Entrepreneurship: Off to the US with a business plan!

Sapan Kadakia of CityOffers.in recently won the Global Student Entrepreneur Award conferred by the Entrepreneurs' Organization.

For the first time, an entry from the South Asia region will go to compete at the international level. Kadakia would represent South Asia at the 30 Global Dorm Room Student Entrepreneur of the Year Award on November 17.

He would compete with the top 30 student entrepreneurs from around the world at the NYSE, New York.

Other than the title, Global Student Entrepreneur of the Year, the winner would get over $150,000 in cash and other professional services.

To encourage young innovative entrepreneurs, EO started the Global Student Entrepreneur Awards, a programme founded at the John Cook School of Business at Saint Louis University.

This award is aimed at students, who do a full course while running their own businesses.

The winning student has to be running a revenue generating business for at least six months.

In 2010, nearly 2,000 students from 44 countries were nominated to the GSEA.

The South Asia competition was held in Coimbatore by the Coimbatore Chapter of EO, India.

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Twenty-three student businessmen from all over India were in Coimbatore to present their successful businesses to a panel of judges.

CityOffers.in was co-founded in November 2010 in Ahmedabad by 26-year-old Kadakia, who graduated from Mudra Institute of Communication, Ahmedabad in 2011.

The other co-founders are his brother Tejas Kadakia and Atul Jain. 

Entrepreneurs' Organization (www.eonetwork.org), founded in 1987 by a group of young entrepreneurs, is a global network of more than 8,000 entrepreneurs from 40 countries, with its headquarter in the US.

Now, over to Kadakia on how he became an entrepreneur.

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An entrepreneur is born

Though there was no entrepreneur in my family, I always had this desire to be an entrepreneur. It was a dream I had been pursuing for a long time.

It was a very bold step I took but I was confident.

My inspirations were Warren Buffett and NR Narayana Murthy.

On starting CityOffers.in

CityOffers.in was the first idea that I worked on.

This was when I was a student at MICA.

I felt there is a lot of dead stock with the retailers which need to be sold, and people are crazy about discounts all over the world.

We started the blue print in June 2010 and registered our company.

We had three co-founders with a working capital of Rs 30 lakhs (Rs 3 million), 50 per cent of which was spent on marketing, developing the website and also giving salaries to the six employees and six freelancers.

Till we launched CityOffers.in in November 2010, we were developing the back end technology and getting retailers on board.

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It was tough convincing retailers as the concept was new in Ahmedabad.

Infybeam, an online book seller was one of our first clients.

We started with 50 retailers on board.

We did only online marketing.

We are strong on Google, and also on social networking sites.

We started with 2,000 fans in Ahmedabad on Facebook, and today, we have a 36,000 strong Facebook fan page.

Initially, we offered a lot of services like spa, then discounts on food (Pizza), dinner at restaurants, etc.

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The First few months

The first month was very tiring and challenging with us facing a lot of technical problems.  Also, we had to convince customers that they could really avail of the discount coupons. 

There were highs and lows.

For a few months, we were bombarded with deals.

We were on a high when we were featured as one of the top websites by Economic Times in early 2011.

It really boosted our confidence.

Every month, our top line increased by Rs 100,000 or so.

Today, after eight months of functioning, our top line is Rs 30 lakhs. 

When I got this idea in January 2010, there was no one offering deals in the market.

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In the last eight months, there is a dynamic growth in the number of such businesses all over India. This space is overcrowded now.

But my opinion is that only a few strong players will survive in the end. That is why we are innovating a lot more on the production side.

Future plans

After I graduated in April, we moved our headquarters to Mumbai, and now we have operations in Mumbai, Bengaluru and New Delhi.

We have freelancers in all the cities to bring us deals. We are still brainstorming on our future plans.

We may concentrate on a niche market or expand. We are looking at the untapped mobile field.

We have 1,50,000 users till now. Our Facebook page increases every day by 500.

We want to increase the users. We have at least one deal a day.

If the deal is very good, we see 1,000 people visiting and at least 200 deals materialising. Our target is to have 100 to 200 transactions every day.

Every month, our target growth is 25 per cent.

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Associating with social causes

I take part in social activities like the Road to Ideas where we take a bunch of students on a bus and travel across India and make them meet the unsung heroes.

I am a part of the One Laptop Per Child scheme. I work as a volunteer for goonj (http://goonj.org/) which is the only cloth initiative in the world.

It is doing at least 10 tonnes of material a month.
I also teach at Akanksha Foundation. It is sheer joy of giving that makes me work with these organisations.

I don't look at my work with non-government organisations as social work, I feel it is my social responsibility.

Winning the GSEA award

I did not expect to win the award as there were many other brilliant ideas in the panel.

However, the award gives us a huge opportunity.

For, a global exposure is of great importance for our kind of business.

It may bring in global investors and mentors.