For our fourth session of ‘rapid-fire questions’, we’ll be speaking with Swarup Bose, founder of Celcius (Cold-chain focused marketplace platform facilitating logistics, fulfillment, and warehousing at a pan-India level), and Shivjeet Ghatge, founder of Step Set Go (Reward-driven fitness app enabling a healthier India)
What’s the best method in trying to bring down your sales cycle while dealing with brands/clients?
Swarup: Celcius sales cycle is 90 days From contact to contract, we start pilot trips with clients from day 1 itself, with our recognition spreading and our performance increasing will ensure our sales cycle comes down.
Shivjeet: Ad sales - these are the large brands that we tie up with. It is usually pushed through advertising agencies like group M and interactive avenues.Â
These have a 2-3 month payment cycle. There is no way to reduce this if the campaign comes via an ad agency. If the client is closed directly the payment cycle can be as low as 2 weeks after the campaign ends.Â
Another bottleneck is getting all the necessary information to run the campaign (these are mostly design assets and the content for the same). If our design team was larger we could help the client in adapting the designs in all the needed formats and sizes. But as of now, we need to wait for the client to do the adaptations and send the assets to us. Â
How to define expectations prior to the engagement with a brand/client and how to manage them in case of any downturns?
Swarup: Due to the nature of our business and the gap we address the expectations of our solution is high as it’s a unique solution made for the first time in India, thus increasing our network and software offerings prepare us for any downturns that might come up.
Shivjeet: At SSG we promise user participation in a challenge. Depending on the time the challenge runs, the sales team knows the kind of participation the challenge will receive. Now this participation can be translated into coupon dispensation or impressions/CTRs. The conversion of the coupons is not something SSG takes the responsibility for.Â
If by chance the participation is lower than expected we are open to running another campaign for the brand for a nominal price (sometimes even for free)Â
Is product customization for a given client a necessary element during the early days? If so, how do you align it with the product roadmap?
Swarup: The core problem with most of our clients is the same, customisation works in our favor as the same is applicable to multiple clients making a standardized product.
Shivjeet: Â we already have a set of assets that the client has full control over (the advertising side of the different challenges as well as the widgets in the bazaar) but this customization is set within the size of the already existing UI.Â
For clients that have billing of over 3L (for less than a week), we customize their experience by adding a microsite where we have one dedicated resource. As of now, we have the flexibility to take on more brands like this.Â
With limited resources to deploy, how important is brand/client selection during the early days of operations?
Swarup: For us selecting clients is of utmost importance as we need to map our transporter’s route and cold storage locations to optimize the reverse logistics and make sure the fulfillment ratio is high, the demand needs to be mapped but so does the supply so selection criteria are high
Shivjeet: this is always a question of branding value over the amount of revenue that’s coming in. There is no blanket rule that can be set here. For example, a Nike campaign (even if it’s a free one) will still be executed because the value SSG gets from having Nike on the platform is immense (from a user standpoint). On the other hand, if we already have 5 large electronic brands on the platform and we get a new brand that comes in and promises to distribute 200 products. We might drop a larger free brand and take on a smaller brand that’s ready to provide more value to the platform.
That's all for today! We’d like to appreciate our portfolio founder’s Swarup Bose and Shivjeet Ghatge for taking out time from their extremely busy schedules to add valuable insights to our subscribers.Â
That's all for today! This space is for founders in the sectors and solutions we are bullish about, therefore, a call out if you are a founder building in the Ecommerce enablers space, you can reach us at connect@huddle.work and we look forward to brainstorming with you. If you are an enabler and investor and would like a further look into our ecosystem, then we are happy to dive deep into these sectors alongside you.
These are popular questions that have been asked by our subscribers and have emerged across each of the themes covered. (Keep your questions coming our way and we’ll continue our best to decode for you!)