hobhit Arora had a normal ‘day’ job until a year ago. After graduating from IIT-BHU in 1998, he joined ‘Escorts’ (an engineering company that deals with heavy machinery) as an Assistant Manager, Sales. After a year, he went to Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai, where he majored in Marketing and International Business.
After stints at Asian Paints, Standard Chartered Bank and GE, and having always had an interest in art, he decided to take the entrepreneurial plunge in August 2014 with World Art Community, an online marketplace for artists and deals with paintings, photography, sculpture, pottery, apparel, accessories and home décor.
“Being a peer-to-peer platform, we connect buyers and sellers. After years of holding senior positions in corporate life, it was not easy, but I had to start doing cold calls to get the initial set of sellers on board. Pratap SJB Rana, an artist whom I connected with on LinkedIn was one of the first few to work with us. We used dummy images to explain how the site would look eventually, as it was still under construction. He is now a good friend and advisor for the company,” recalls Arora, about their early days.
He adds, “Getting our first buyer was an absolute joy. When Google analytics flashed the checkout page, our small team jumped with joy. I sent across handwritten letters to each of our initial customers, thanking them for their cooperation.”
Artists and designers can sign up as sellers on the platform, free of cost. The dashboard allows them to set up online stores, upload products and manage pricing. Sellers can even link their social media accounts with the online stores, and can run campaigns seamlessly. They are charged 10 per cent commission on every successful transaction through the platform.
In a short span of seven months since its launch, www.worldartcommunity.com has 400 plus artists and designers selling over 25,000 items online.
The buyers are primarily women seeking exclusive lifestyle enhancing creations. An angel investment of $200,000 within four months of their launch has given the team immense confidence for the future, and they hope to cross monthly sales of over ` 1crore in the next few months.
Born and raised in Jaipur, Arora had complete independence to make his own decisions, which helped him develop faith in his abilities and value systems. By the end of his Mechanical Engineering course, he was clear about working for two years and then going to a business school abroad. Within a few months of his campus job, he realised the futility of not having a business degree and enrolled at NMIMS the next year itself.
At Varanasi, he managed the local chapter of the Society for the Promotion of Indian Classical Music And Culture Among Youth (SPIC MACAY) in his final year, which exposed him to the rich cultural heritage of India.
— rohit@learnbizsimulations.com