Parag Pathare

RightDeal.com
primary goal is to bring you your neighbourhood discounted deals covering local
services and products. It distinguishes itself from bringing deals covering
services which aim to cover ‘must have’ and not just ‘good to have’ services
& products. This is achieved with the participation of location experts who
know the locality and the needs of its residents. This way, we provide our
framework for the locals who can chisel out Deals to the likings to its local
communities. These deals can be solo or group discount deals covering consumer
segment and targeting individuals, groups of friends, societies and even SMBs.
This certainly sounds a mammoth task, but our team is up to face it and we will
do it.RightDeal.com (wholly owned by IPSense Consultancy Pvt Ltd) was established
in Nov2011 and we have gone live since Jul’2012.

Fortunately,
the software solution we invested on is a market leader in Group Discount
software segment. However, moving this product from plain vanilla to the
customized ver for our market takes a lot of work. Having a local development
team is crucial instead of relying on remote work deliveries which can be time
consuming. A sufficient amount of pre-planning is required to shorten the
implementation and rollout time.

Selection
and finalization of proven software solutions & technology partner with the
right industry know-how and experience is critical in ensuring that our efforts
and investments have long term benefits. In dotcom world, compromising on this
quality can at times turn out to be a make or break situation. Another critical
area is the need to form a solid team which becomes fundamental for any
startup, and achieving this effectively and successfully is crucial in the make
or break of a startup. 

Having multiple
heads/partners to drive different frontiers is very crucial. This for us still
an open issue as we continue to look for individuals who can become our long
term co-founders and bring significant experience to our outfit and hasten the
growth curve. Relying only on remote(different timezone) development team is
not always a good approach and having a local team is certainly a speedy way to
build the startup.

Focus a
large portion on pre-planning, local technology team, early stage co-founders
and partner formation. 

The sheer
excitement & challenges of taking a startup from drawing board to rollout
and seeing it benefiting the communities at large gives me an immense pleasure
and joy. Apart from Rightdeal.com, we are also in the midst of rolling out
Community Commerce portals which take one Mumbai suburb at a time. The only
objective is to bring the area specific information, exchange, communities and
commerce onto a single platform, thereby giving the community an arm-chair
location specific search and services at its door. While the scale of effort
can at times look mammoth, the eventual benefit to the society at large is
surely a huge satisfaction. 

Spotting
right talent can at times cab be purely intuitive, however i always try to look
for passion, commitment, confidence as some of key personality traits in
picking young talents. Hand-holding and assigning tasks which give a feeling of
challenge and satisfaction is key to nurturing and inspiring young talents.

Ensuring
motivated team is very key to a fruitful performance of each individual within
a team. Towards this goal we keep a very open, engaged and very professional
environment which takes care of each employee like a member of family. 

Real
Neighbourhood Discounted deals on our platform provide a very cost effective
model as there is no upfront cost and so putting this value benefit coupled
with the value of reaching new customers over internet within the neighbourhood
area of the customer worked quite attractive model for businesses. A full
fledged e-commerce model allowing merchants to promote & sell products
& services provide the most cost effective medium for biz who can focus on
their service while our platform takes care of promoting to the offerings to
customer base. The deals which we striked till date took us thru the experience
cycle of what works and what needs further tuning to make it work. So there is
this constant learning and refining of the Deal model with the merchants which
helps to make it more workable in the favour of both the merchants and
customer. 

Not yet,
but in the near future we will look towards taking this step.

We are a
new startup and so you always go thru juggling many hats as you are the
visionary as well as the key person navigating the ship. Many times it forces
you to explore roles which may not be your forte and but gives you the
opportunity to give it a shot. The initial days requires the entrepreneur to be
a ‘jack of all’ and take active participation on the biz model Design, Planning,
Operations, HR, Sales & Marketing and which is quite exciting and
overwhelming at times. However there is a need to then settle down with your
key expertise area and assign experts to specific areas and take a bigger
picture.

I must
say that avoiding mistakes totally is not possible. You must have falls and
then get up and this must happen preferably in your early stage of venture to
learn the right ways and gain experience to foresee problems and avoid them.
This comes from experience and also how passionate and innovative someone is
towards his/her venture. 

Be
passionate, ensure joining right forums like TiE and other leading
entrepreneurial groups which keep you networked with similar minded people and
in motivated state of mind, listen to your heart, constantly validate and
refine your idea to shape it into a niche and economically feasible. Without
trying,  you won’t know the true thrill & challenges associated with a
venture.

The risk
is competition from well funded big boys in the deals industry, but honestly
they are also the ones who shape us continuously. If you take into
consideration the following facts then it will emerge that there is bigger
opportunity at stake in the Deals segment and we believe even today new
entrants can gradually build its pie of the market share. a) This year the big
boys are celebrating their 2 anniversaries (nascent stage & evolving Deal
space), b) India has just under 1% population buying things online, c) that the
country has large citizens making its living thru offering services
(skilled/semi-skilled services) in offline world, d) Merchants will forever
need cost effective Biz & Service Marketing & promotions .e) in the
advanced online market like US, there are today 500 group discount sites and so
India can easily absorb about 50 odd sites easily. f) India’s cultural
diversity and language demographics provide bigger customized Deals
opportunity, which today remains untapped. The key to success would be
differentiation and finding your niche space and the goal should be focused,
constant innovation is required to differentiate and sighting segments which
you take the first-mover lead advantage.

All of
the first movers are truly genius entrepreneurs who had the vision to sight
which others didn’t. Google is undoubtedly the most admired company for me and
they are truly revolutionary in the initiatives they bring and will have a
significant influence on mankind.

Dream
Dream Dream & Action Action Action