Interview with Ananya Dattawadkar | Make At Home
Ananya Dattawadkar is an enthusiastic and energetic professional always into interacting with people, helping them out is like her hobby. As a passion, She always wanted to get into business but she always wanted to get into such kind of business in which she will get 100% motivation and self-satisfaction. Out of all these things, she finally started her own venture Make At Home.
Many people are blessed with specialized skills many are experts in various hobbies such as cooking, music, arts, fashion, beauty, photography, home decor etc. The small bunch of people converts their skills into a business. These people have tremendous love and passion for their skills or hobbies. Many people earn their bread and butter by selling their handmade products. Due to various reasons, it becomes difficult for them to grow their business and earn more. Our start-up is established with an intent to provide a platform for such homemade sellers and help them to establish a better business and grow further. Our application “Make At Home” is one of such a unique platform for where anyone can buy and sell such unique products or services made at home. Our app is exclusively for homemade business where buyers can find awesome products and services in their area which they cannot find anywhere else. With this problem-solving approach in mind, we have recently launched our startup and committed to further grow this idea to help many especially women entrepreneurs in India.
Links
Website: www.makeathome.in
App link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ecom.makeathome
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/MakeAtHome.in/
1. What gets you out of bed in the morning i.e what’s your source of motivation
When there are thousands of users looking at you with a hope or belief then that itself becomes a big motivation for us. Currently our platform though very young is having 2500 registered sellers across India who are involved in homemade business and soon more to join in. These sellers look at us as an opportunity to sell their products and some money for their livelihood. Delivering their expectations has become a motivation for us.
2. Why should people choose your product/services
Today there are so many options for buyers to buy goods likes luxurious shops, malls, Online stores with so many variables and options to buy. Homemade or Handmade products itself is a unique category. Various people have specialised skills and out of these skills they develop some really amazing products or services and offer them at a very reasonable price. You will never get such specialized products or services anywhere in shops or malls. Make At Home helps to identify the sellers selling homemade products or services around your locality and buyers can easily connect to them through our app. So our platform is offering a unique collection of homemade products or services around you which is an altogether different concept. You feel that there is always a demand for homemade products but at the same time, its difficult to identify homemade sellers and we are here bridge this gap between buyers and sellers for homemade or handmade business.
3. What’s your competiaive advantage and why can’t it be copied?
Our first differentiating factor is we are exclusively for homemade business none like another this itself is our uniqueness. Currently, there is no platform which covers so many categorize of homemade business. Secondly, We are offering this service completely free without any charge or commission from sellers. In future, we want to give some paid features to the seller to expand their business. So we have a very different business model in place which provides complete flexibility to sellers and helps them to get a complete profit margin for their products. Currently, no e-commerce website or app is based on such a concept. All websites are commission based.
4. What risks are you facing?
We are a startup which is just like a nascent baby and facing all the challenges and risk that an early startup face but we feel that is how you grow, you need to fight with those and move ahead.
5. Have you considered any alliance/partnership?
We are open for it however we have not thought of it seriously as of now. There are stages in any business and as it grows you need to take steps based on the stages your business is in. Currently, we feel we have not gone up to that stage where we can have a strategic alliance or partnerships because at the end of the day any partnership must be beneficial to both partners. But certainly we are open and soon we will reach a stage where we can think of this.
6. What are your cash flow projections? When will you break even? How much will you need in investments
As said earlier we are providing our app completely free as of now. Currently, our goal is to maximise our reach and create an identity of our app in the market since that’s important. We want to be a one-stop destination for homemade business. But soon we are going to implement our business model and will be revenue generating idea. We expect to reach break-even within some 2 years after implementing a business model. About investment, it can never be a fixed amount more is less.
7. What comes first for you money or emotions?
Money never comes first when you work on a real problem. Today in India so many sellers are earning their daily bread and butter by selling products or services. They grow their families out of this small businesses. If you are becoming a part of their growth then what better you can achieve in life. For us emotions are first that’s why we are in this and offering our services free.
8. What are your strengths and weaknesses?
Our strength is strongly believed that there is a need for this concept and we will solve various problems through our app. We are working hard for it that’s our another strength being an early startup our strength cannot be a big team or funding like many other big companies, it’s our internal motivation, belief and hard work which is our strength. Weakness are many as we don’t have too much fund in our bank, no manpower for strong technical support or to do aggressive marketing etc. We are working on to tackle these weaknesses and will soon overcome.
9. Tell me about an accomplishment you are most proud of.
With all the said weaknesses and challenges we were able to reach out to a large audience may be in few lacs. Close to 5,000 downloads with 2500 sellers registered an equivalent number of products and services for sell on our platform in just 4 months itself is a big achievement.
10. How do you handle the pressure
When you jump into a sea you can not run away by looking at its high tide, you need to face it to survive whatever may be pressure we are putting in very hard efforts to grow and sustain our business.
11. If you sold your company today, what would be the tone of the conversation? What would you want to gain? What would you want to avoid losing
We are too early to sell at this point of time we can achieve nothing by just closing something we started. This will be a premature period and we would like to grow upto certain big level where we can really think of such things.
12. What advice would you give to someone starting out?
If you want to start anything then planning is an ultimate thing. If you have planned your things very well then things will be in your favour. detail study is required before you start not only about the problem or concept you are providing but also you need to be ready with a plan about how you are going to reach out to a relevant audience. Today Marketing and execution is more important than an idea. If you have not planned then you can fall on your face even though the idea is great. So my advice will be for a
