At BrilliantRead, we love bringing unique and compelling startup stories from the ecosystem for all our readers and community members. This week we spoke to co-founders of Quirqstation – Santosh and Sorabh to understand more about their startup. Well, they are making lives of micropreneurs from across the world a lot easier through their venture. Let’s find out how!
Excerpts from our exclusive interview with Team Quirkstation:
Tell us a little bit about your startup Quirkqstation please;
Quirqstation is India’s first omnichannel marketplace which helps designers, artists and creative entrepreneurs to sell their products. We are a DIPP approved start-up and recently we also got a tax exemption from Inter-Ministerial Board of DIPP.
We have two colourful retail outlets (Indiranagar and Church Street) in Bangalore. The third store is coming soon at Forum Shantiniketan Mall at Whitefield. We are a team of 22 enthusiasts from a deep knowledge of Tech, Marketing, Retail and other fields coming from institutes like IIT Kanpur, IMT Ghaziabad among the others.
We believe in selling stories of artist partners through our stories social media platform and our online marketplace. We have a firm belief that ‘stories sell better than products’.
Our artists come from all walks of life, we help urban creators like Alicia Souza from Katie Abey from the UK to name a few. We also help few traditional artists from remote places of Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh. We have full-time creators or artist who are illustrators, doodlers, cartoonists like Paul Fernandes and we also have few part-time makers or hobbyists who are students, housewives, working professionals to mention a few. Currently, we are helping around 200 creators to reach more customers through our retail stores and the online marketplace. We have big plans for the future including 25 retail stores in all major cities of India and Internationally.
You can go through our website www.quirqstation.com
How do you find the industry/niche that you’re in?
India, currently has over 800 million population of Millennials & generation Z, calling itself as the youngest nation among the others. By 2020, 64% of the population will be ingested with Millennials leaving them with the superior power to make spending decisions. And we all know Millennials are always in the quest for something unique or anything that carries an aura of being one-of-a-kind. For those who understand the importance of creativity in this mundane life are constantly creating or designing something new. Nailing on this concept there are more than 70 design institutes in India with more than 10K students graduating every year. These artists are every day creating merch that ranges from apparel to home decor or even stationery. There is also another wide range who dwell in traditional art and products working in remote parts of the country. Their lack of technology and recognition has left them under the cover and their stories are never shared. They take the aid of flea markets like Sunday Soule Sante (Bangalore), The Lil flea market (Mumbai), ZaPalooza (Pune) and Comic-Con. A few also manage to create their website, but managing the marketing and technology part of it is always a challenge. They deserve a permanent market, both online and offline. So with both the demand & supply of unique, artistic products, we think that the market is ready for us.
What gets you out of bed in the morning i.e. what’s your source of motivation?
We are in a business of creating micro-entrepreneurs. We help people monetize their art & passion. Quirqstation provides them with support like sales, marketing even manufacturing their products. We are almost like an incubator for these creative entrepreneurs. So the biggest motivation for us is to create more entrepreneurs & help them grow their businesses.
(Santosh Jagtap co-founder & CEO with Sorabh Arora co-founder & COO)
What is one strategy that you believe has helped grow your startup/person?
Our strategy to be an omnichannel startup has helped us a lot. When you sell unique, curated products the touch & feel factor or the shopping experience at times becomes quite important. With two retail outlets along with the website, we have been able to give a complete shopping experience to our customers.
How do you handle the pressure and manage stress?
We don’t feel any pressure at work since we are extremely passionate about it. Me & Sorabh don’t remember when we had taken our weekly off in last 2 years. When you are solving a good problem which helps people around you there is no stress.
In your opinion what are the keys to entrepreneurial success?
It’s a very exciting & a rewarding journey if I have to talk about just 3 then it would be Vision, Passion & People.
People don’t work for companies or their promoters they work for a bigger vision which will add value to their lives as well as the world around them. When your vision is about adding value to the people’s lives or touch their lives in some way, you have a motivated team. And a highly motivated team can achieve anything.
What advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs?
I think it all starts with identifying the right problem. When you are solving a good problem which adds value in peoples lives the rest of the things will follow. Having a right team, raising the right money etc is a function of what problem you are solving. And surprisingly the problems need not be very complicated ones, simple real-life gaps are what needs to be identified.
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.
