Entrepreneurial Venture Creativity, Innovation, knowledge Networks and Entrepreneurship (CINE Course) This document submission towards completion of the CINE course. As part of the evaluation of this course, I had decided to develop my plans to set up my own venture. Over a period of the course, with help of learning from this course and the encouragement by the fellow participants, I was able to put my thoughts into action. Today, there is far more clarity than it was at the beginning of the course. This report outlines the evolution of that thought process through this course.
Submitted by: Narayan Singh Rao, Student, PGPX 2014-15 2/28/2015
Contents 1. The business idea and its evolution ...................................................................................................... 3
2. Products and Offerings ......................................................................................................................... 4
2.1 TheIndianIris.com................................................................................................................................ 4
2.2 Technotification.com .......................................................................................................................... 6
2.3 YatraChalo.com ................................................................................................................................... 7
3. Our Proposed Services .......................................................................................................................... 9
4. Process Set up – Collaboration ............................................................................................................. 9
5. Milestones achieved so far ................................................................................................................... 9
6. Organizational Values ........................................................................................................................... 9
7. One Year Targets ................................................................................................................................. 10
8. The Team and the Organizational Structure ....................................................................................... 11
9. Appendix ............................................................................................................................................. 12
9.1. Requirement document for TheIndianIris.com .......................................................................... 12
9.2. Requirement document for YatraChalo.com .............................................................................. 14
9.3. Customer workflow for YatraChalo.com .................................................................................... 16
9.4. Caretaker/Administrator Workflow ............................................................................................ 18
9.5. Technology to be used ................................................................................................................ 19
9.6. Reference for Yatrachalo.com .................................................................................................... 19
1. The business idea and its evolution
About six years ago, my friend and I were deliberating on starting something of our own. He wanted me
to join him to develop the idea at that time. Though I wanted to but, due to some family commitments
and challenges, I was not in a position to join him at that time. He started developing the idea alone. I
stayed in touch and kept discussing things. However, despite some development on the idea, it did not
click and the efforts were abandoned.
However, desire to own our business did not vanish. In year 2013, Ritesh and I again met in Mumbai at
his residence and committee to each other that we are now in a position to start on our own. We
discussed all the ideas we had in our mind and prioritized them in order to choose one to start on. We
decided to aggregate the Dharamshalas in our country and allow people to book them online. Currently,
there isn’t any such portal which provides this facility. However, this time too destiny had other plans. I
got admissions to IIM A and Ritesh joined IIM B. We decided to move slowly during our education and
start it once we are out of the colleges.
We kept on building on the idea and started talking to travelers as well as to the trustees and managers
of the Dharamshalas about our idea. We received mixed responses. While consumers were euphoric
about the ideas, trustees and managers were not very much excited. When we discussed with more
Dharamshala managers, we noted that for building this and winning over them, we would have to offer
something which appeals them. Essentially they should get something tangible in return of their
allowing us access to their inventory. We, hence, decided to list down their pain points and plan to
address them in our product. I discuss them in detail in subsequent sections.
While working on this idea, we realized that before our Dharamshala portal starts functioning, it would
be prudent to choose our business model in a way to help us gain some revenue, while we build the
portal. Since building the portal will require significant time and extensive travel across the country, it
will not be possible for any of us to do so while we are on the campus.
We therefore added a couple of more products to our portfolio, which was a result of our continuous
monitoring of market needs and available gaps in the market. We found that Internet is offering
immense opportunities to build revenue streams faster than other businesses. Digital marketing is one
of the fast growing areas. We were keeping an eye of one of the young Entrepreneur, who has built a
portal, technotification.com, which is a smart, intelligent, quirky, witty content portal that targets
people interested in technologies, science, inventions, computers and cyber security. We are more
interested in the Entrepreneur who built this than the portal. For our development, we need a
committed expert in this area of web/portal development and digital marketing.
While travelling to various place and observing recent election results, one question that was asked
again and again – what government has done in the past 9 months? We then did our research to see if
there are any existing sources that fulfill this need. We found that that the government portals such as
nic.in and pmo etc provide this information in details. However, these portals provide information in
great detail and it is not easy to understand the information provided there. In addition, there are about
70 ministries which produce information and it is in the interest of citizens to be aware of the decisions
being taken by those ministries and departments. We plan to bridge this gap by our news and media
portal, TheIndianIris.com.
