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This Entrepreneurial Story is about Mrigank Shekhar who Founded ‘ Olmec Technologies Pvt Ltd ‘ located in Bangalore India.
About –
- Mrigank Shekhar: (CEO) B.Tech. from IIT Delhi, 2001. PreviouslyWorked at RSA, Qwest, Tavant. Was leading the Engineering of a 40M$ Security product before starting allMemoirs. Loves Innovation, Leadership and Experimentation. LinkedIn
- Kush Srivastava: (CTO) B.Tech. IIT Delhi, 2003 Previously Worked at mChek, Qwest. Was the Technology Head of mCheck before starting allMemoirs. Loves playing with and trying out new technologies. LinkenIn
When Started: Started work in Jan 2013, Released allMemoirs in May 2013.
What Motivated you to start your Business?
On one of the Co-Founders birthday, the discussion shifted to gifting, rather finding gift items at ease and at one place. As the discussion grew we realized that finding a perfect product for self or for gifting online; is such a pain. The idea came to put forth a fully personalized and categorized shopping site for oneself where online products from many other sites are classified according to consumer’s likes and taste thus making online shopping simple and pleasurable.
Tell us about your Business
In a nutshell the product is to make online shopping and finding gifting products hassle free and to the point. How?
allMemoirs is a product classification engine with a fully personalized experience – We handpicked products from multiple e commerce sites and the consumers see them according to their likes and tastes. This enables
- Product Discovery: Products are classified into collections and tags (not yet released to public), making it easier for Users to discover products.
- Gift Ideas: Products are classified into Gift Ideas based on Relation, Occasion, Mood, Interests, Age and Price Range, making it easy for Users to discover gifts.
- Wishlist and Curation: Users can save products into three buckets, what they like, what they wish and what they want to gift. More curation options will be released later as we move ahead. One major area where our competitors are behind is the mobile space – we have the following apps in the market
- Android + iOS – Trends/Product Discovery Application (~ 3k downloads combined)
- Android + iOS- GiftIdeas Application (~ 2k downloads combined)
What is a Day in a life of you like?
Given that we are a start-up, the founders have to wear multiple hats, we need to look at Marketing, Budgeting, Technology, Users, Conversions, Engagement, App Downloads, Hiring and other mundane administrative stuff.
We create a sort of mind-map of top 5 activities in each of these areas for the next quarter. Everyday, we get together, have a look at the map, and pick up 2-3 activities on which to focus on. There are days when we pick up something which can take 5-10 days, so it is slightly normal, but then there are days when we have to pick 2-3 activities in a single day itself. These days are full of context switches, and we get these type of days more often that the first type. So we end up doing marketing, hiring, tech and user analysis on one given day itself. Not that we are complaining.
There are days where we decide, ok, no more day-to-day work, let us sit for 2-3 days and just ideate and strategize. These days are the days of creativity and innovation, where we bounce ideas that can help our product.
And finally, you have days, where you do the mundane admin stuff, like tax related work, other company related paper work, which are a necessary evil. We try to keep them to a minimum.
One particular skill you got right and gave you best results.
We have understood that making a successful business requires lots of patience and perseverance. So, we are not looking at short cuts, we have a robust plan, and we are in for a Test Match, and not a T20 game
What have been your biggest challenges in running your Business so far?
Online shoppers always look out for tangible benefits like discounts, coupons and sale. As our benefits are not directly out on the face, its difficult to get that “love at first sight” or “Ok I get what you are doing” thought from the customer.
How did you overcome these challenges?
We feel that our patient and step-wise marketing plan, our technological capabilities and the eventual movement towards Social Commerce will counter this and get on the new customers and our personalized classification engine will retain them for long.
What have you found the most effective way to get new clients?
Facebook, and the correct use of it advertisement capabilities
What advice do you give to other business owners?
It is a test of patience, and you will face more lows than highs. There will be no one but yourself (and your Co-Founders) to keep you driven. Learn from the lows, forget them fast, enjoy the highs, don’t get carried away with it, and most importantly, just enjoy the journey.
How did you keep motivated through difficult times?
Having a great Co-Founder and high levels of self-drive helps. Remember, here we do not have a Boss\Manager who we can approach to get motivation. I have a few songs (mostly Bollywood) that drive me, so at times, I play them continuously 10-15 times and just think of ideas, and this helps me get the motivation back. Also, I watch a lot of football, and have not given it up, helps me unwind and get relaxed.
Whats Your Marketing, Funding and Team Building Strategy
- Social Media Marketing:Facebook is out primary Marketing Platform, we have 40k Facebook fans at https://www.facebook.com/allMemoirs.
- We use the 4 stepped approach of Fans -> Branding -> Conversion-> Engagement.
- SEO: Current focus area, looking at increasing visitors coming via Search Engine.
- App Store Optimization for Mobile App Marketing
- Facebook Ads and Google Adwords to get to new Users
Your Achievements
Individually, I had some great achievements at RSA, these 2 the most important ones
- Turning around a highly unstable product (used by majority of Fortune 50 companies) and inconsistent Engineering team into a reliable product with innovative and responsive.
- Running a successful, one of its kind Innovation competition at the RSA Bangalore center called “sMashUp”. The competition is still used as a reference to what innovation events should be like.
What’s your favorite quote?
I like these lines from Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken”
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Who inspires you?
I have been inspired by 4 different generations of successful entrepreneurs, starting from Bill Gates during School days, Google founder during College days, Mark Zuckerberg during my early office days and now the Flipkart guys. I have been most inspired by the Google guys, though . 🙂
Also there are sport stars like Lionel Messi and M.S. Dhoni, who are an inspiration (and stress busters) but in a different way.
Do you have a Business Philosophy?
Solve the right problems for your Customers, and it should pay you in the long run.
Contact Links
More Info
https://www.startupfreak.com/allmemoirs/
Startup Freak wishes Mrigank Shekhar, All the Best!
