills and adapting to new technology. Last financial year
what you did was fine but in order to grow and achieve your goals you can’t
continue doing the same things.
