Today’s roundtable had several entrepreneurs with promising businesses, including some already in revenue.
Localvore
First, Cameron Kramlich from San Francisco, California, pitched Localvore, a concept for local artisans to be able to sell their merchandise to consumers who want to shop local. We discussed models for inventory (buying versus consignment), target segments (local versus tourists; the latter, in my opinion is unnecessary), logistics, etc.
socioMD
Next, Rahul Sarasani from Hyderabad, India, pitched socioMD, a professional network for doctors to share information, discuss cases, etc. It is not clear to me whether doctors would, indeed, participate in such a network in India. For one thing, they are not the most tech savvy bunch, and definitely not early adopters of technology. This raises the question, how large is this opportunity?
LadyBlush
Rahul Sethi from Delhi, India, pitched LadyBlush, a marketplace for merchants selling women’s apparel and accessories to sell their products to consumers. The platform has one key twist: they can handle cash-on-delivery, something that Indian consumers demand. Rahul is already making $20k a month in revenue, and has managed to validate the concept to some extent. Fund raising will require establishing that the business is sufficiently profitable, taking into account customer acquisition costs, delivery charges, etc.
Uforic Technologies
Then, Hitesh Ashar from Hyderabad, India, pitched Uforic Technologies, a collection of derivative products that he wants to sell to stock brokers and active traders in India at a subscription charge of $100 a month. I asked Hitesh how many active traders are there, to which he responded 10k-100k. My assessment is closer to 10k, than 100k. So the market size for the offering is $10M-$25M. This is not the kind of TAM level at which institutional investors play. Hitesh’s funding plans need to be revisited. He cannot raise $2M to build a $2M business. He needs to cut the funding cloth to fit the size of the opportunity.
Gradient Training
Last up, Amit Singh from Bhubaneswar, India, pitched Gradient Training, a training company with about $150k in revenue. Amit has also come up with an online learning management product that he wants to sell to the test preparation market. I advised him to not spin the new business out, rather use the existing business to bootstrap the online business within the same corporate entity. We also discussed B-to-C vs. B-to-B models and segmentation and business models thereof for the online business.
You can listen to the recording of today’s roundtable here.
As always, I would very much like to hear about your business, so let me invite you to come and pitch at one of our free 1M/1M public roundtables. We will be holding future roundtables at 8 a.m. PDT on:
Thursday, May 23, 175th 1M/1M Roundtable, Register Here.
Thursday, May 30, 176th 1M/1M Roundtable, Register Here.
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Sramana Mitra is the founder of the One Million by One Million (1M/1M) initiative, a virtual incubation program that aims to help one million entrepreneurs globally to reach $1 million in revenue and beyond. She is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and strategy consultant, she writes the blog Sramana Mitra On Strategy, and is author of the Entrepreneur Journeys book series and Vision India 2020. From 2008 to 2010, Mitra was a columnist for Forbes. As an entrepreneur CEO, she ran three companies: DAIS, Intarka, and Uuma. Sramana has a master’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.