Innovations – Dutch Uncles

Stepping Stones To Thrive In The New Era Of Innovation And Entrepreneurship

Abhilash Bapanasha — Sun, 22 Aug 2021 05:35:12 +0000

Innovation is the key factor impacting the business world and is increasingly catalysed by the omni-presence of the internet. The concept of entrepreneurship is steadily adapting and changing to meet the demands of the new technological dawn and the economic cycle. It is a lemon and lemonade theory today, which focuses on adapting a new age skillset with entrepreneurial skills for resilience. In order to elucidate the relevance of new age skills in this new era of entrepreneurship, Dr. Nancy Juneja was the speaker for MentorED, our weekly live 45-minute workshop where industry veterans share their knowledge and experience and discuss topics that are apt and relevant to the start-up and small business fraternity.

Dr. Nancy Juneja is an Educationist, highly acclaimed Success Coach and Leadership Mentor with more than fifteen years of experience. Sought out by numerous Educational Institutes, Corporates & Industries, she has been mentoring entrepreneurs, youths, corporate employees, coaching start-ups and providing quality skill education to the individuals and communities. Her initiative, MENTORx School of learning is all focused to inspire youth to lead a purpose driven life.

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Entrepreneurship has always been about versatility. Talking about the challenges, it is seeing the opportunity before anyone else.

In brief, the session had the following takeaways:

Scaling the stages of economic cycle
How to have an entrepreneurial mind
How digital economy has opened worldwide opportunities to succeed
New age skillset for ushering the new era
The entrepreneur mindset

The Entrepreneurial Mindset

Change being the only constant, for an entrepreneur too it is indispensable to evolve with circumstances. Be it economic adversity or one owing to the pandemic, there are new age skills that define the sustenance to thrive in this era of entrepreneurship. According to Dr. Nancy Juneja, “An entrepreneur identifies opportunity in every situation. He is the person with a vision, an audacious tech leader successful in bringing brilliant ideas to the market, an initiator who creates something new every moment and converts it into a business idea and the whole process as we gloriously call as entrepreneurship.” While it is important to survive, but more importantly it is necessary to thrive.

The digital transformation has been happening in a very rapid form for several years now but the COVID era reinstated it as the new norm. It is vital for each entrepreneur to believe in the notion that opportunity lies in the middle of difficulty. Innovation emerges as the norm and needs to be aligned according to the stages of the economic cycle. Thereafter, she listed the stages as – Boom (or the period of expansion with the rate of growth rising at a faster rate), Early Recession or Slowdown, Full Recession, Depression and Recovery.

The mentor touched upon the issues of the Indian economy and focussed on the skill sets that can make any entrepreneur bounce back and move ahead. “Entrepreneurship has always been about versatility. Talking about the challenges, it is seeing the opportunity before anyone else. It is much more in today’s world apart from critical thinking, effective communication, analysing your mindset, your patience and persistence. Being a digital entrepreneur, the empathy and the motive of value creation along with the social responsibility – there is much more which is needed in the long run.”

The indispensable skillsets that define an entrepreneur

From her own experience in being in the entrepreneurship arena for more than eighteen years, she urged on evolving and being a learning person throughout. It is the learning curve that defines the skill set. “It is moving ahead, continuously learning and unlearning to learn which is a powerful reminder given to each and everyone. Be it any number of years you are into the business – you need to be learning, testing, sharing, collaborating and in this mode, you need to think upon something to apply and discard.”

Decision making in the entrepreneurship journey is a paramount skill because a present approach determines the course of action in the future. Again, it is also important to stay calm in crisis and lead the team through the challenges. Dr. Juneja listed four means to achieve it –

Having an outsider approach to a problem
Remembering past obstacles that have been successfully overcome
Focusing on what can be done to get started
Keeping oneself motivated and entertained

Also, as exemplary as it stands, it is vital to prioritise team work by coordinating among different departments.

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The thumb rule is to innovate or evaporate. That is how it goes in today's world. It was the scenario earlier too but now we need to be ready. If option A is not working, we need to be ready with option B and so on and so forth.

