In our relentless pursuit to identify and share with our community some of the unique and compelling startup stories from the ecosystem, this week we spoke to Team Eunimart to understand more about their journey, their vision and the way forward. Eunimart was started in 2016 by Shayak Mazumder and Archana Shah. Let’s read their unique story!
Excerpts from our exclusive interview with Shayak:
Please talk us through Eunimart’s journey so far;
We started Eunimart in 2016. At that point in time, I was an ex-Naval Officer and the youngest Staff Officer in the Indian Navy and an INSEAD graduate with extensive experience in managing and expanding e-commerce services across 21 countries as the Global Head of Cross Border Sales, MD of Jumia Group.
Eunimart’s Vdezi is an Artificial Intelligence enabled platform helping companies expand and manage their omnichannel operations and sales through a single platform. Our AI-enabled platform provides Supply Chain Management System, Warehouse Management System and Virtual Warehousing, Freight Management, Inventory Management, Inventory Prediction, Order Processing, Logistics Management, Multiple Sales Channel Management, Payment Reconciliation & Point of Sales solutions which enable companies to automate their processes to increase business and reduce operational cost by approximately 60%.
The proposed solution considers all the practical challenges and scenarios manufacturers, brands, resellers, e-commerce marketplaces and supply chain companies face in their daily operations. Our solutions address real-life issues and impact the overall efficiency of your organization.
Eunimart, coming from a strong technical background with 3500 businesses using our current platform to solve their back-end automation challenges, is aptly placed to resolve these challenges definitively.
Where did the unique idea to start something like this come from?
During my days as the Global Head of Cross Border Sales, MD of Jumia Group, I had to travel extensively across the world and work in close collaboration with policymakers and industry leaders. It was then that I felt that a holistic approach to omnichannel management was required. Especially smaller and medium businesses which face different challenges pertaining to funds, manpower, efficiency and reach, could seize many more opportunities with the proper technology to address all their concerns and bring it all to one dashboard to manage their entire business on.
With extensive technical experience and a highly skilled and a motivated team of 60+ people, Eunimart has built multiple scalable and easily integrated solutions that can be combined to build a scalable and practical platform resolving important use cases to enhance operational ease, increase revenues, reduce costs, increase customer satisfaction and retention.
Eunimart’s proprietary AI is designed keeping the practical use cases of large companies in mind. Many of our solutions do not exist across marketplaces today. There are a few solutions that work only on Amazon because it gives you some of the solutions itself. We are the first to create a solution for cross-border e-commerce automation for businesses of all sizes.”
Our AI can help brands in predicting Inventory requirements, Order forecasting, Re-targeting of leads and gauging future requirements of every customer based on their last purchase cycle and much more.
How do you find the industry/niche that you’re in?
Our niche audience is the one that chooses intelligence over ignorance. Businesses that evolve strategically to grow and people who value the benefits of an ecosystem and have the foresight to explore and exploit the fruits of omnichannel commerce.
It feels great to be a part of the journey with people of such enterprise and vision. Every day we have well-established International businesses ask for our solutions as more people understand the importance of digital adoption. The number of online transactions has doubled as more companies implement omnichannel strategies.
Our technology clearly carves out its niche as a growth-hacking suite and gives businesses the benefit of a platform which can automate operations and optimize resources. Businesses use our advanced reports and analytics to form your business strategy and our tech to implement decisions seamlessly across all your sales channels across 100 countries.
It feels wonderful to be able to help over 3500 Indian businesses optimize their business processes and establish an impactful presence on international markets.
How do you manage to keep going despite the challenges? What drives the team?
Any business, be it big or small is full of challenges, especially if you are a start-up. Here is the story of Eunimart. It speaks of perseverance and persistence, innovation and team spirit. We have overcome great odds in the past and no doubt will go through difficult times in the future and come out of them stronger and better.
Eunimart is a microcosm of what is good in our society. These are extremely stressful times and bring out the best and the worst in us. I am so proud of what every member of our team is doing to keep our services unaffected and bring some respite to businesses in these difficult times.
I am part of many groups which are working pro bono (without salary or money) to create applications, PPE (protective equipment needed by doctors), ventilators, etc. India is not a rich country and we do not have the resources that some Western countries have. Yet, we have come up with an extraordinary response to the situation. People are paying out of their pockets to feed the poor and paying salaries when they are themselves stressed for money. We offered all our premium features absolutely free for every business that was looking for e-commerce automation or smart logistics solutions to reactivate their business.
We are growing with each step because we have the vision to accomplish which is much bigger than any of these challenges. We are a bunch of entrepreneurs and everyone in the team is here for more than just the money.