With these expertise and ideas in place, we would like to offer digital marketing services in future. We
have kept the name as Positive Ventures Pvt Ltd.
Figure: Products and Service to be offered by Positive Ventures Pvt Ltd
2. Products and Offerings
2.1 TheIndianIris.com
It is a portal that shall keep monitoring policy decisions taken by parliament, strategic moves by
government and its various departments. We plan to build the portal in stages. In the first phase, we
plan to cover the key ministeries and key flaship scheme. In the scond phase, we add next twenty
ministeries, and then the rest of the ministeries, departments, and other government functions. Below
are the list of ministeries and flasship schemes that we plan to add on our portal.
Ministeries
a) Finance
b) Defence
c) Home
d) Extrenal Affairs
Flagship Schemes
a) Jandhan Yojna
b) Beti Bachao Beti Padhao
c) Digital India
d) Make in India
e) Smart Cities
f) Swach Bharat Abhiyan
g) Skilled India
Figures: Logo and Site Banners that we have put together
Figure: the home page of http://theindianiris.com
2.2 Technotification.com
The portal was developed by a 20 year young students of MCA. This content portal targets people
interested in technologies, science, inventions, computers and cyber security. It is a news website that
reports on the importance of digital innovation, robotics and cyber security and how it empowers and
inspires people around the world. It is fast becoming a reliable source for technology news, information
& resources for the Connected Generation. Our stories inform, educate and entertain the audience
across a number of domains. Some basic statistics about technotification.com:
More than 25,000 visitor daily
Earned about $8,000 (~5 Lakh) in past 5 months
Sponsored some big tech facts in India such as IIT Kharaghpur’s Kshitij 2015
It is ranked 22,000 in the world and 3500 in India by alexa.com
Large websites such as DailyDot.com , AnonHQ.com, CNET, The new York times and Russia
Today etc. republish content from technotification.com
We plan to acquire or partner with technotificatyion.com for growing our portfolio and utilize the
expertise of the entrepreneur. He is currently helping us develop theindianiris.com. The picture below
depicts the home page of the portal.
Figure: Home Page of Technotification.com
2.3 YatraChalo.com
Our country has numerous Dharamshalas (Sarai). These dharamshalas offer cost effective
accommodation, specific to religious travelers. Information about these dharamshalas is hard to find
and most of the booking happen either via walking in, over phone or via personal references. Many a
times, user faces problems in getting the booked accommodation due to change in the booking or the
owner passing on the booking accommodation to someone else without intimation. This leads to poor
travel experience of the user. In such situations, the user generally does not have any record of the
booking. Further, during peak seasons, travelers are uncertain of getting an accommodation in
dharamshalas. They may have to settle with costly alternate options such as hotels or guest houses.
Similarly, during off peak seasons, rooms of these dharamshalas go vacant thus remain under utilized
while hotels nearby are booked. It shall be in interest to the dharamshalas to attract such customers
during off peak seasons and generate some revenue which can be utilized in developing the place and
the improving the facilities.
We therefore see a strong need for bringing all dharamshalas online for the purpose of booking. This will
however require multiple rounds of discussions with the trustees of these dharamshalas and convince to
subscribe to our portal and allow us to book their rooms online. In return, we plan to offer them
Graphical User Interface to manage their dharamshalas and booking system for their own use. In
addition, we plan to extend them other complementary solutions to build efficiency in managing their
daily operations and administrative reporting.
So far, we have discussed our idea with 10 dharamshalas, from which we received mixed responses.
Some were out rightly reluctant to go online. Some were indifferent while some were euphoric about
this portal. We spoke to over 100 end users, and religious travelers to understand their needs. End
consumers were excited to hear this. It seems that they shall be very happy to get good quality
accommodation at much cheaper rates compared to the alternate options of hotels or guest houses.
Figure: Tentative logo of our portal
Figure: Home page of YatraChalo.com
3. Our Proposed Services
In near future, we would like to venture into digital marketing services. These shall include promotional
campaigns on Internet comprising social media marketing, email campaigns, sms campaigns, WhatsApp
campaigns etc. With increasing penetration of the Internet, use of social media (Facebook and Twitter)
and messaging platforms such as WhatsApp is growing rapidly. All types of firms, be it small, medium or
large, are now looking for their presence on social media and want to remain ahead in terms of reaching
out to their existing or potential customers. We plan to address needs of this dynamic and fast growing
market.