Critical thinking – the route to sail through any adversity

The mentor then talked about critical thinking that allows one to develop intellectually and to make hard decisions as per the need of the hour. “Even if you feel that the circumstances are not in favour, you can manipulate the present and you can focus upon the future, it is all binding up your team and encouraging them. Being an entrepreneur is taking everyone along and focusing upon your goal. The thumb rule is to innovate or evaporate. That is how it goes in today’s world. It was the scenario earlier too but now we need to be ready. If option A is not working, we need to be ready with the option B and so on and so forth.”

Added to this is the introspection to ask oneself some questions like – Should I have a more agile supply chain? Can we make manufacturing more competitive in higher cost environments? How can supply chains pivot fast yet still be robust and resilient to the next disruption? Can I shift my supply chain to a new geography without huge cost or risk? Well, for all of these questions, digital transformation comes as the single loudest means to proceed.

An interactive session

During the Q&A session, viewers from YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter took the opportunity to seek advice on various concepts and business challenges. Dr. Juneja addressed questions with her experiential insights. Topics varied from steps to revive business in the pandemic, techniques to make businesses processes more efficient, action points to solve challenges in rural, semi urban areas while pursuing digital avenues and upskilling with the new age entrepreneurial skills. Dr. Juneja’s guidance reflected her firsthand experience of working closely with entrepreneurs and giving a glimpse of her role as Vice President of the National Child and Women Development Council.

Thus, as the mentor elucidated through her informative presentation, the only option for an entrepreneur is to either innovate or evaporate. In a nutshell, it is all about developing the entrepreneurial mindset with a renewed perspective of creating your idea from the current problem and nourishing it gradually.

Watch the complete video on YouTube to know more of all the skillsets shared by the mentor in her presentation.

The post Stepping Stones To Thrive In The New Era Of Innovation And Entrepreneurship appeared first on Dutch Uncles.

Hospitals in India turn to Startup Dozee for solving ICU Bed shortage

Chingkheinganbi Mayengbam — Sun, 09 May 2021 07:35:05 +0000

In the ongoing battle against Covid-19, India has proved that it is ill-equipped to come out victorious without external help. Hospitals have been facing routine shortage of necessary equipment. In such a condition, healthcare startup Dozee has been providing a solution to the shortage of ICU beds in hospitals. Let us have a look at how Dozee has been helping with the covid crisis.

What is Dozee Pro?

A Bengaluru based startup, Dozee is helping in converting any normal hospital bed into a step-down ICU in under two minutes and enabling contactless remote patient monitoring (RPM). The remote patient monitoring is achieved through Dozee Pro – Dozee’s contactless vitals monitor that comes equipped with sensor, communication pod and cloud-based patient monitoring tool to capture real-time body vitals, and provide round the clock monitoring.

Further, Dozee has also set up a patient monitoring cell and with the AI-powered triaging system set up within hospitals ensuring on-ground support and remote monitoring of patients outside of the ICU can happen round the clock. The parameters monitored by Dozee include the patient’s heart rate, respiration rate, oxygen saturation, blood pressure and cardiac performance matrix among others.

Impact of Dozee in resolving ICU Bed Shortage

In an event held in March, Dozee CEO & Co-founder Mudit Dandwate announced that Dozee is looking to partner with over 500 hospitals and monitor over 2 lakh patients in the next 12 months. Since its launch, Dozee has partnered with 156 hospitals and set up 3155 beds all over the country.

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Dozee Pro comes equipped with a sensor, communication pod and cloud-based patient monitoring tool to capture real-time body vitals, and provide round the clock monitoring.

Will a healthtech solution revive India?

In the current situation where healthcare workers are at risk and are few in number, contactless health monitoring will enable healthcare providers to provide patients with an enhanced level of care even beyond the pandemic. According to a study licensed by medRxiv, India has an estimated 19 lakh hospital beds and 95,ooo ICU beds. These numbers are too small to combat the rapidly developing covid situation where over four lakh cases are reported in just a day.

The only viable solution to the current situation is through healthtech solutions. The future of medicine is digital health monitoring that is accessible to a patient at home administered by a registered health care provider. Moreover, remote patient monitoring also saves money.

How healthcare startups can support?

