We are publishing an interview of Mr. Yatin Hans, Co-Founder, Bigsmall.
Please tell us about the founders
Yatin Hans, Co-Founder, Bigsmall, the brainchild behind bigsmall.in and it’s unique collection, is a marketing grad from Esade Business School. He has worked with ompanies such as Reebok India, O & M (BMW brand) and 91springboard. Also, adding to his eCommerce love, he had stints with companies such as dealsandyou (Gurgaon) and Degustabox (Barcelona).
Aman Hans, Co-Founder, Bigsmall, heads digital marketing & finance verticals at bigsmall.in. A computer science engineer from IP University, Aman is a start up enthusiast with a diverse profile, adding skills from his dynamic job experience with multiple startups – Leh Leh Sports, Festivalas, and 91mobiles. Though Aman still considers google as his favorite teacher.
What is the problem you are trying to solve?
Life is filled with stress and everyone is waiting for that holiday for a getaway. We forget to share, smile and laugh. Gifts are limited to occasions and show off. Here comes someone who says share, smile, and laugh and make them laugh. Trying to change the gifting concept but giving uniquely awesome products and not limiting to occasions but celebrating each day, we want to create that moment of happiness with our products.
Gifting is a lost art. May it be a birthday or some festival, the gifts that we receive all look the same! Deodorants for guys, chocolates to the girls, bouquets are good for everyone, and if nothing comes to mind… vouchers and cash are the best! Alas, what is one supposed to do, these are all that are available, right? We at bigsmall.in are striving to make presents shine amidst the sea of monotony, by making available the most quirky and unique gifts to all. Our gifts are not just pretty looking things but bring in a unique or simple functionality with them. Take an example of power nap pillow, a hand pillow.
A perfect armory for anyone who always ends up sleeping on his or her hand or faces sleep trouble while travelling. Every product we added to our list, reminded us of a person or a situation and how our products will bring smiles to their faces, once they own them.
What is the uniqueness about your Startup?
If we sell a product, it’s got to be curiously awesome. Since that’s our only criterion, we have something unique for everybody. We believe in surprising our customers with quirky and uncanny products. From creative gifts to out-of- the-box problem solvers, at bigsmall.in, you’ll find the most innovative products that you never knew, you needed before. We see what’s trending and get you what you don’t want, but what you need. We are on a mission to make such uncommon and awesome goods accessible to everyone sitting at home. With a few clicks over the internet, your experience will be right up your door.
- Our customer interactions are incredible. We just don’t believe in selling products online but giving a whole new service experience with our personalised communication. Helping customers with on spot images and videos on whatsapp makes the communication personal and easier. It helps the customer select the product in real time allowing them to have a real time shopping experience.
- We believe even though we are doing online business, there is always a need for a human touch. Hence, we ensure to call each and every customer giving a personalized experience, and helping them with any questions/feedback they have about the product and their experience. . The conversation in these calls are friendly and kept short and easy with the customers.
- We give special attention to our packaging. We have received tremendous feedback on the packaging and want to keep on improving that. Idea is to capture a smile at the stage when a customer receives the package.
Explain your thought process.
- Our business model is that of an E-retailer. We are an online gifting commerce. All our products are sourced and curated from around the world and within India. The stock is kept in our warehouse from where packages are dispatched everyday as gifts for the recipients. Since the stock is at our disposal, a lot of focus goes on quality of these items. Apart from sourcing products, our team also designs and develop a few products.
- Another segment of our business model is corporate gifting, wherein our team focusses on providing relevant products to different corporates matching their requirement. We ensure complete branding on products and take extra care in creating safe and beautiful packaging.
Who are the consumers that you are targeting? How is this going to affect them?
Anyone who is looking for creative gifts for friend, husband, wife, kids, etc or self. These people are mostly salaried people who enjoy some quirk and creativeness in their life. They like to spend on things which bring smiles.
Another segment of our audience are the corporates, who are looking for innovative giveaways for their events or internal teams. Indian Gifting market has huge potential. With our own festivals around the year and personal events there is a huge trend of celebrating international festivals in India. All these lead to a bigger gift oriented market. Though conventional cash gifting is still the norm in most of the festivities and with our products we aim to change this as much as possible to gifts that signify people.
What is the big picture of your startup? Will it lead to something bigger? If so, how?
We are presently at 6000+ orders/month and our growing rapidly. Our goal is to target and increase that number 15,000-20,000 within the next 6 months.
- Our Facebook page boosts more than 120,000 active followers. Our traffic has also been growing steadily, with close to 2 Lac unique visitors in the last month. With a team of 11 people, the business has grown 300% each quarter, and is en-route to clock 5 crore in annual revenue in FY 2017-18.
- Apart from this, our major expansion focus is to cater to the huge corporate gifting market. We aim to bring more innovative products for corporate requirements and build relationships with different partners.
- With increasing disposable income and people are spending it more online.
- Capturing the mindset of ‘kuch alag dekhao’, we have been able to strengthen our database and grow on it daily.
What is the success story of your startup in your own words?
Please write about the challenges that you or your startup faced and how you overcome them to achieve success. Make sure it should inspire others.
- Over the last 12-15 months, we’ve been able to successfully initiate, maintain and grow our business on a stable note, that too without any external funding. We’ve had over 90% satisfaction rate, with numerous happy customers every day. Our facebook page as well our website boasts these reviews, with customers giving special praise to our service along with the whole shopping experience.
- Along with this, we’ve built relationships and catered to the big brands such as Google, Indigo and Uber for their corporate gifting requirements as well.
- With a lean team, we’ve been able to automate our processes, while maintaining the human touch to ensure personalization with the customer.
Any other information about your startup that you would like to share with us.
We focus on the whole online shopping experience because we believe that both buying and receiving a gift should be a happy experience, we have carefully categorised our inventory keeping in mind the needs of the customer so they get exactly what they need on an easy to navigate platform – all just a few clicks away.
Bigsmall.in has a dedicated team specifically for calling and welcoming questions from every customer regarding the products, video demonstration for the customers to easily understand the product that they want to purchase. Friendly conversations and looking for solution to any problem they might be facing will always add the human touch to the experience.
