COURSE:

ENTREPRENEURSHIP DEVELOPMENT
INSTRUCTOR: MR. ARJUN PANCHAL
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"Being an automobile engineer,
I was always fascinated by
cars and bikes. And my family
trade into detergent raw
materials. So I just connected
both the things and ventured
into car washing shampoo. So
that I can apply my
engineering knowledge"

MANUFACTURECA
R
WASHING SHA
MPOO
 EMPLOYEES:10-1
5
S T A R T E D : 2 0 1 9 (2 years)

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1. Tell us something about yourself and idea about your start-up?

Hey! I am Akshit. I am an automobile engineer and my family is into the production of

raw materials for detergents and I also had an opportunity to work as automobile
journalist for few publication houses. I connected my passion for automobiles and my
family expertise in the field of cleaning material to my start-up into the field of car
washing. So, I am basically into developing shampoos for car washing.
Akshit also spoke regarding his strong passion to start something of his own. He was
somehow not interested in the routine 9-5 job. He wanted to utilize the expertise of
his family business to start his own venture. He was fully aware of the risk
associated with it. He was also aware of not getting regular income in the form of
salary every month but for him, his passion ultimately prevailed.

2. Who is your target audience and why?

I am right now more focused on B2B segment which is all about good quality product
and correct pricing and also having some contacts in the industry is a big bonus. My
company is likely to venture into B2C segment after conducting thorough analysis
and challenges associated with the segment. Logistics requirements for B2B
segment is relatively lesser than B2C segment. B2C segment requires greater
coordination, right packaging & promotion to reach the desire customer base. All the
sensitiveness related to B2C segment such as packaging, pricing of the segment in
addition to the fund requirement/stroke investment is being deliberated before taking
plunge into B2C segment.

3. Can you name few of your clients in B2B segment?

Yes, sure. We are dealing with Vipul motors and Rohan motors, who are among top
20 dealers in North India. Also, we are serving to various car dealers. We have also
developed different grades of washing shampoo to cater for the requirement of
hospitality industry, various hospital chain in which the base of chemicals remains
the same, only slight alteration in PH level & chemical composition is done to cater
for their requirement.
4. Who are the competitors that worry you the most and why?

(Laughing) I fee, I am myself is the biggest competitor. See there is no idea which has
not been explored in some form or other. However, challenge is to provide quality
product or services at right place and at right price to enhance the buying experience
of the customers. Look even the cow dung cakes are being sold on Amazon and
hence there is no idea which is not being explored. So rather than competing with
others, it is my own struggle to provide better service so as to remain in the industry
and establish my start-up as a brand. Look at Haldiram bhujiya, which can be found in
the households having annual income of Rs. 10000 and it can also be found in the
household having lakhs as annual income. So, look at its wide customer base. Hence
the basic essence is to provide right buying experience without being getting overly
bothered about the competition.

5. That one feature/innovation that differentiates you from your competitors.

See it is the most important requirement to be the differentiator and in my case USP
of my product is the reduction of water consumption by at least 25% for cleaning
which is huge for the vendors who are located specially in metro cities where water is
the major concern. This has given me recognition in the market and also, I am
working to develop water less car washing product.

6. What do you feel are the strength, weakness, threat and opportunities in your
field?

The biggest strength for my firm is the quality of the product, right procurement
strategies and reduction in the water requirement. See the weakness

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7. What would you choose- brand name with fewer profits or less profits with big
brand name?
Nobody makes it a brand in few days. You can’t expect to make a brand just by
starting a company in few days or months. First of all, you need profits and only after
that you start making a brand of yourself with each passing day or quarter. So, you
keep working, start making profits which will help in marketing. Word of mouth
marketing is there for businesses at earlier stage.
After a certain level, when you start earning a sustainable level of earnings, you
need a brand because you cannot just compete on prices. There would be a newer
person who would enter and start serving at a cheaper price because he has lesser
expenditure on marketing. So overall, both are important- brand name and profits.
They go hand in hand.

8. How do you plan to tackle the threats and challenges in changing working

environment?
The only planning we can do is research and development but that’s a very
expensive concept. It’s important to spend on research and development, people are
doing it but it’s expensive. When you’re talking about a car buyer, I range of 5-6
lakhs, he will not be willing to spend 500 bucks for car wash every time. To a certain
extent, it depends on the business situations.

