Partnerships: the New Age Way of Scaling Business

: Have you driven a bicycle or a bike or a car? Sure! But have you manufactured all the parts of the automobile yourself?
Partnerships: the New Age Way of Scaling Business

KOCHI: Have you driven a bicycle or a bike or a car? Sure! But have you manufactured all the parts of the automobile yourself? No! You haven’t. And you don’t need to. Because there are already many companies who do that work much better than you ever will. So why not let them do their job and you do yours. Why not you enjoy the ride while the parts manufacturing, servicing, petrol mining – all of that be left to the companies who do those jobs better! Why not consider them as your partners in this project.  

This understanding is fundamental in today’s new age marketing. The world is moving fast and if you want your startup to catch up with everyone else’s you don’t have time to do everything yourself. You need partners who will do those jobs for you. For eg. When we launched comic books startup, we wanted our books to be sold through bookstores. We didn’t start our own bookstores but partnered with the leading ones that already existed. Similarly when we wanted our books to be hosted at a library, we didn’t start a library, we just gave our books to a library that was serving multiple locations. 

While these examples could sound easy, here are three creative partnerships that you should plan right away. Social Media Partnerships: If you are a startup, you surely have a social media page and definitely want it to get promoted to boost awareness but are afraid if spending money on advertisements will really get you required visibility. No worries. Why not partner with pages which can help you get that visibility and maybe you can offer them something in return like promotion on your page or product etc. 

Distribution Partnerships: Be it an app or a physical product, you need to have partners who distribute it to your target audience. It will take a huge time for you to distribute your own app (or products) on your own. For eg. bookstores or libraries in our case. 

Event Partnerships: When we launched comics, we wanted to be at Comic fan fests to reach comic fans. But we didn’t start our own comic conventions then. We participated in the top ones that are already being hosted. For eg. Comic Con. You can partner with events that are useful for you too. For eg. If your app targets college audience, why not partner with a college fest and do some on ground activity where you can get people download or interact with your app.If you have any queries, write to Rajeev@TBSPlanet.com

Rajeev Tamhankar is IIT-R Alumnus, Entrepreneur of The Year’17 (Print Business) and the Founder of TBS Planet Comics (www.TBSPlanet.com)

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