Your busy and hectic work life doesn’t really spare you enough personal time to get caught up in chores. Often we end up spending our weekend checking the pending to-do-list. To give you the much deserved “time-out”, DoneThing is here to provide busy people resources of an on-demand personal assistant through technology.
“We give our customers a limitless proposition. That makes us a one stop solution for all our customers need. DoneThing utilizes a blend of innovation enabling them to do more in the same amount of time via delegation of daily mundane tasks which could be done by someone else. With DoneThing you can essentially carry out all your to-do-lists without having to intervene”, says Done Thing Co-Founder Sonal Saraogi.
To sum it up, DoneThing is a multi channel everybody’s personal assistant catering to diverse group of consumers. For anyone who is time pressed, it’s a service like no other.
Excerpts from an exclusive interaction with Sonal Saraogi of DoneThing:
Background of Promoters
DoneThing was founded in 2015 by Karan Saharan, Chetan Agarwal, Rohit Pansari and I. We all come from varied backgrounds, where two founders are qualified Chartered Accountants with post qualification experience at EY.
Karan & Rohit have managed the finances, budgeting & marketing leg of the business along with strategizing the way forward for the company. With prior experience in audits & assurance service accounting, their result oriented outlook has built sustainable business model for DoneThing. Chetan is an MBA from MDI, post which he joined a boutique consulting firm Athena Consulting and now manages the product for DoneThing.
I am an MBA from Fore School of Management and have worked for ICICI Wealth, after which I took over the family business. I steered all operations, right from production, to sales and purchasing, managing 150+ blue collared employees. Currently at DoneThing I handle operations and HRM to ensure a delightful customer experience and a strong & happy workforce.
The initial period- the challenges & the ecstasy of quick wins!
The initial period came with challenges full of learning. One of the key challenges we faced was to enter the market with a ‘Market Ready Product’.
We also learned that the brand commitment was a key factor in improving customer experience. It is not important to service with speed, but to deliver as per commitment for a good overall user experience. It was more about delivering delight and training staff was an important part of it. We take immense pride in our sales force spreading smiles across faces of the clients we service.
The journey so far!
From the inception of the company in 2015 to the expansion of operations to entire NCR region, DoneThing has had quite an eventful journey. We raised our first round of funding in March 2016, which was like the first major expression of trust. With that we expanded operations from Gurgaon to the entire Delhi-NCR region, covering requests from every corner of the region. We rebranded from Qlivery to DoneThing in June 2016, after which we had to re-build the trust of the customers & our goodwill.
With the demonetization move, we saw ourselves as one of the few companies to make the transition to cashless India comparatively easy for our customers. Where there were long queues outside banks, we offered to stand in queues for our customers to save productive time & efforts. We also delivered daily needs from local vendors paying in cash, while accepting online payments from customers who could now avoid haggling for cash with local small time vendors.
2016 for us has been a year of transformation, with ample of interesting learnings and new milestones.
As of today, we have an acquired customer base of 50,000, reached a daily 1000 request mark and growing 25% month on month.
Strategic Alliances & Partnerships
With an increasing merchant base of over 5000 local merchants from local vegetable vendors to big grocery stores and service professionals, DoneThing has covered every aspect of the market place. We now have our supply side of on demand drivers, electricians, tutors, yoga instructors, maids and more. With alliances for ‘DTOffices’ DoneThing has partnered with various corporates for admin tie-ups for the company errands as well as cater to the daily needs of the employees.
For upcoming alliances, we are partnering up with hotels under ‘DT Hotels’for the convenience of travellers.
The basic aim of these alliances is to equip the offices, hotels & other establishments with an on-demand concierge solution such that the employees & customers can benefit from it.
The future, as you see, 3 years from now in terms of scope & scale of your business enterprise
In the near future we intend to work more on improving the product focusing on UI/UX and introducing Artificial Intelligence to make the process faster, reduce errors & improve user experience. We have major expansion plans with presence in over 12 cities in the next 3 years starting with Bangalore. We intend to increase our customer base, reach out to larger audience and achieve 500% growth in the coming year. We plan to introduce DT Plus services with premium concierge services, extend our operations to 24×7 and introduce a subscription based model.
Key moments of reckoning in business life
Our journey had many moments that we reckon. During conception of the idea of DoneThing, there was a lot of thought put into understanding – the need for a Personal assistant for a common man who is hard pressed for time. From interviewing people to exploring avenues of an errand running service, we were able to pin-point the need. There is a large number of people who have now become accustomed to paying their bills after the due date. Our endeavour has always been to address that need to complete their to-do lists, save their time & help them multitask.
From the first employee we hired, to building a full-fledged team, the journey has been memorable. Our first investment was one of the most beautiful moments that we have experienced together as a team. We worked hard together towards achieving the milestones & grew together as a team.
The life of a co-founder is both rewarding and stressful at the same time. It is important to constantly update & reinvent yourself to keep up with the industry dynamics. I strongly believe pursuing your passion is equally important to keep yourself highly motivated and rejuvenated. This is where I draw my strength from.
The feelings on getting the first big order / contract for your company
Our first big order was for a Fear Factor Theme Party arrangement which was to be hosted for about 100 guests. The team of DoneThing personal assistants were quite excited to service this request lending a dark, dangerous & grungy look to the setup yet being quirky and fun at the same time. From sourcing of plastic reptiles, decorating with tyres, to dressing up an area with caution tapes, barricades, paint boxes& water tanks, our team was all enthusiastic to ensure the client loved the set-up! The smile on the faces of the customer with their guests was enough to make our day.
Our endeavour has always been to deliver customer delight, so that the users stays around and keeps using our service forever. With requests pouring in from all sides, we actually enjoy servicing the odd requests the most, challenging us to do better from every day to extraordinary.
