"You want to be greedy when others are fearful..” recalled the two co-founders of Positron Internet when they started their journey of reshaping offline marketing while innovation has been largely focused in online space in recent years.
“Indian businesses are adopting the online way of doing things and rightly so, but in a country like ours one cannot really discard the offline ways so early. They still hold the key to success given we leverage the power of technology and big data analytics to make them smarter”, says Neeraj- Co-founder and CSO at the venture.
Neeraj Sharda is a management graduate from IIM Calcutta and an Electrical Engineering graduate from IIT Bombay. He has been a star in academics since his early school years, achieving state ranks in Class 10th and 12th and securing place on Institute’s Honor Roll of IIM Calcutta. Neeraj has worked as strategy consultant with Bain & Co. and Tata Strategy Management Group.
“There are two ways to launch a successful venture: delivering MVP with focus on quick initial traction or work out the product in detail before looking to grow. We chose the second path as we see hundreds of startups everyday making debut with a weak offering and fading away in a short span of time. We believe that more than the early mover’s advantage, it is about delivering a masterpiece which users fall in love with”, Sudhanshu, Co-founder and CEO at the venture elaborates.
Sudhanshu Goyal has already served as CEO of a prominent manufacturing firm in steel industry. He joined his family business struggling against Global Recession of 2008, after dropping out from a premier Institute to help his father and led its turnaround at an early age of 18. “The contrasting backgrounds of me and Neeraj led to long and aggressive debates nights after nights during product conceptualization but now we realize that it has helped create a sophisticated offering as both of us approach things from two different angles and then converge to an understanding with the virtues of both”, says Sudhanshu.
The duo has launched a unique solution called
Chikoop which is an audio mobile marketing solution for all phones. It leverages patented technology to provide users with quality of telecom calls without internet and without any top-ups. Also they can get information about relevant products and deals & avail them through the platform. The platform offers lot of engaging features like social media and offline chat messenger making it a complete experience for users. As an innovative marketing solution, Chikoop enables brands to market to their target audience by placing ads during free calls. Since the solution works on all phones with or without internet, it gives brands access to 90% of the people in India- higher than TV, Radio, Print and Online put together. Also unlike offline marketing, brands can track leads, re-target interested audience and measure real-time analytics on clicks. Chikoop has received over-whelming response from brands including ventures of IIM and IIT alumni from sectors including e-commerce, food-tech and deals aggregation.
Indian media house The Times Group has shown confidence in the venture from its early days and their VC arm Brand Capital is supporting the initiatives. “Chikoop is a disruptive idea catering to a felt need in the industry. Neeraj and Sudhanshu are a great team in the process of creating a useful platform for advertisers”, says Chinmoy Mallick- Deal Executive, Private Equity at Brand Capittal, Also IIM Calcutta Innovation Park as well as the institute faculty has helped them to a great extent by mentoring and supporting them in materializing their dreams.
The venture has many awards and recognitions in its name including Hot Pitch Kolkata award from the prestigious startup network TiECON, among top 40 globally in Rice University b-plan competition, among top teams in Tata Social Enterprise Challenge and multiple international competitions conducted by IIM Calcutta.
“We raised an angel fund previously for product development and building initial traction and our team has strived hard for last 15 months to deliver a perfect product for our customers. Now that we have achieved this first milestone, we are in discussion to raise a seed fund from able investor(s) to take this to the next level,” says Neeraj who handles investor relations,” Pre-seed and seed stage investment ecosystem in India is still not mature and being a venture which is betting against the popular trend, you will surely face difficulty but your conviction about the idea and external validation from initial customers is enough to drive you to succeed.”
