Innovative business leaders display excellent strategic vision and have a strong customer focus. They create a climate of reciprocal trust and display fearless loyalty to do what is right for the company and the customer. They never give up at the face of adversity and always come up with innovative solutions.
Two such creative business leaders who a transforming the industry through their dedication are none other than Rishabh Landge and Gayatri Amte, the co-founders of Happy Moments Surprises.
In an interview with Insights Success, Rishabh and Gayatri share about their journey, challenges, strategies, and future plans. Below are the excerpts of the interview:
Please brief our audience about your profession.
The Idea of creating “Happy Moments Surprises” came from the thought of helping people in expressing their love towards their loved ones. We provide Premium Personalized gifting solutions specially curated with client’s need in everyone’s budget. Along with this we also deal in high quality Corporate Gifting solutions for Small, medium and large businesses. So our profession more look like we believe that each product we serve to our customer should make their moments happy. We design our products to specifically links to emotions and feelings of our customers. We sell our products on our online store, and social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook. Our products will soon be available on various ecommerce platforms.
This pandemic is the worst thing happened to us. People have forgot to celebrate as they used to before Pandemic. Circumstances because of pandemic has influenced the minds of people so badly that finding happiness somewhere has become very rare. So taking all these things into consideration and transforming it into positive energy, we are trying to contribute to people’s happiness and celebrations with our products. Our Corporate products aids businesses to grow in their corporate journey, promote their business & helping in employee welfares without harming your financial budgets.
What differentiates you from your competition?
We don’t just sell gifts, we give people their moment to enjoy, a moment to celebrate, a moment to propose, a moment to remember. It was quite a challenging task for us because there were lot of business already dealing in the Industry. We needed to do something extraordinary to stand out from the crowd. Being different is always a hard task but research is the one of the key ingredient of any task. Our appreciable research found one common thing among all the people in industry which is way of their customization. Almost all of the businesses do nearly identical and traditional repetitive customization on nearly same products with highest prices. We had to change this,so we worked specifically on product selection and unique customization to each and every clients and premium packaging for our products in budget prices. Every day is inspiring & new learning for us.
When we talk about the customization of products we ensure that with our client’s need & wants. It’s not just a design on a product, we design their emotions, their moments. We redesign our client’s memories. We take care of their hobbies, passions, goals, achievements, likes, professions while design even a smallest single product. So the range of selected products, the way of customization, budget pricings, a great customer experience and premium gifting packaging all these are factors what differentiate us from the crowd.
Guide us through your personal life. What does it look like?
We (Gayatri and Rishabh), two Passionate Engineers, soon to be MBA graduates following the hobbies and skills and turning it into a business of our dreams. Believe us, seeing people happy, enjoying their moments because of you is one of the best feeling in the world. We hail from Maharashtra, where it is believed that Marathi man or woman cannot run a successful business as they don’t have business minds.
It was really challenging especially when you have a family background where most people come from government field. They believed having a stable job (Private or Govt.) is always best for person being stable and having healthy life.But both of us had totally different mindsets when it comes to stability in life. From our past corporate experiences, we learnt how hectic it is to work for more than 10 hours for somebody else’s growth and not being able to focus on your own growth, passion, dreams.
We believe for being stable, one should work on the things he or she is passionate about, work on everything that will help them to achieve their dreams. So with this thought we started our journey stepping in entrepreneurship. We started our own manufacturing unit from just Rs. 40,000 which was saved from our last jobs.
And never looked back from that very same day. Of course we had obstacles and money issues in between but with each other’s support we are growing every passing day and expanding our business and products ranges because we know we are going to build our empire one day. With the supports from our friends, family (as they saw growth they started supporting little bit) and acquaintance we are approaching towards our dream and we are continuously working towards developing new projects too.
What were the challenges you faced while getting into the profession you provide services in?
Very first challenge we faced was a thought of stepping into something called entrepreneurship. This was going to be a completely new take for us because without any prior experience in family or friends, without any support we had no clue how to move ahead. So collecting guts and agreeing parents to leave our jobs and start a business was the most challenging task for us.
As mentioned earlier, there were lot of competitors and standing out was challenging for us in this industry. Getting known to technologies, the phenomenon behind the concept of personalizing gifts and delivering it to client in our very own way was the challenging factors for us getting into this professions. Obviously getting capital for building a business is hardest task or anybody but somehow we started investing our profits and started growing our facilities.
