Founded in April, 2015 by Yatin Hans and Aman Hans, Delhi-based
Bigsmall.in is an eCommerce startup that curates gifts from around the world and sell them online.
In an interaction with Sujata Sangwan of BWDisrupt, Yatin Hans, Co-founder, Bigsmall.in, shares his entrepreneurial journey, present status and the company’s future plans etc.
Idea generationMy mother had a habit of sleeping over her hand and used to wrap a cloth to make her own hand pillow. That sight made me cringe and I used to think there must be an alternative. I started searching for hand pillows and there we found one, which we call now the ‘Power Nap Pillow” (a cushion that attaches to your hand like a glove). We felt ecstatic gifting it to her and she felt elated! It was a perfect gift for her and for many others. This is where the thought behind starting BigSmall.in triggered. We listed many such problems and started searching for products to solve these problems. This led to idea of bigsmall.in, a gifting platform where every gift personifies an individual.
Special key features 1) Everyone wants to gift something unique. The issue however lies in accessibility. What is one supposed to gift? Where is one supposed to look? Questions like these are what Bigsmall answers. We believe our product curation is very well done. People love the products and are easily able to select gifts for the person they have in mind.
2) Secondly, we make sure to call each and every customer who places an order on our website. We have special team for that. Both Aman and I also make these calls. We start the conversation as a confirmation call but are welcomed with questions relating to the products or enquiries for upcoming new products. The thought behind these calls is to show the human side of our business. We believe even though we are doing online business, there is always a need for a human touch. The conversation in these calls are friendly and kept short and easy with the customers.
3) We give special attention to our packaging. We have received tremendous feedback on the packaging and want to keep on improving that. Idea is to capture a smile at the stage when a customer receives the package.
Funding StatusWe are a bootstrapped company and doing really well with our growth. As a company we are growing strongly from within and have got some funds from family. We plan to raise funds next year wherein, we plan to take our operations global.
MonetizationWe are an e-commerce portal. Currently 80 % of our revenue is through our website and 5% from marketplaces. 15 % of revenue is through corporate gifting and offline events which goes higher during festivals.
Challenges FacedWe feel challenges are a part of establishing any business. Major challenges or the biggest challenge I would say was managing logistics which still exists. Setting up our website was another challenge but with the help of eCommerce platforms our life was made easy to some limit. But logistics & effectively managing the inventory continued to remain the roadblocks. We were able to find an easy solution to it but are still exploring a definite method.
Market Size and OpportunityTotal size of Indian corporate & personal gifting market is about 250,000 crore today. Of this, corporate gifting market in India is estimated to be 12,000 crore and is growing at over 200% per annum.
Gifting is an integral part of many of our festivals and with new celebrations adding each year the market size for personal gifting is growing at a tremendous rate. Currently India has 300 million Internet users, a database every e-commerce player is trying to dive into.
With increasing disposable income and people are spending it more online. Capturing the mindset of ‘kuch alag dekhao’, we have been able to strengthen our database and grow on it daily.
Traction DetailsIn last 6 months we have done close 5000 online orders just on our website. We have seen a growth of 400% in our quarterly sales. Our Facebook pages boosts close 15000 active followers. Our team size has grown from 3 to 11 people. Presently, we are focussing on building our team and hiring the right people. Future plans will be to have a platform which has a global reach and develop an app thereafter.