As per the latest data, if the healthcare industry could make use of remote patient monitoring technology along with electronic health records (EHR), around $700 billion could be saved in the next 15 to 20 years. Additionally, it has been found to be the most quantifiable return on investment (ROI) for a hospital.

For startups that engage in healthcare, producing healthcare solutions that employ remote patient monitoring technology and are cost-effective is one of the only ways to extend support to the ongoing crisis facing the country.

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What is Disrupting E-Commerce in 2021?

Shalmoli Sarkar — Fri, 02 Apr 2021 02:35:04 +0000

Be it agriculture, health, pharmacy, fruits and vegetables, fashion and jewellery, or white goods, Indian e-commerce is burgeoning across all these consumer categories. Though vaccination drives have commenced, the virus still has time for its eradication. In the wake of the second wave of the pandemic where the infection rate is back to the past year, thus imposing regional lockdowns and curfews it is likely that the Indian shoppers will remain loyal to e-commerce in the future. The e-commerce sector is currently at an inflection point with digital transformation witnessing population from hinterlands embracing technology bringing in first-time consumers thus expanding the customer base. According to a report from EY- IVCA India Trendbook 2021 India’s e-commerce is estimated to reach $99 Billion by 2024 with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) at 27 per cent with grocery and fashion becoming the tailwinds of its growth. Despite a sluggish economy, pay cuts, and conscious spending, major e-commerce players such as Lenskart, Flipkart and Nykaa are planning to launch IPO ( Initial Public Offering ) thus, unleashing the industry’s potential. In the next few years as more and more, Gen Z will comprise the workforce population unlocking newer demographics and consumer behaviour, more new market segments will emerge that will lead to disruptions in e-commerce ecosystem. Below are some of the disruptions in e-commerce that 2021 will witness.

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According to a report from EY- IVCA India Trendbook 2021 India’s e-commerce is estimated to reach $99 Billion by 2024 with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) at 27 per cent with grocery and fashion becoming the tailwinds of its growth.

Upcoming Disruptions in E-commerce

Growth of E-pharmacy

The pharmacy market in India is fragmented with its brick and mortar stores in rural and semi-urban areas not having adequate drug inventory. There exists only a handful of retail pharmacies across smaller towns and cities, thus offering poor availability of medicines and other health accessories. The advent of e-pharmacy platforms such as Netmeds, Pharmaeasy, Medlife, etc. is disrupting conventional drug sales in India. According to the RedSeer survey, over 70 per cent of users are willing to use e-pharmacy post-covid-19 due to the positive experience coupled with stronger adoption among low-income households. A major reason for online pharmacy’s growth can be attributed to the paradigm shift in consumer behaviour. Consumers today are conscious about leading a healthy lifestyle and are interested to buy from drugstores that do more than just selling medicines. They require a wellness companion that can offer them holistic wellness solutions to lead a healthy lifestyle. Products such as protein shakes, fitness equipment, nutraceutical foods are more appealing to the health-conscious segment. Hence,here the online pharmacy platform with its efficient supply chain system can aid consumers get access to the hard-to-find medicines in semi-urban and rural areas as well. The omnichannel drug retail will experience a boom with superior quality of service and personalized offerings giving greater consumer control. Anticipating the growth in online drug retail conglomerates and e-commerce giants such as Reliance, Tata, and Amazon are eyeing to own major stakes in the homegrown online medicine platforms.

Whatsapp Payments and Shopping button

As per Statista, Indians form the lion’s share of Whatsapp downloads by 340 million, making it the most preferred messaging app in the nation. The newly introduced features of Whatsapp namely Whatsapp payments and shopping button has made the social messaging app a central platform to thrive the e-commerce businesses. With the launch of the shopping button in its business app, it will allow users to browse through its business catalogue, making it convenient for the users to discover goods or services offered and increasing visibility when clicked on the business profile, eventually increasing sales, that otherwise required to share a PDF of the catalogue. The Whatsapp payments features powered by BHIM UPI allow money to be transferred directly between banks thus, simplifying the payment on the instant messaging app. These two features will prove to be highly beneficial to the local business and small businesses that currently do not have a website due to strained budgets. Many fashion- tech D2C companies such as SockSoho are receiving orders through its Whatsapp account.