4. Process Set up – Collaboration
We currently operate from our respective locations and plan to continue in the same manner for next
one year. Hence, it is important for us to remain on same page, and communicate effectively. We are
using social media as a platform to manage our work as well as source information for our work. We
have created Facebook and WhatsApp groups for fast communication. We allocate work through
Facebook closed group. We use Google Docs for sharing and reviewing documents. Further, we use
freely available teleconferencing facilities such as Google hangout, teamviewer etc. Such tools help use
see each other face to face and allow sharing of our screens with each other.
5. Milestones achieved so far
In the past 2 months, we have been able to set up the team, and put it in functioning mode. We have
identified right set of skills and people for our venture. We have allocated responsibilities as per their
skills and interests. The team is currently conducting research on government decisions and policies
formulated by them. Further, we have finalized the logos and site banners and got them designed by
experts. We have already purchased the domain name. Further, we have invested in purchasing a
server.
6. Organizational Values
We are ambitious in building our organization. We wish to set standards for our operations at a very
early stage. We have selected the team members after due care and discussions for over six months. We
would progress with the following values and beliefs:
a) We would strive to be the best in what we do
b) Quality shall be of the utmost care
c) Customer needs shall be fully taken care of
d) Professional approach in our work
e) Remain honest with our behavior on work or otherwise
f) Collaborations shall be promoted and team spirit shall be rewarded
With these values, each member of our team is committed to the following for the next one year.
a) We shall not seek any monetary rewards from our efforts
b) We shall not acquire any physical assets, i.e. office space, vehicles, laptops etc except for
servers, tools and equipments required to deliver our work. We shall continue to use our own
laptops, internet connection, and home for working for the firm.
Depending upon what we achieve in one year, we shall change our strategy.
7. One Year Targets
We plan to achieve the following targets by the end of March 31, 2016.
a) Coverage of all ministries, flagships schemes, and government departments on our portal
b) Target number of visitors on TheIndianIris.com is 25,000 per month
c) Target number of visitors on technotification.com is 50,000 per month
d) Revenue targets for technotification.com are INR 300,000 per month and for TheIndianIris.com INR
100,000 per month.
e) Enroll at least 100 dharamshalas with our portal
8. The Team and the Organizational Structure
Ritesh and I are (co) founders of the organization, while Vikram Singh is going to be either a partner or a
cofounder with us. Rest of the team members shall be employees and equity holders in the firm.
9. Appendix
9.1. Requirement document for TheIndianIris.com
This documents lists the requirement of the portal theindianiris.com
Pages
Home Page
About Us Page
Contact Us/ feedback/subscribe
Article Corner
TimeLine – (choice to choose between ministry and schmes)
o May be in the form of a drop down menu
Infographics (statistics of every scheme, every ministry )
Archive
Home Page
Menu bar which gets fixed upon scroll.
Header with our banner (please specify the size that would be good, currently I am using 1200
* 275)
2 column layout (right side bar with important news links)
Not yet decided what should go into the content pane.
If possible a cool video else a poster with some introduction( not about us but about why this
website is important to people. A quick intro )
A lite accordion ( horizontal ) to accommodate the flag ship schemes in the form of a poster
http://indiancag.org/ like the one in this.
Then footer contents:
o Social connect
o Login link( social login plugin and manual login for people who don’t like to connect
using any social network)
o Contact us link (the link to page)
o Any recent innovative trends that’s been used in the websites for socializing( if any)
o Copy rights
TimeLine:
As discussed in the meeting
Month wise with links to the articles.
And every month name can be a be a hyper link .
This hyperlink will be linked to infographics page where we have the posters arranged section
wise.
Each section is a month.
Within the infographics page we can have a < href >to the section insde the page.
So when clicked on the bullet people go to that page. But when clicked on articles invidually
they are taken to that particular articles.
By this they can get a consolidated version in terms of month and also access to every article in
detail.
Contact us/feedback/subscribe :
This will just be a plugin. So you know it better :P
Article corner: leave it under construction / coming soon
We shall start this page once our site has good number of visitors and has the potential to get
articles from people.
And one person going through the articles and selecting the innovative ones.
May be we can add this thing in the page and put a banner saying coming soon
About Us:
Not very sure about this page.
Infographics:
Divide the page into sections.
Add href to each section so that it is can be referenced from within the page.
