“Initially, I worked with them through the ad agency but soon realised that their needs are different from the traditional clients I work with,” Desai told. This led to the genesis of Brand Launch Centre, a launch program specifically for consumer facing startups.
Desai clarified that this is a fee-based model and not a social enterprise. “We are working with companies that are functionally or operationally ready to launch in the market. We put them in touch with external experts as well as the in-house ad agency to help with launching their product or service,” he said. In the last three years, the company has worked with close to 30 companies, and recently announced that it would be spearheading the Pune chapter of the Mumbai Angel Network.
Increasingly this is a trend that is starting to be seen across various service industries. The spike in people starting their own ventures has resulted in service providers, whether branding or marketing, legal or insurance, setting up a dedicated vertical to handle these transactions.
Take for instance BMC Consultancy Services that started out providing legal services online in 2009. Seeing the high demand coming in from startups across the country, CEO Bala Nadar decided to launch Startupwala, a dedicated online legal services platform earlier this year.
“In the last eight months, 17,900 companies have used our services, with sales already crossing Rs 6.5 crore. Since the launch of Startupwala at the end of March 2016, our quarter on quarter growth is 300%. We’ve worked with startups from all over the country, including J&K,” said Nadar.
The app based service covers 27 interaction points with customers and offers the required contracts for all of these, along with other legal documents need to set up and shut down an enterprise. For a lot of service providers, this is a new stream of business that can often be sustained with a small dedicated team that works in collaboration with the main entity.
Source: Economic Times