Introducing AI tools for a personalised approach

Implementing artificial intelligence (AI) tools in e-commerce is not new. However, with changing consumers these days prefer to purchase from brands that offer them to celebrate uniqueness and the liberty to express themselves vividly. Hence, e-commerce companies will be adopting AI tools for a more personalised approach that will help in enhanced customer engagement, track shopping habits, and chatbots for improved customer service eventually generating better demand and conversions.

New E-commerce: Social e-commerce

The introduction of new selling features on Facebook and Instagram such as Facebook marketplaces, Facebook shops and Instagram selling features is opening new avenues for small and medium businesses. According to a report by Bain & Company, it states that small sellers constitute 85 percent of all social commerce players. Social commerce allows small businesses to acquire customers at lower costs as compared to e-commerce giants that spend enormous budgets on marketing for acquiring. Sellers through social commerce gain a deeper understanding of customer behaviour for consumers in rural India. Apart from leveraging social media platforms, various social commerce platforms such as Meesho, Saral Jeevan Sahelis are adopting an assisted commerce platform that will give rural customers access to a plethora of rural-friendly products and services.

For the startups to enter the e-commerce

Investors are now interested to fund in business models that are not following the suit of e-commerce aggregators such as Amazon and Flipkart. Instead, they are looking for unique business models that can effectively solve the problems of the customer and remain resilient to the ever-changing consumer behaviour, thus bringing disruptions in e-commerce.

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Types Of Innovation: A Guide for Startup Entrepreneurs

Smruthi Krishnan — Fri, 05 Mar 2021 04:35:04 +0000

Innovation is taking two things that exist and putting them together in a new way. Be it any sector within any industry, innovation is the key to persistent and continuous growth. Innovation is the tool used to avoid stagnancy and improve production and productivity by scaling up and becoming more efficient. There are different types of innovations taken up by different firms and organisations. What works for one organisation may not necessarily work for the other. Let’s explore the various kinds of innovations and you can decide which one fits your enterprise the best.

Why is innovation important?

Around the globe, almost all companies spend tonnes of money on research and development. According to a study by Stanford University, it is estimated that the largest 1000 companies in the world spend $782 billion on research and development. Though R&D is not the only measurement of innovation, it still gives us a clear view of how important innovation has become in the current status quo. Over the years, it has been noticed that labour productivity has been declining gradually. This puts extra pressure on organisations to invest more in R&D and come up with better technology and ideas to keep up the same level of output despite the decreasing
productivity.

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Recently, radical innovations have been taking place in the fields of artificial intelligence, 3D printing and the Internet of Things which will transform the way the world functions shortly.

What are the different types of innovation?

We often feel innovations are scientific and disruptive. However, that is not the case every time. The following types of innovation will help you understand this better.

● Radical Innovation

Radical innovation is a rare form of innovation that takes place once in many years. When we talk about innovation, our mind always runs to new industries and revolutionary technologies like vaccinations, MRI scans, computer technology, etc. Such innovations do not occur every day. It is something that takes years to happen and requires a lot of effort and research work. When radical innovations occur, the world takes a great leap forward and then there is no going back. A prime example of such innovations would be smartphone technology.

Examples of Radical Innovation

The industrial revolution gave us hundreds of examples of radical innovations in terms of machinery used for the mass production of various goods from clothes to books to medicines. Recently, radical innovations have been taking place in the fields of artificial intelligence, 3D printing and the Internet of Things which will transform the way the world functions shortly. Smartphones, as mentioned before, are the best example of radical innovation. Being a compact device that allows us to communicate with people, watch videos on the screen, listen to music, shop goods with a click, search the web page with instantaneous replies, smartphones have changed the way of life radically.

● Architectural Innovation

Architectural innovation is also known as ‘recombinative’ innovation. Its very essence is to draw an approach, technology or methodology from one field and bring it to another. It is to bring already existing things and putting them together on one platform. Architectural innovation is found almost everywhere. Nearly 40% of the patents registered over the past 150 years fall under the ambit of architectural innovation and this percentage just keeps growing every year. This innovation helps in increasing new customers as long as the new market is receptive. The risk involved in architectural innovation is usually less as the technology is reliant.

