Don’t tell people about your dreams, show them. A Hyderabad based startup ‘My Dream store’ is turning your entrepreneurial dreams into a reality. Telugu360 is in conversation with Sumanth Bommothi an IIM Lucknow Alumnus and the Marketing Head of My Dream Store who takes us through the achievements, goals and dreams of their startup….
Can you pitch for your startup?
My Dream Store is a platform where one can create and sell custom apparel online with zero risk and zero investment. We take care of manufacturing, delivery as well as customer support while the sellers can just sit-back and make money. We are trying to solve the problems from a seller perspective. Campaigners can sell products like tshirts, hoodies, vests, polos, tanktops, mobile cases, coffee mugs, posters, photo frames on My Dream Store
Can you walk us through the technicalities of this process?
We are more of a ‘create and sell’ service. Our sellers have to start a campaign by creating products, setting a target number of buyers, selling price and the duration for which the product is available. Sellers promote their products and the get the orders for us. Once the target number of orders is reached, we print the tshirts, pack them and deliver to the respective buyers. Then the margins that sellers make are directly transferred to their bank account.
How did you get the idea to setup the e-store?
We were doing offline bulk merchandising previously. We realized the difficulties for small businesses like us to go online. So, we decided to build a platform which is more like plug and play without worrying about product quality, inventory management, delivery and other complexities in managing an ecommerce business.
From 2014 to 2017 how has my dream store transitioned?
Initially we started as a platform that enables graphic designers to monetize their artworks through merchandising. However we quickly realized the scope is much bigger and extended our concept to internet marketers, NGOs, students, working professionals. That’s the transition point which has given positive results we are seeing now.
What are your challenges?
Attracting talent is one of the biggest challenge. The startup culture is not yet widely accepted but it is slowly evolving. Getting people who resonate with our thoughts is tough.
Streamlining the operations was another challenge we faced – that means increasing production capacity and reducing waiting periods simultaneously. Exactly two years back we were doing 50 products per day, now we are shipping 1500 products a day. During the same period our delivery timelines have reduced from 20 days to 6 days.
What was the impact of demonetization on your startup?
During November first week, we were doing 2000 products per day. We thought we are going to outdo all the targets the following week. Then demonetization happened and all of a sudden, there was a steep fall. But within 2-3weeks we coped and the best part of it is, earlier we used to have a lot of cash on delivery orders. But post demonetization it drastically reduced. This in turn is helping in decreasing the return rates.
Because this is a custom merchandise, how do you handle the returns?
Our return rates are very less compared to other big ecommerce players. Nonetheless whatever we get back, we donate it to NGOs. Generally, our returns are due to unavailability of customer as we never compromise on quality.
Tell us more about your customer base?
Our customers are spread across India, most of the orders come from Metros and Tier 1 cities. We attract close to a million visitors per month. Till date we have served more than 300,000 customers and have a seller base of more than 12,000 people. They are from India, USA, Bangladesh, Vietnam and many other countries. We do not have any restriction on who can be our seller. It can be a student, a homemaker, online communities or a working professional. Anybody with an idea can do it.
Since they just need to create the product and sell, how do you address the selling part of it?
Sellers are the most important part of our startup. They promote and get the orders for us to fulfill. We identified they have very limited resources to learn about online marketing so we created ‘My Dream Store University’ a self-learning portal for sellers. We host weekly webinars, one to one interactions and blogs. We have recently set up ‘MDS Labs’ which is a centre of excellence for Online Marketing. Through this we will be publishing research content that educates sellers about market trends, insights, running Facebook ads and help them sell smartly.
What is your vision for the near future?
We are working on ‘create and buy’ option. We are also planning to expand our range to bring in more product categories, premium or branded products for existing lineup and celebrity merchandise. Apart from that we are preparing for a geographic expansion whereby we are exploring opportunities to ship products to Asia-pacific.
Can you talk about the impact My Dream Store has made in people’s lives?
We are giving people the freedom to explore endless opportunities in this ecommerce world. Through My Dream Store, thousands of people are able to start online business and earn money sitting at the comfort of home. Students, Home makers are using our platform extensively. In a few instances some sellers have actually left their jobs and entered into this business. Recently a seller has made 50lakh rupees per year from our portal, there are many such success stories. Such instances and the impact we create in their life motivates us to built better platform and create best selling experience for our sellers.
