Rocking Deals, founded by Yuvraj Aman Singh in 2005, is India's leading online store for unboxed, refurbished, and pre-owned products. It is the safest and most trusted place to buy secondary products with a comprehensive quality-check process, expert product knowledge, and unparalleled customer focus.
The brand sells phones which doesn’t come seal packed or those which are not brand new. Such product maybe excess inventory, carton damage, refurbished or customer returns. Which the brand calls up to 24 hours used stock as per the 30 days return policy by the eCommerce portals. Yuvraj has now started investing in clothes, appliances, accessories, fashion and IT products too.
In a conversation with BWdisupt, he talked in depth about his entrepreneurial journey.OriginComing from a service class background I always wanted to be independent push myself to an extreme and stand on my feet. The 3 generations of my family were into government service but I wanted to do something of my own. Since I was 14-15 years old, I always wished to have my own business ad I also had the hunger to make it big.
HurdlesInitially when we started the biggest challenge was to explain the customers the meaning of refurbished and unboxed. They thought all the products were faulty repaired with duplicate spares etc. We made sure we stood by each commitment and made sure that the customer got what we promised. It was rigorous after sales service specially in retail when the customer in his head thinks that there is a problem with the phone that’s why we are selling it at a cheaper price but actually our fault ratio is below brand new products.
OppositionThere are many coming up now as our competitors. But, the first starters in any business are the ones who would do better. The new players remind us how hard we have worked. There are companies which are doing billions of dollars of turnovers and have been doing the business we are into since 60-70 years I would call them by competition. GENCO, SIMS and PCS wireless etc.
Point of DifferenceOur model is very different as we prefer buying out the whole lot which means one brand all models exclusively with us also we maintain a very good relationship with the brand and the selling partner. We bridge them both and invest in partnership not short term money gains. Exclusivity is the Key. Like in case of Xiaomi we must have sold more than 75000 phones to the end customers and not wholesalers. It took time but then the brand image goes at stake when the products go in the wholesale market.
It took us time to sell but it all got sold- if there was any of our competitors they would have waited for 10 days and sold it all in wholesale this is what they do even now.
Clients and ExpansionAny person who is looking for a good deal while buying a smart phone in which he can buy a quality product at a lower price is our client. We are doing the major business through eCommerce portals. We have agreements with majorly all the portals and we are planning many more in coming few years. We believe that the higher the sales go, the more products would come to us. This way we can expand our business in a best possible way. Franchise stores is also an area we are working on very soon you will start looking at Rocking Deals expanding in the retail space.
TractionThe key point is quality and price- supported by the brand image and goodwill. We sell close to 1500-2000 units a day to the end customer not wholesale hence we QC more than 2500-3000 units a day.
Funding Status and Revenue GenerationIt’s not like the box moving business of brand new phones. You buy you test, clean and then put it on the shelves, list it and ship it the payment comes to us in 7-15 days hence it take close to 30-45 days to get the funds for the sales done. Holding stock for that many days need a lot of investments hence if you are doing sales of a crore a day then you would require 45 crores in hand to do this business.
Each second and minute is important as the mobile phone business is like melting ice Business. Newer phones with better specs are launched daily. We cannot hold the stock for long of its value would depreciate.
We are looking to partner with like-minded companies in the same business that have been doing this for decades.
The best and worst memories We first bought a lot of Sonyericsson phones, at that time we were a Tata Tele services Franchise and running their shop in New Friends Colony hence all we sold before was CDMA phones boring and low-end. We put the Sony phones at the counter we did not sell a single unit for a coupe of days. I thought of an idea and put a table outside on the pathway where those monosellers are sitting- within 2 hours we had to take the product back in as there were more than 200 people jumping on us to buy the phones.
First time I realized what a Rocking Deal means. Indians have a lot of money and if they see a deal they want to buy it for everyone in their family. I remember selling phones to 20 people in a family. All word of mouth no branding.
Marketing Tactics Online marketing & social media is what helps us build maximum awareness & traction. We believe that word of mouth is the best marketing tool for us. Big e-commerce players like amazon, eBay, and Snapdeal market for us and they have spent lakhs of rupees in marketing of unboxed phones.
Market Size and OpportunityThe market size and market opportunity is great as the industry is evolving. It is 10000 crores a year. Each used phone is an asset that can be sold and bought and then can be sold again.One can imagine the market size by this.
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This is Meghna Shukla. She lives in Delhi. She is an engineering graduate and currently pursuing MBA from Jaypee Business School. She has a work experience of 2 years in content development. She loves to read and write.
