As part of our ongoing interview series with successful, promising and emerging entrepreneurs, we invited Abhirup Basak – Co-founder & CEO at DelyBazar for an interview with us to understand more about his inspiring journey and his mantras. Abhirup has an excellent entrepreneurial bent of mind from very early on in his life. Despite an engineering degree, he chose entrepreneurship and built a solid business with multi-crore revenue within a short span of time. Let’s read more!
Excerpts from our exclusive interview with Abhiruk:
Talk us a little about yourself please:
So I come from an engineering background and from 3rd year of my graduation, I started experimenting and tinkering with a range of business ideas and started making good money. Though I failed in many of them, most importantly I got the flavour of doing business. I was very lucky that I also stumbled upon a few friends with an entrepreneurial bent of mind. Despite hailing from a family with no business background, I always had ample ideas of setting-up small but different businesses with the knack to build a revenue model for every business I encountered. After many ifs and buts, we started Delybazar in 2015 to disrupt the perishable industry.
Why did you choose entrepreneurship over a job?
I grew up reading books of Shiv Khera and Robert Toru Kiyosaki where I have understood that if am unable to use my talent and activities for myself it will be used for someone else. I always dreamed of building an enterprise which will create a lot of value for its consumers and stakeholders. In early 2015 the idea of Delybazar came in our mind. We have always discussed that we must give it a try because taking no risk will be the biggest risk we are taking, as we knew even if we fail we will learn a lot of things and can easily move on with diff jobs. But due to god’s grace, we were successful to have multi-crore revenue in the very first financial year even beyond our expectation.
What gets you out of bed in the morning i.e. what’s your source of motivation?
When you are starting up with your own passion nothing needs to motivate you. You woke up with your passion. And I believe motivation is very temporary as it comes very fast and also goes away very fast; it’s all about your inspiration and burning desire which will make you feel happy to work.
Every day is a new day for us, with a lot of new challenges and learnings.
Why should people choose your products/services?
We are trying to standardize the billion-dollar industry of fresh perishables in products and quality. We deliver the best quality products with specified parameters and also customised products according to consumer needs in the standard price. Thus a consumer can blindly rely on a brand while purchasing these products. Delybazar is the only portal where you will get maximum varieties of fresh fish, meat, veggies along with other household products in a very short turn around time. Experience is everything for a customer, and we working hard to provide a better experience to our customers.
What’s your competitive advantage and why can’t it be copied?
Our think tank is our competitive advantage. Also, we believe in continuous learning. Services can be copied but the way how to make them innovative in terms of deliverables & to find innovative solutions is something which can’t be copied. The innovative business model as well as a strong supply chain to execute it is our main USP.
What challenges/obstacles did you face in your journey so far?
Every business has risks. Our risks are associated with a right skillset that we look for expansion in future. We already have a core niche team but I see from future expansion perspective, we would need innovative minds, with the flexible thought process. Although, with a clearly defined process, and innovative means to reach out to search resource, we are confident enough that we will mitigate it.
What are your expansion plans/breakeven projections?
In the last 3 years, we have raised funds 3 times. With our current round of larger funding, we are looking for scaling up operation rather than breaking even. Looking for break-even in q1 of 2020-21.
Tell our audience more about your failures? How should one bounce back?
Start-up journey is all about ups and downs. But we know that where we will reach is not the reward but the journey is the reward. So certain failures can never demotivate us.
What comes first for you – money or emotions?
Both things are very important. When we are trying to build an enterprise to create value for consumers we are more focused on connecting with emotions of our customers rather than making money. As once we will be able to build successful enterprise money will be made automatically.
What advice would you give to someone starting out, particularly to aspiring entrepreneurs?
Most important advice is to start-up only when you are very passionate about your idea. Because nowadays start-up looks very glamourous and interesting but honestly speaking the journey is very tough for at least first few years. Don’t start-up just because your friend has started. Build a solid business plan and verify it 1000 times and make sure that you never quit.
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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.
