KOCHI: Firstly, wish you all a very Happy Independence Day! Keeping in line with the theme of celebrating the spirit of India, let’s discuss today about a startup that has trailblazed on the backbone of Make in India movement. We shall talk today about ‘Lifelong’, a startup which is redefining consumer durables category and let’s see what lessons we can learn from its case study.
But before we dig deeper, here is a brief intro of the startup. Lifelong Online was launched in November 2015 by Atul Raheja, Bharat Kalia, and Varun Grover. The brand sells home and kitchen products along with personal care appliances and healthcare devices through e-commerce marketplaces like Amazon, Flipkart, and Udaan. The startup has a portfolio of 40+ products and has just raised `40 crores in Series A funding led by Tanglin Venture Partners.
So now coming back to how the startup has advanced and how you can too! Well, a lot of industries in India are still running traditionally. And so the good news is that most industries are still awaiting you to innovate and shake the landscape. Here is a small case study of gas stoves category on e-commerce that can help you get the perspective.
The traditional industry of gas stoves for instance had three major problems. Firstly, since the product was built for traditional offline market, the packaging was not optimized to sustain e-commerce logistics, which resulted in lot of damaged products on delivery. Another complication was that the product would have a lot of complaints about gas leakage.
The third problem was the price was quite high. Lifelong innovated on all three fronts. Firstly, the brand reengineered the product’s piping system to ensure gas leakage was prevented. Secondly, the packaging was redeveloped so as to sustain e-commerce logistics. And lastly, the stainless steel frame of the stove was unnecessarily making the product expensive. Replacing that with powdered mild steel ensured that corrosion-free gas stove could be made available to Indian consumers. And all this innovation was possible only because the product was being manufactured in India and therefore was in controlled environment.
With controlled manufacturing, Lifelong could improve design and product readily. Product development iteration worked much better because of the close proximity to the factory. Capital cycle, inventory holding and speed to market–all was solved by emphasis on ‘Making in India’.
In fact, Lifelong is now in the process of building an innovation network with different universities that can help promote student entrepreneurs who are building disruptive technological products. So if you are a student entrepreneur building a futuristic product solving modern day challenges, perhaps your first fund can be from Lifelong. For getting funded, you can write to ankitabhatia@lifelongindia.com. Here’s hoping to see more entrepreneurs building on ‘Make in India’.For any queries, write to tamhankarrajeev@gmail.com.