Examples of Architectural Innovation

One of the best examples of architectural innovation is Uber. There was nothing unique or new about sharing rides, geolocation or freelance cab and auto drivers. However, once they were put together, they became a large market disrupter in the taxicab
industry and changed the entire taxi landscape across countries.

Incremental Innovation

Most of the innovations you come across are incremental. Incremental innovation occurs when a chain of small and otherwise not so significant improvements turn into a large-scale organisational change. It utilizes your existing technology and increases the value to the customer within your existing market. It is the most accessible form of innovation and can be performed within small budgets without any large teams or reorientation of the business strategies.

Examples of Incremental Innovation

Some of the world’s most recognised companies remain at the top due to incremental innovation. Often legacy brands become mainstays only because they never stop making changes. For instance, let’s look at Amazon. The reason why they are at the top of the world’s leading businesses is that they keep perfecting their services. They keep experimenting with their web interface, resulting in daily optimisation of the user experience.

● Disruptive Innovation

Disruptive innovation is also known as stealth innovation which involves applying new technology or processes to your company’s current market. You can either create a new market or enter an existing market and change how consumers interact with it. The newer technology is usually inferior, harder to use, more expensive and has fewer features which are why it is stealthy. Only after a lot of trial and error, it surpasses the old technology and disrupts all existing companies. The existing companies are usually not able to compete with the new tech and many of the shutdown post disruption.

Examples of Disruptive Innovation

Apple’s iPhone disrupted the entire mobile phone market. Before the disruption, most phones relied on buttons, keypads or scroll wheels for user input. The iPhone came up after years of technological movement with touch screens, a simple user interface and several third-party applications.

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Some of the world’s most recognised companies remain at the top due to incremental innovation. Often legacy brands become mainstays only because they never stop making changes.

Business Model Innovations

Profit Model

Profit model innovations aim to bring existing offers in new ways. They usually are disruptive innovations when it comes to traditional customer relationships and require an in-depth knowledge of customers and their needs.

Network Model

Network innovations become important when supply and value chains become more complex and interconnected especially post globalisation. It creates new ways of taking advantage of the processes or technologies of other companies.

Structure Model

Structural innovations look into an organisation’s internal assets and how they can be put to use to create new value. Value can be created by improving internal software and processes such that it improves efficiency and productivity by amalgamating talent and equipment. Managerial innovations also fall into this category with changes in work culture and work process to attract a better quality of talent.

Process Model

Process innovations involve changing the way you go about your business forming the core competencies of the business. They help you stand out from the crowd and stand tall against rivals. These innovations also have a long-lasting impact on efficiency, employee engagement and empowerment.

● Product Innovations

Brand

Branding innovations help a company distinguish itself in a competitive market and reach a larger consumer base with unique selling points, especially through advertisement and employee engagement.

Product Performance

Product performance innovations are done by expanding on a product’s features, improving quality or creating something unique such that it adds value to the product line.

Service

Service-related innovations aim to improve attraction towards your product or service, by making it easier to use, improving customer experience, fixing common problems, etc. Service innovations may not seem important as compared to the product but they
can make your brand stand out.

Product System

The product system innovations usually include complementary products and services that can add value to the primary product. These are products that can be sold together or integrated into the primary product, often services are a popular option.

Channel

Channel innovations focus on how you deliver your offering to consumers. For example, recently, E-commerce turned out to be a channel innovation that made shopping much more convenient and hassle-free. These innovations focus on how consumers get what they want in an easy, safe and faster way.

Customer Engagement

Building long-lasting relationships with your customers will need a thorough knowledge of your consumer base to form a connection with them. This builds trust and confidence in your company or brand.

Conclusion

The above classification of innovations is just a few amongst the many that exist. However, there is no set rule that your innovations must fall into these categories or that you can only innovate in one of the above ways. Innovations are subjective, they can be spread across these categories or stick to one. As long as they add real value to your product or service and improve productivity, innovations are always a blessing.

