Archive for March, 2009
Inkfruit.com: Socializing the T-Shirt
Buying a tee shirt involves going up to the shop and picking the one which has your favorite colour and design. Probability of being unlucky, your choice of design and colour gets overruled with the availability at the shop. But, how about getting your own customized tee shirt. Inkfruit.com, a Mumbai based startup by two IIT passed outs, spices up to quench the need for awesome T-Shirts by utilizing the power of Web 2.0 and the artistic strength of the designer community.
At Inkfruit, a designer submits his design for free; a 10,000 strong online community gives their votes and feedback; the winning design gets to do its cat walk to the printing lab; the designer gets paid for his work; his name gets etched in each and every tee that comes out into the market.
28 year old Kashyap Dalal, a 2002 IIT-Mumbai passed out of Civil Engg. stream has an MBA from IIM Lucknow with a couple of years experience as Sales & Marketing Executive with HLL in Chennai.
29 year old Navneet Rai, a 2002 IIT-Mumbai passed out of Civil Engg stream had a stint for 2 years as Product Manager at “Tex Indus”, a textile production house in Gurgaon
Good designs gets churned out from top Indian design institutes, but many of these get shelved to the bin due to the absence of a platform for such designers. The vision in Rai & Dalal to bridge this gap by providing a Web 2.0 platform saw the birth of Inkfruit.com, during mid 2007. The jump off the cliff into a new kinda business was not an easy ride for them. Having shelled out their own savings of Rs.4 Lakhs, initial days were like sailing in a rough sea. From running errands of a delivery boy to that of being execution manager and taking care of customer servicing of their own company,, their financial constraints often decided for them, rather than their business logic.
With commitment levels being given a litmus test, all the hulla bulla got to settle down a bit with seed capital coming in from two of their seniors at IIT during 2007, thereafter receiving angel funding in the year 2008. This financial support allowed Inkfruit
Daylight movie to pursue a more aggressive business plan which paid off Rs.2 Crores as turnover in just one year of its inception. Inkfruit.com is now setting its strings to attract design talent from across the world to create awesome merchandise, which they say is still not so far available from leading brands even though they are equipped with professional design teams. Is that the power of Web 2.0 ??
Selling out about 6,000 tee shirts a month and their website clocking 5 Lakh plus web views a month, inkfruit.com now has a team of 15 people to take care of activities like web designing, managing the social media, graphics designing, buzzing with retail outlets, serving the customer, supplying t-shirts, etc.,,
Marketing is done more through online with presence on Orkut, Facebook Paycheck dvdrip and Twitter; added up with reviews by bloggers and through mobile Ad campaigns. Offline promotions take place by sponsoring of events at colleges and campaigns in design schools and monthly contests offering upto Rs.10,000 for the winning designs. Of course online marketing is getting its veto due to its reach and cost effective factors.
On entrepreneurship the quip from them is “Your passionate customers are extensions of your company and they are your valuable assets”
Address: Inkfruit.com., Tenement No.105/846, Ground Floor, Motilal Nagar, Road No. 1, Goregaon (W.) Mumbai - 400104 Contact: priyanka@inkfruit.com; Tel: +91-22-65292584Blog: www.blog.inkfruit.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/pages/inkfruit-design-your-graphic-t-shirt/21172612060
Twitter: www.twitter.com/inkfruit
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