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Startup > My Story > Parag Pathare
Parag Pathare

Parag Pathare

Founder
RightDeal.com

Short Description

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.

Brief about company, offerings and foundation of the company

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.

Some of the difficulties faced while building product/ solution

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.

Most critical decision

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. 

Three big lessons/ mistakes encountered while building company

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.

Different actions if I rebuild my company from scratch all over again

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

Motivation and Drives factor

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. 

Way of choosing my people

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.


Unique about my way of motivating troops

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. 

The challenges and lessons learnt to get first customer

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. 

Experience of reaching out to potential investors

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

My role at different dimensions as the company evolved

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.

As a leader how I make sure that I am connecting the right dots

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. 

My thoughts related to entrepreneurship/ leadership and management

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.

Risks involved in business and way of addressing

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.

Best company I admire globally

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.

Advice for fellow entrepreneurs

Dream Dream Dream & Action Action Action