And each section has posters(which are images(statistics)) from made from
http://piktochart.com/
January
When you click on one image there should be an option to share the images. Like the facebook
effect. (light box or some jquery effect).
Archive:
Will have all the relevant links to articles which we referred in making our articles.
Bibliography sort of thing.
Article archive on fb page may be linked to this.
9.2. Requirement document for YatraChalo.com
Requirement Document
This document intends to captures all basic requirements of an online portal (or later a mobile app) for
allowing travelers book their lost cost accommodation in a Dharamashala at a religious place or
otherwise. The document should segregate the essential and immediate components from option or
preferred components.
1. Graphical User Interface – Portal / Website / App
www.mydharamshala.com / www.bestpriceacco.com / www.myspiritualtour.com /
myreligioustourc.com etc.. the best and widest appealing name
Home Page
Searching Page
Contact Page / Information and Help Center
Registration Page
Payment Gateway
Link to Blog
Advertisement Spaces
2. User registration - create user ID password and build a user/customer database
Name, Phone No, email id, address, and Preferred ID proof details
3. Inventory Database - List of Dharamshalas/guesthouses
Name
Address
Location Map
Inventory Details : Rooms available, price, category (Premium, Classic or affordable etc))
“Book Now” button against each listing
Occupancy details (double/single/multiple)
Images of façade of the building, room interiors, lawns, and dining facility etc
Options to view on Map
More..
4. Searching : Search for places and nearest Dharamshalas based on requirements
Location
Booking Dates
Number of Guests
Type of Travel – Religious, Leisure, Educational
Number of Rooms, Types, Occupancy (Single/Double/Multiple)
Filtering options – Check Boxes etc
i. Star Ratings
ii. Food choices
iii. More options…
5. Booking window: Seek details of tourists
Number of Travelers
Details of Travelers : Name(s), Age, Sex
Number of rooms required,
Occupancy Selection (single/double/multiple), Contact Details of the user (already
picked from the database for those registered and - option to provide alternate phone
number).
6. Payment Gateway setup
Room Fee + Convenience (Rs 10 per passenger) + provision for tax, if any {OR dynamic
pricing model : Rs 10 upto 5 passengers, Rs 7.5 for 6-15 and Rs 5 for more than 15
passengers}
Booking confirmation –
i. sending email to user and the dharamshala manager
ii. sending an SMS to user
iii. Payment settlement – Room charges transferred to Dharamshala / guest house
+ convenience fee to our firm
Feedback Seeking / Start Rating while booking
7. User Reviews / Start Ratings: Feedback seeking post completion of journey to monitor the
experience of the traveler and any issues faced by them of searching, booking, and
communicating, and checking in and out, about the quality of bedding, food, and ambience,
cleanliness
8. Separate Interface for “Add/Enrol Your Dharamshala / Guest House”
9. Blog
Active Information – Upcoming fests, dates, etc
User experience sharing
Tips
Audio / Video Guides
10. Social Media Feeds
11. Customer Testimonials
9.3. Customer workflow for YatraChalo.com
Consumer searches for dharamshala online booking on google or directly use website url
User fills details and checks availability
If more than one options available for that place, all options will be shown as below. There could be 2-3
category like dharamshala by religion, guest house and bunglow/apartments.
Once user selects room to book, a form will be shown next to fill or sign in options.
Payment options will be shown using payment gateway and once payment is made.
Success message will be shown or a message to confirm in 6 to 12 hours will be displayed.(this all
depends on particular dahramshala). Payment will only be debited once we confirm***.
During confirmation, email will be sent to customer, sms /eail will be sent to dharamshala caretaker so
that they know someone has made the booking.
Once user reaches to the place, he/she will show the booking confirmation. Caretaker can confirm this
using his message or using through portal or confirming the phone number for identity.
9.4. Caretaker/Administrator Workflow
Any dharamshala venue should get an internal ID and password.
Once they login, they should be able to
Add /remove any number of pics of rooms and dharmashala
add information related to place
add new rooms or reduce room available for online booking
**add and remove new caretaker and guards phone number
direction to reach and direction on whom to meet once customer reach
check out who has booked on which days
reports on booking and payments
9.5. Technology to be used
Opensource only, PHP+mysql
SEO capability of the portal
9.6. Reference for Yatrachalo.com
http://www.makemytrip.com/hotels/
http://www.mahaveerji.org/book-room.php
*** End of the Report***
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