“Necessity is the mother of Startups”.It has been proven time and time again that startups provide exemplary solutions to the difficult problems that consumers face and a fare share of the founders of these startups will accept that solution came when they themselves faced a similar problem.
Voko - in this case is not an exception.
The founders of Voko, Harsh Vardhan Singh(23) and Bhuvnesh Sharma(25), while working with OYO had to relocate themselves to a new city every 2-3 months and every time they shifted, they had to buy new furniture for their apartment and had to sell it back again while shifting to a new city. This process was frustrating and took a lot of time. As an experiment, they rented furniture one time and realized that even though shifting was much easier this time, finding vendors, predicting quality of furniture and negotiating price was stiff very difficult. This was the time when the idea of starting a rental platform sprouted. Both of them left their job at OYO and co-founded Voko.
Zero to OneIn a matter of few weeks, they realized that unlike Mumbai, Pune and Bangalore, Gurgaon and Delhi were far behind and lacked infrastructure and supply for rented furniture and appliances. Considering a lot of options, the duo chose to take the road not taken, went bootstrapped and started building their supply from scratch in Gurgaon and Delhi.
For the next few months, their core focus was to build a strong supply stream. In order to achieve the target, they onboarded about 20 furniture vendors and because they were using a asset light model, they were able to strike down the prices of the product to the lowest the space was offering. E.g a king sized bed is generally available at a price of 899/- per months. The team brought down the price to 499.- per month. This price point attracted a lot of customers.
A Little Something Different Once the foundation was ready, the orders kept steadily growing because of the referrals given by their happy customers. With a better understanding of the business and trying out their competitors services, they realized that customers faced some other issues i.e the had to pay a pre-booking amount, and their extension policies were very rigid. Hence, to deeply solve consumer problems and to stand out in the market, the team came up with smooth policies and cash on delivery options, which worked out really well for the company leading a surge in the sales leading to 800 happy customers in matter of few months only.
Meanwhile, the team carved out a solid marketing strategy, a sharp B2B sales and a smooth onboarding and a standardization procedure for the products. They also came up with smart ways to connect to their customers by assigning a dedicated relationship manager to them. Each team member doubled as the relationship manager and thus it helped them getting to know their customers in a better way.
The way aheadThe team is now tweaking up their website for its launch in a couple of weeks, which will be coming out with features like Social media plugin, payment gateway, pre-booking etc. They are also working towards the launch of new categories i.e Cameras, adventure gear and fitness equipments to serve their customers in a better way.
Voko - translation roughly to assistance has a strong supply chain model and their core focus lying on unit economics and profitability. The aim of this cockroach startup is to create connected neighbourhoods where people will be able to share things that they want to use instead of buying them. With a great team and a unique business model, this team is poised to create a dent in the business ecosystem.
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