Gifting has become integral part of people’s life these days, so getting into something like gifting services is dealing with people’s emotion. So it was our first priority and challenge to select the product which will cherish their lives and deliver the products which won’t hurt their emotions but make them remember it for lifetime. At the same time while delivering corporate gifts we had to take care of brand image, Company status and the expected results from the products.
Last but not least, we would like to quote “Entrepreneurship is a lonely chair”. You will meet lots of people who will not try to support you but throw lots of negative energy for your thoughts, will laugh at you, and will demotivate you. We heard so many things like “business me kuchhnahipadahai”, “Gifts ka business badanahibanta” “ye bhi koi idea hai” itnapadhahai job kr le” and so on every day, But you need to inhale all these things and exhales it in your performance and success.
How the adaptation of new technology in your fieldhas helped transforming your workspace and what more could be expected in the future?
Technology has proven to be a boom to all businesses and a humankind if used in positive way. Technology has ease out the lives of people so it does ours too. Technology has invented new ways to develop a gift and personalized it in more modern way. Our work is primarily technology driven as it involves use of software’s for designing and machines and printers to deliver a perfect product to customers. Without technology we are nothing. We are always ready to accept new technologies in our workspace which can ease our works and make us more reliable.
Extensive use of Social media platforms has also helped us a lot. Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp have given us our brand name and we are standing tall because of all these technologies. It has given us many clients along with it a family where we can share our thoughts, success and interact with the client base.
We work totally virtual without any physical shop present currently, what’s better use of technology than this can we explain. Obviously we are looking forward for more advance technologies to adapt in our profession.
How has the ongoing pandemic affected your work life? How are you sustaining in these difficult times, keeping yourself safe at the same time?
We would take this question in a very positive manner, because this pandemic has given us a chance to take our idea out into market and given us a huge growth. In pandemic we helped people in celebrating their occasions and make their occasions a moment to remember. It was very hard for everyone to go out and purchase something. We delivered around 500 well packed and sanitised gifts in lockdown 2020 in Maharashtra and then all over India gradually following all safety measures keeping ours and people’s safety in mind. We even launched our very unique “Digital Gifts” when pandemic burst out and all the safety measure and strict lockdown were followed.
So overall pandemic has been opportunistic for us and yes, we are sustaining with growth.
What would be your strategic approach to scale your profession or yourself in 2021 and beyond?
We believe in continuous progress and improvements. We have been delivering beautifully curated gifts since more than a year now and in this journey we have met lots of people with variety of mind sets and different and very unique thoughts and ideas, which has made us innovative day by day. Whenever we delivered products, we make sure to take feedback from customers which helps us to grow and even make improvements in us, overcome our flaws.
In 2021 and beyond we are looking forward to building a strong relationship with our clients as customer satisfaction will be our main focus. We would also like to expand our network widely and deliver not only to individuals but also add corporates to our family. We are aiming towards being a corporate partner of 50 large & small businesses and help them grow. We welcome all our readers to join with us, we promise to deliver you your Happy Moment every time.
What would be your advice to budding professionals who aspire to venture your field of work?
To budding professionals, we would like to tell one important message that there will be competition always in our field or any else. Lots of people are already struggling in the market and growing too, there will be many people to pull you down too. Do not let anybody spoil your dream, just design the path by yourself and follow your passion keeping everything behind. Just don’t forget you owe something to this mankind and do great works which will be followed by many others.
Specifically In our field, if you have vision to build something, if creativity runs through your blood, nobody can stop you from being big. Creativity is the heart of this business. You have to be creative and focused on new innovative ways all day all long. We will be always there to help if somebody wants to succeed in this field of work.
It will take time, but you will make it for sure!
Where do you envision yourself to be in the long run and what are your future goals?
In the long run, we are looking forward to expanding the fleet of services we are providing. We are looking at “Happy Moments Surprises” as brand which provide customization on each and every product possible and exists. We would love to provide services overseas too. Along with it we want Happy Moments to give people an experience of a lifetime in terms of celebrations. We are looking forward to launch an event management services which provide people services to cherish their each and every moment, right from the candle light dinner at your home to a helicopter ride with your partner or parents. We want to grow a socially responsible company which will spread happiness in people’s life and will work towards environment as well. Our ultimate aim is to be the one of the recognized brand in our field in India and overseas.
What is the current scenario of the industry that you cater to?
As mentioned above so many people are trying to establish their business in this field. Gifting field is on the boom these days as people are more interested in personalized gifts rather than gifting just anything. Keeping pandemic situation in mind, people prefer to shop from their home comfort without any efforts and this situation is so nurturing to the gifting industries. The innovative products is evolving this industry into a biggest factor of the market.
