Author Archives: Sakshibansal

As a part of the course Business Development Lab my team had to present on the topic customer segment. Hence I went through a lot of materials and videos and would like to share some of the key points I learnt.

Customer Archetype

• Understanding and defining your customers in detail
• Profile for the customer – age, gender, location, role, how they buy, who will buy etc.
• User of the product may not always be the buyer of the product.
• Identify how your product is going to help your customer and where it fits in their life.

Working with customers

• Constant interaction with customers.
• Customer discovery – test the problem and get better understanding of the problem you are trying to fix.
• Customer validation – test the solution by creating demo, website/apps.
• Start selling the product
• Improve the product and add more features

As a part of this course we had to form teams and participate in an online venture simulation game. Before sharing my experience with the game I would like to explain it a bit.

There are two parallel worlds in the game, each having six teams. The teams in one world compete with each other. Also we were asked to form a team having some amount of diversity (gender and geographic). I think this was really nice as it ensured that we interacted and worked with different people and not just stick with our friends.

There were a total of seven quarters (with the last one being the final presentation). With each quarter we were able to broaden our venture i.e include more brands, more products, have more and more sales offices, increase the sales force, include R&D and improvise our products. One thing that my team sort of struggled throughout was designing good ads and where exactly to place these ads. Each quarter we tried to improve it and hence made a lot of modifications.

Some of the things I liked about the simulation was that it allowed us to review our product and the competitors brand every quarter. This helped us in great deal to learn from our mistakes and  improve. Also it gave a sort of insight into how everything works starting from the geographic location we wanted to launch the product, to the kind of sales we wanted or the R&D we wanted to invest in.

Recently I saw the video ‘The Death of Business Model’ by Terrence Brown. In this post I would discuss some of the highlights and the things that I learnt from the video.

There are numerous definitions of a what is a business model and a lot of them were discussed in the video. From all of them my view on business model is that it helps one to decide what is the value the business will offer, who will it offer this value to, how it will reach those and finally finances (profit, cost of selling etc). To explain this in more detail we have business model canvas which has 9 components. In my opinion all are important but the one to start with is ‘value proposition’. This is because the most defining aspect of a business is what exactly is the value that we can offer. Whether is to attract customers or investors the most important thing is to know exactly the specifics of the value that is offered.

Lean startup movement consists of three components – business model canvas, customer development and agile engineering. One of the most grave mistake to make is to assume that your potential customer segment is going to live your product and readily pay for your product without actually talking to your potential customers. Hence it is very important to actually talk and discuss with your customer and to design your customer archetype on some solid testing rather than assumptions made. Next agile engineering consists of a lot of action items. I believe here is when you start doing some actual work. An MVP (Minimal Viable product) is designed and deployed, customers can be asked to test the demo/beta and give constructive feedback. Multiple design decisions are actually tested and based on the results they could be destroyed/modified. Also most of the time there would be some or the other changes that will need to happen to your business model, value etc and you will pivot. It is important to understand that all of these are tools and should be just used as a tool. It does not mean that if one can design a good one page business model canvas that their business will be successful (business is not equal to business model canvas).

Like all sports based movies Eddie the Eagle was very inspirational. The story of a man that achieved his dreams by overcoming all the odds and obstacles on his way. However it took me sometime to realize what could be the entrepreneurial lessons that I could learn from this movie?

Firstly the most important lesson to be learnt is that in spite of what people think you can and cannot do and irrespective of what obstacles one face, you must work towards your goal. Rather than focusing on what others think and discouraging yourself, one must only and only focus on your dreams and how you can achieve it. This is a sort of golden rule and should apply to all aspects of our life.

Another important thing I derived from the movie was how well-defined his goal was. He did not have like a hundred things on mind or a vague idea of what he wants to achieve. He knew exactly what he wanted – ‘taking part in the Olympics game’, the goal was well-defined, short and he was able to work towards it. I believe this is a very important rule while building your company – getting specifics. If you don’t have a good idea about what the pain is and how your product can solve it, the customer segment, how marketing should be done, finances it is very difficult to establish your company in the market.

In my opinion a good mentor can really help you grow and achieve much more similar to how Eddie’s mentor helps him achieve his goal. Likewise I believe it is important to have good mentors in your life, having good entrepreneurial knowledge who prevent you from making grave mistakes and help you follow the right path.

There is no doubt in the fact that there are a lot of young female entrepreneurs, leading many startups these days. It is also a lot of fun meeting and interacting with these amazing women. Sometime back I too got an opportunity to meet two amazing female entrepreneurs. The event was organized by the Women@EIT group at KTH. The first entrepreneur was Elsa Bernadotte, COO & Co-Founder at Karma. She shared her journey from working at a company to starting her own startups. Her initial startup was non-technical and it was very interesting to listen about how to select the raw materials, production details etc. She also motivated and encouraged us to believe in us and take the risk to build our own startup. The second entrepreneur was Karoline Beronius,  who is currently working on her social enterprise. She had previously worked in CLC and have known her well. This was a completely different experience as this was the first time listening about a social enterprise. I believe this is a great thing to use one’s experience and knowledge and help people around you. We later got to mingle with the women and they shared their experience. It was a very fun and knowledgeable experience overall.

Recently I came across a group of female entrepreneurs and found their story very inspiring and decided to write about them. These female entrepreneurs are from Sarai Nuruddin, a small village situated in the northern part of India. The group mainly consists of around 15 women who make and sell baskets. Apart from them from time to time other women in the village also contribute in their free time. The baskets are made of waste plastic (usually cut from carry bags and straw that are usually discarded as waste).

Their journey started when few women in the village would make baskets from leftover or discarded plastic, as they are available for free and would use it for day-to-day storage purposes. Soon more and more women started working together to make these baskets. They found a need for their product in the village and then started taking orders from people in and around the village. They were spotted by Amrita Serve a project that works towards the development of villages and sustainable development. Amrita Serve also helps these women to promote their work and reach out to more people. The major attractions of the product are that they do not require any industrial setup, does not produce any wastes, utilizes discarded plastic to make new product and ofcourse look beautiful. Here are some pictures of the women making and selling their product.

Currently they are working on an order for Australia!