As part of our quest to identify and share some of the meaningful and compelling startup stories from the ecosystem, we invited the founding team of DOST for an interview with us, which they gladly accepted.
Well, we all face a myriad of problems when it comes to planning and managing events like wedding and that’s exactly the problem they are solving through their startup. They have already raised the seed round and expect to close Series A by Q1’20. Let’s read more about their entrepreneurial journey.
Excerpts from our exclusive interview with the 3 Co-founders of DOST – Siddharth, Sruthi and Saurabh:
Tell us more about your startup! Why should people choose your products/services?
We’re in the business of offering affordable wedding planning services to people. Yes, you read that right. Gone are the days where wedding planning can only be afforded by the rich. Now, with DOST, wedding planning services start at Rs. 15,000 for end-to-end management, versus current market rates at Rs. 1.5 – 2 lakh. We charge a fixed fee for planning, there are NO hidden costs, and we do the same things any traditional wedding planner would do. We operate PAN-India with prices as low as Rs. 5,000 (for micro-planning services). Our aim is to offer our services to middle-class people whose wedding budgets typically range from 10 lakh – 30 lakh. Everyone needs help in planning their big day, and that’s what DOST is here to do. Our digital platform allows us to offer services at such low prices and operate in large numbers. It makes the whole process efficient for everyone, and therefore hassle-free. Our mission is to ensure that for clients, the burden of planning an event doesn’t ever come in the way of making merry.
What’s your competitive advantage and why can’t it be copied?
Our services may be copied, but the product that enables our services is a first-of-its-kind for India. No one in the market today is offering wedding planning services at our price points. We are 70-80% lower than the market rate. The digital infrastructure that adds tremendous value to our services, both in terms of cost as well as speed of service will be hard to emulate and our aim is to gain a first mover’s advantage.
What challenges/obstacles did you face in your journey so far?
It took us a few iterations to get our product right. Without needed support that can only come from the right product design, our services would suffer, and so would our financials. It took us two failed attempts to finally get on the right track. Furthermore, we had to expand our team to hire the right resources to help create brand awareness for us as well as for offline sales. Our current biggest challenge is lead generation in sufficient numbers to validate product/market fit. We’re all-hands-on-deck now to boost sales.
What are your expansion plans/breakeven projections?
We raised seed funding last year and with all the progress and traction we will have achieved by the end of this calendar year, we’re looking to raise Series-A funding in Feb’20 for expansion to more cities, upgrading our platform with technological innovations that help to further automate parts of the planning process, as well as to introduce relevant features to delight users. Projected break-even is end-Q1 of 2021.
Tell our audience more about your failures? How should one bounce back?
We were convinced of our product’s usefulness for our target market. But to change habits, and to change people’s ways of doing things, that’s a hard battle to fight. For existing wedding planners to let go of their Google Sheets, Google Docs, and WhatsApp and then start planning on the DOST platform was a tall ask. To get end consumers to self-plan on the DOST platform was even more arduous. One or two-step digitized engagements and transactions are what people are comfortable with and that’s why businesses like Amazon, Swiggy and Dunzo work. We realized two things- i) The average person in India isn’t tech-savvy enough to use a project management platform, no matter how user-friendly it may be (this will be true at least for the next 5 to 10 years), and ii) The average person in India is, for the lack of a better word, lazy – for most people, to be organized about planning and let technology make their work a lot more efficient is not top-of-mind. To learn this took us a few good months of trying.
The above realizations, however, didn’t mean that these services weren’t needed in the market. Our market research suggested a huge supply-demand imbalance as far as wedding planning was concerned, especially with middle-class weddings. Of 1700 listed wedding planners in India, only 250 or 15% serve middle-class weddings, and 170 of these 250 planners are based in the top 10 cities. It became increasingly obvious that we needed to pivot into offering services and make that a scalable model for PAN-India operations. The idea is to offer significantly cheaper wedding planning services to be appealing to the masses, generate leads in volumes and use technology to make these services efficient and scalable. With 2.7 million middle-class weddings in India by 2023, and with the industry growing at 25% YoY, the opportunities and business potential are immense.
Despite our pivot, a different challenge still remains – it may be true that no one likes doing the grunt work, and no one likes running around, and so we’re trying to do this too for the wedding sector. But where weddings are concerned, this is a battle that’s a little harder to fight since these are once-in-a-lifetime events for people. It’s an emotional justification for people to want to be completely involved even if it tires and stresses them out. There are some myths we need to bust, there’s some educating we need to do for the masses to show them the value in engaging professional wedding planners, and this is precisely what we’re aiming to do. To quote Steve Jobs, “A lot of times people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” Perhaps what we’re fighting to win is one such battle.
What comes first for you – money or emotions?
Where people are concerned, emotions are inevitable. In our line of work, emotions are perhaps running at an all-time high. KPIs for us include ways to measure quality deliverables, client satisfaction, pro-active and personal engagement etc. Like I said before, we’re dabbling in affairs that are once-in-a-lifetime for people. Our business ethics are to offer the very best services to people. It wouldn’t be a business if there wasn’t money in it, but money is the outcome of value creation. If work is done right, the money will follow. There’s a very apt saying in the Bhagavad Gita that goes, “Karmanye Vadhikaraste Ma Phaleshu Kadachana” which broadly translates to “Let not the fruits of your actions distract you from your duty.”
How do you handle the pressure and manage stress as a team?
It helps to work in a team where we have each other’s backs. There are constructive ways of dealing with pressure and stress – this may be hard to do solo, but when working in a team, it becomes a shared burden and therefore easier to handle.
What advice would you give to someone starting out, particularly to aspiring entrepreneurs?
We’re just starting out ourselves, but it’s already been such a great learning journey. There are life lessons along the way that perhaps one will never learn if one doesn’t give their entrepreneurial dreams a shot. Always have your end goal and vision in sight. Sometimes, in day-to-day dealings and operations, it’s very easy to lose sight of the big picture, pivot and pivot until your original intent becomes lost altogether. Those are caveats to try and avoid. Weekly brainstorming sessions help a great deal to zoom out and to assess where you are and what needs to be true to where you need to go. Sometimes it’s better to go back two-thirds of the way and re-start than to be pushing through the wrong route. Most importantly, remember that you’re here to learn, it can be the most humbling journey and that’s priceless. Losses hurt more than you can imagine, but little wins are joyous beyond measure, and this is what makes it a fun ride. It doesn’t matter whether your business failed or succeeded, because no matter what, you will always succeed – purely because you tried, you worked, and you learned.
Follow them on:-
Website – www.yourshaadidost.com
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/yourshaadidost/
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/yourshaadidost/
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