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9. What practices do you adopt to minimize your costs?
To minimize the costs, you need to figure out the various costs involved at
different operation levels. There are fixed costs such a land and machinery
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etc. The only cost you can cut is that you need not spend too much on
marketing in the first place. So you need to establish a certain level where you
start earning and word of mouth marketing comes in. You cannot just exhaust
all you fund on marketing in the first place, later to find yourself that those
funds didn’t fetch you anything and then also profits haven’t yet started to
come in.
Other aspect you can work on for cutting costs is by focusing on variable
costs. For that start investing in automation to cut down the variable costs, but
again don’t go all out on funds for automations. Start investing strategically, as
per your profit margins. Automate your business slowly.
Also, fixed costs can go rampant if your business is more susceptible to
changing dynamics of business. For example, if we take the case of
WeWorks. They leased the building on rent for at least 15 years which is fixed,
but inflow of cash from clients is year on year basis. Now if the demand for
lease starts declining, their inflow declines whereas the fixed cost of lease
agreement is fixed. So for a new business, this thing needs to kept in mind
too. You don’t enter in long term contractual agreements if you don’t have a
huge chunk of capital in the first place.

10. Is your startup in profits from the first day? If not, then how much did it
take to reach break- even point?
From day one hardly any business would be in profits, I believe. But one must
realize one thing that if you’re into a business you already have experience in
or exposure to, then it’s very rare that you make a huge loss. So, I did
something that was an extension to the business we were doing already so
my experience came in handy. But suppose if I ventured into the business of
hospitality and opened a hotel, where I had absolutely no experience,
probability of failure increases. Since, I was into this field from before I started
my own business, it took me around 1 year to reach the break-even point.
11. Do you plan to raise funding in near future? How much?

Right now, there are no such plans because getting into this funding thing so
early. It gives the entire control to investors. Therefore, I don’t want to get into
this so early stage, let us reach a certain level and find a good investor plus a
good value to whatever I have particularly invested.

12. For expansion, would you like to prefer bank loans (debt) or
investments from VC (equity)? Why?
At the initial stage bank loan makes more sense, it is easily understandable.
And write now looking at the banking scenario I don’t think there is any
particular area in the country where at least 10 banks are there in every city
or district. Getting a loan is not that easy but approaching a bank is very easy,
you can understand all the terms and conditions but in other things like
VC you really need to have a particular plan for that, you really need to
approach certain people. If you are well aware of how all these things work
then it's fine but for a layman, a bank is still a better option at least in tier2 and
tier3 cities
.
13. What is the average profit margin in your company/ industry?

If you include every expenditure that is there, then average profit margin
would be 8 to 10 percent.

14. The best day of your entrepreneurial journey.

It can be any day if the person next to you remember you by your brand
name. So, there is a lot of instances when you pass by and people call you by
your brand name. The day people start recognizing you by your work, your

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16. Any advice to future/ upcoming Entrepreneurs.

The advice is to not follow the basic advice that people normally gives you
every single day, it’s not easy to leave your job, it’s not easy to break your
cage and come out of it, it’s very difficult, failure is there sometimes, and
people tend to criticize you especially friends and because you used to earn
a certain salary, maybe your friends will be supportive but society is very
less supportive in that regard. If you really want to pursue something and
you are really confident about yourself that you can do it, at least give it a
shot, be calculative there are lot of people who just get into things without
knowing what they are doing, that is very risky. If you actually research for a
while, for days, months, years whatever it is, at least work on it, if you work
on an idea even if you fail you will still be happy that you did your best but
you failed. Business do not work like that, because there are certain
challenges practically that are there on the ground when you jump into it.

17. Where do you see your firm in the next ten years?

Ten years! That’s a difficult question, I do not know, maybe I will be serving
certain level, serving directly to OEMs, serving the companies directly,
maybe I will be producing the branded material for them, maybe I will be
making the shampoo which Maruti would be supplying to their dealership.
That is something I want to do. Apart from that I also want to start a brand
now in B2C segment, serving people at right price and also at reduce scale
of water consumption, waterless washing is the future.

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 Lessons Learnt

1. Importance of Idea. It is very important to develop an idea for the start-up and even
more important to execute the idea in correct time-frame.

2. Use of Knowledge: Akshit aptly utilized the family knowledge in developing the new
product. Hence, always try to exploit the existing knowledge to discover its full
potential.
3. Interpersonal relationship. It is very important to nurture the relationship as they
play big role in your success story. Hence always give due importance to the
relationship.
4. Your hobby as your profession: It is very important to indulge in the profession
where you have natural inclination. This takes away undue stress & pressure from
the individual.
5. Start small: It is very important to execute the idea at a smaller scale to avoid any
unforeseen circumstances and also to prepare future strategy.
6. Importance of profit: It is very important to generate profit at the earliest as it keeps
the morale of everyone high.
7. Diversification as you get opportunity: Expansion of car cleaning shampoo from
automobile sector to hospitality and hospitals. Opportunities will keep coming your
way, one just need to be patience and keep exploring the field.
8. USP of the product: Quality and innovation is the differentiator.
9. Importance of word-of-mouth publicity: Helps to reduce marketing cost in initial
stage and helps to reach wider customer base.
10. Value can be created: Providing the right product/service at right time and right cost
creates value.

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