When you start a business or a brand, generally you will need registration and technological support in digital marketing and online advertising. Many go through a lot of hurdles, and many lose a lot of cash in the process. Most of the time, that lost investment could be a crucial chunk of your investment limits. And unguided, instead of getting any return on your investment, you end up losing it, and what is more, you have to write it off as a bad asset.
Moreover, in the cutthroat competition, and unkind market, you keep finding your new startup struggling in terms of recognition, reach and presence. In today’s world of digitalization, everyone finds it difficult in showcasing their product/services on a local and a global platform to the targeted audience.
It happens because as an entrepreneur you might be having the greatest of ideas, products, solutions, or services under your belt to offer, however, you lack in the most crucial aspect of running a startup successfully and growing it into nationally and internationally recognized brand.
What you and the millions like you need is a global digital platform which could solve all your problems. Again, in the crowd of many such costly digital portals shouting at the top of their lungs to confuse you and trick you into opting for them, you find it almost impossible to find out the best suitable one for you. One which will minimize the cost by bringing you affordable prices, so you relax while it brings in the utmost cost-effective solutions to your table while putting your brand on a global-based platform where you can get that exposure.
Keeping all these factors in her problem-solving mind, modern digital entrepreneur Nikita Sundaram launched Startofactory, a platform to make it easier for you to run your brand or business efficiently digitally. As the name suggests, Startofactory means to start a business, brand or manufacturer. It is thriving itself in giving the utmost services and resources to upcoming or established brands, start-ups or manufacturers.
Nikita shares, “Our vision is to be the leading platform worldwide and to be the best platform for services and resources. We are reinventing the way you network.”
Nikita spoke in an exclusive interview with Insights Success for its edition of ‘India’s 40 under 40 Brightest Business Leaders,’ where she talked about this revolutionary idea and her journey and plans to enhance Startofactory’s reach and scope further.
Please tell us about the saga of Startofactory since its inception.
The venture was started on April 1st, 2022. Startofactory was built with a vision to be an end to end services-based platform. We have collaborated with around 20+ brands such as Aasaan, Urordr, Namaste, Vyapar, etc. In just two months, we have helped 427 start-ups and businesses. We hope to help more as we progress.
What was your inspiration behind venturing into the business arena?
We were a hyperlocal based service before when we found out that every business had problems in either company registration, technology or marketing/advertising. So, building an eCommerce platform wasn’t a solution to the problem. We reengineered our model again and created Startofactory. Where we could help all the businesses at least to our utmost with our services.
What were the initial challenges that you had to surmount to enjoy your business success rate to reach greater heights?
Sales leads were a problem initially. People didn’t know our services when we commenced. We were bootstrapped by friends and family members. So, we weren’t able to spend on our marketing which was a downfall initially.
What professional values in qualities do you think your clients’ value in you and Startofactory the most?
We respect our clients; they are generally start-ups. Start-ups struggle a lot while starting their projects. We reduced our costs to help them. In our price factor, we were affordable and we had all services on one platform. That was a major advantage. Start-ups would approach us for registration and they would ask us to help with content marketing and we would help them.
What USPs highlight Startofactory’s uniqueness in the industry you are catering to?
Our slogan is ‘We have a “strategic” plan, it is doing things. We kept this slogan in order for start-ups or businesses to do things strategically. There are many free resources and affordable resources in the market. But people are really not aware of it. That is when we come in between to make the products affordable.
We do have free resources as well and we do have free webinars. We are currently collaborating with Tamizh Techie. A tech platform specializing in the Tamil based market. We hope to bring more language platforms for people to understand and it’s easier for them to converse and learn.
As an experienced professional what would you like to advise the budding aspirants willing to enter the business world?
Every day is a learning process. There are many resources available. Many are actually learning through YouTube as well. We had a webinar for game design by Mr PK who taught creating realistic planets using Unreal Engine-5. He is an aspiring YouTuber who self-taught himself and is helping encourage more game designers as well. Do not worry if you make mistakes, keep learning and trying you will get there for sure.
How do you envision Startofactory’s operation with emerging technology and automated tools that are revolutionizing the business world by enabling innovations?
We are personally working on global markets learning the flaws and drawbacks. We will be expanding into Singapore and Dubai by year-end most probably. We have started a student ambassador program as well to encourage aspiring entrepreneurs. We have partnered with 17+ schools and colleges and we will soon be developing those resources as well.
