Helpmebuild Will Help You Build Yours

Mr. Prasoon Shrivastava, CEO and founder, Helpmebuild explains more about the architecture and design execution startup.

Why did you decide to start Helpmebuild?

Upon my return to India, having spent quite a few years overseas, I found that inefficiencies within project design and execution in India were reaching an all-time high.

Also over the years, after working on projects of various scale both residential and commercial, my personal experience was that architecture and interior design project execution industry needs a new perspective on design, execution, and innovation through technology which would aid in advancements within this field.

This gave way to HelpMeBuild, a one-stop-solution for conceptualizing of a construction project to its streamlined execution. We officially kicked off in February, 2015, but Helpmebuild has since evolved, and continues to do so as per the needs of the market.

Share with us what’s special about this venture and how it’s different from its competitors?

Currently, no online social ecosystem exists within the interior and architecture space, which provides solution ranging from ideas to products to full stack design build services. Helpmebuild aims to provide its users with the right set of tools through their unique content, commerce, community and integrated project solutions to enable them to be informed and actively participate in the process of decision making when designing and building their spaces.

Our venture is different from our competitors, as we have implemented artificial intelligence and deep learning techniques with the solution to their problems on the Helpmebuild website to cater to our user base as precisely as possible.

Another major differentiating factor in the home decor space is the integration of the Facebook chatbot on Helpmebuild’s Facebook page where users can interact with the bot about queries like décor ideas and products to decorate or remodel their homes with.

How did you manage to fund this idea?

Helpmebuild is self-funded. It is a bootstrapped startup. We have created value through their user database; vast selection of content; thousands of furniture, home décor products and integrated project solutions business.

What are/what will be your monetization paths?

Through a multi-vendor marketplace and turnkey design build solutions, we have managed to set up quite a robust revenue model.

Tell us how the business has grown so far

We are currently 10,000 user - strong and growing.

In addition, we now showcase over 100,000 furniture and home décor products for our users to buy online at Helpmebuild.

Profit percentage varies from 15% to 45% depending upon the categories for online multi-vendor marketplace. For turnkey design build projects, we have done more than 10 residential and commercial projects with profit percentage ranging from 5-15% depending upon the project.

What marketing strategies and plans are in place to grow the business?

We are aiming to acquire one million users pan India online who are looking out for even minor renovation/ redecoration ideas for their homes through social media and online promotions.

Also, we plan to expand into overseas markets. We believe in customer satisfaction whether it is online buying or offline turnkey projects, which will help us in lead generation through online as well as offline activities.

What is the market size and opportunity?

It’s a big market. Architecture and construction market is estimated at 79 billion dollars and home décor is 20 billion dollar market and combined is a more than a 100 billion dollar market and growing 5-10% annually. This includes both online and offline opportunities.

Online market share for home décor constitutes to 4-5% of total market size and we believe that there are many opportunities, which are still untapped through online and offline activities in architecture and interior design space.

Apart from this, knowledge sharing and building a social ecosystem where design enthusiasts can share their views to get the right thing done will be of utmost value going forward.

Any challenges faced setting up? Anything unique to your situation?

It was a learning curve over a period in place of challenges. Since the problem we are solving is big and concerns multiple stakeholders like homeowners and design enthusiasts, it will be crucial to solve problems arising from inefficiencies within design and execution in India.

Share with us some best and worst memories while running the business.

Best memory is when we got our very first turnkey project worth one crore within 6 months of operations.

Worst memory was the time taken to figure out the scalable technology that would enable us to integrate as much functionality to serve our user base both domestic as well as abroad to provide them with the expected results, which will help us in expansion.