It’s our passion to create something unique and impactful to every business that drives us to keep going. It is our way of bringing equity to the equation. We want to be known as the Indian startup which empowered every business with million-dollar solutions.
What are your expansion plans?
At the moment, we provide businesses with a mixed model ecosystem to sell across 100 countries. We were planning to expand our operations to the US, Europe and the Middle East this year.
As we are a SaaS company, we have managed to keep our operations on schedule with small hiccups during the initial days of the lockdown when some of our team members were travelling back to their homes. Post that, we have managed to keep our services unimpaired and provided businesses with complete support during the lockdown.
We are currently partnering with a host of logistics partners, payment partners, marketplaces and services to give businesses a comprehensive global and regional presence. Our new platform has got a lot of new upgrades and you can also personalize your dashboard based on your preferences.
Our partners are white-labelling our technology in different countries. Growth is an ongoing process and every day we try to grow in terms of functions, usability, service and reach.
How do you guys handle the pressure and manage stress?
Taking frequent breaks – not necessarily going out on a vacation but spending quality time with family and friends every weekend is a good stress-buster and you come back more focused and productive. We normally have a team’s day out once in a while and spend the entire day engaging in different sports and games.
We encourage a fun and progressive atmosphere where every member is encouraged to think, share and innovate. We share insightful content, trending news, float ideas, crack jokes and have discourses on our WhatsApp group throughout the day where every member of the team gets to interact freely and learn from the exchanging ideas.
Meditation and exercising are great for relaxing and staying fit. We used to go for occasional group sports like cricket and badminton in the old days. Now we do dips together.
It definitely is tough on everyone. But we stay focused by staying strong as a team and caring for each other.
What is one strategy that you guys believe has helped you grow as a team/startup?
Never, ever, give up. That’s the best lesson I learned. As an ex-naval officer let me tell you that Navy training is very tough and rigorous. It demands everything out of you.
We make a lot of business strategies but this is a mental strategy that each and every person in a startup must form to make sure everyone sticks together as a team. This is very important as a start-up.”
We knew what we were trying to accomplish was near to impossible for us at the time. We knew we were going to face enormous challenges.
But we believed in the product, in our solution. We believed in the necessity of an AI-powered e-commerce suite for businesses of all sizes. Most of the solutions we provided were only available to bigger enterprises until we brought them to the SMEs. With only a fraction of sellers on cross-border e-commerce, we understood that Indian businesses needed to explore international markets. For that reason, we built our platform on the latest technology and built data analytics into the system to give sellers actionable insights and a complete ecosystem for seamless cross-border commerce.
What advice would you give to someone starting out?
Do your research well before getting into a business. You must know what you want to do, and have a GTM ready. You need to have a concept which addresses and resolves a general challenge.
Don’t be afraid to go out and meet new people. I met over 300 investors in India (both angel investors and VCs) before some international investors backed me.
If you have the resources, try to create a need for your product first before you actually launch it. This is a great way to test the waters before you actually start sailing.
During the product development stage, have realistic expectations and set milestones to achieve. Encourage team building sessions and exchange of ideas.
Tell as many people as you can. During the early days, every free form of marketing and kind word matters. Put the product across as many people as you can and place importance on the feedback.
Keep track of what the world is up to and how you may enrich an experience with your product and keep tying up with as many services or partners as you can to maximize traffic.
During this COVID19 crisis, what are the measures Eunimart has undertaken to continue its own business without disruption?
Safety: Our first priority was to ensure the safety of our team. We took a pre-emptive decision as a company to have our entire team maintain social distancing and regular sanitation of the workstations and the entire office premises weeks prior to the nation-wide lockdown. We also decided to let some of our out-station members travel back home before the lockdown. This enabled us to cocoon ourselves and set up work from home protocols.
Support: Our team constantly stays connected over WhatsApp, email, Zoom/Google/Skype meetings, and phone. It goes a long way in ensuring that team collaboration is smooth, and the team is motivated.
Service: Our services have not been affected in any way thanks to our proactive members who have great foresight. Our clients received unimpaired services even during the lockdown where our teams helped hundreds of businesses adopt e-commerce channels or upgrade their business with our e-commerce automation platform. Thanks to the enormous effort from every team member who put in the extra effort to make up for the loss in momentum.
BrilliantRead is committed to bringing stories from the startup ecosystem, stories that reshape our perspective, add value to our community and be a constant source of motivation not just for our community but also for the whole ecosystem of entrepreneurs and aspiring individuals.
Note: If you have a similar story to share with our audience and would like to be featured on our online magazine, then please write to us at [email protected], we will review your story and extend an invitation to feature if it is worth publishing.