Your organisation may need different innovations as compared to some other company. Innovations vary across industries, sectors and company goals and targets. What works for you may not work for someone else. When you conduct your research and development and trial orders, make sure you go with what benefits your company the most and helps you stand out from the crowd. Make sure your approach ends up effective and does not create mayhem in the workplace. With the world rapidly becoming more productive and competitive, innovation has become a necessity and priority. See what fits your business the best and get going.

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Maharashtra’s State Innovative Start-up Policy 2018

Smruthi Krishnan — Mon, 01 Mar 2021 02:35:03 +0000

As a nation of more than a billion people is embracing technology with welcoming hands, every state across our country has started focusing on their Start-up ecosystem, building on policies to incentivise entrepreneurs to augment their ventures in specific states and often specific sectors. The start-up culture seeped into India a while back and has sown its roots deep into the entrepreneurial status quo. However, metropolitan cities like Bengaluru and Delhi-NCR continue to be the hub of start-ups and quantum of investments. The industry needs to expand into smaller cities to increase opportunities across the country and for better growth of ideas and technologies. This would also bridge the gap between consumers and producers making the market place more digital and convenient. Maharashtra’s State Innovative Start-up Policy 2018 aims to convert the state into a more convenient and successful landscape for the growth and development of Start-ups and innovations before the end of 2023.

About the Policy

The Maharashtra State Innovation Society aims to create an ecosystem for stakeholders to participate in fostering a culture of innovation across Maharashtra and building an environment for Start-ups to excel and drive economic growth. They also plan to nurture innovative thinking from a young age by inducing changes in the curriculum of schools and colleges.

To sustain economic growth, the state should promote innovative entrepreneurship; which will also help address pressing issues facing the nation and generate employment opportunities. The policy aims to :

Create employment opportunities for all sections of society, develop robust infrastructure and ease the regulatory framework to spur the development of the startup ecosystem.
The state will ease the regulatory regime and keep compliance costs to a bare minimum to ease the process of doing business. Necessary changes have been made in terms of Self Certification, Relaxing Laws, Easing Procurement Laws, Patent Filing and Quality Testing Assistance.
Setting up the Leapfrog Maharashtra portal to create a one-stop page for the entire startup ecosystem and enable knowledge exchange and a single-window clearance system for startups to obtain clearances and approvals in a time-bound manner.
Innovation clusters: Based on existing and potential regional economic advantages, local Governments and the local industry and academia are working together to nurture sector-specific startups and establish major urban/rural areas as innovation clusters.
The State supports the development of incubators on a Private, Public or Public-Private Partnership (PPP) mode in collaboration with higher educational and R&D institutions, and the corporate sector.
The State created a mechanism to open up conference rooms, laboratories across the state and Tinkering Labs at the school-level for the holistic development of the startup ecosystem. A multi-facility Startup Park was established to bring incubators, accelerators, investors, mentors and other industry stakeholders under one roof. Startup Villages shall be established in places like Amrav. The State organises a two-day Start-Up Symposium to bring together innovators, incubators, investors, industry associations and academic institutions.
In association with leading angel investor networks, the State organizes experiential learning workshops to guide aspiring investors.
A fund-of-funds will be established with an initial corpus of ₹100 Crore and a total corpus of ₹500 Crore over five years. Investments are made in SEBI-registered funds including early-stage i.e., angel and seed funds.
Maharashtra State Innovation Society (MSInS): The MSInS acts as the state level nodal agency for implementing, monitoring and evaluating this policy.

What is in it for Start-up Entrepreneurs?

With innovation transforming the economic landscape, government bodies plan to foster innovative start-ups by providing connecting communities to share ideas, experience, knowledge and ease the process of doing business which impedes innovation.

A network of incubators will help cultivate entrepreneurial mindsets and help you connect with relevant stakeholders and seed and angel investors. Simplification of the regulatory environment will make it easier for you to set up your venture in Maharashtra and incentivise Start-up growth in these areas. If you are an entrepreneur looking forward to starting a new venture or expand an existing venture, Maharashtra’s economical landscape will provide you with the best opportunities through the New Innovative Policy 2018. The policy will prove beneficial in connecting you with investors and stakeholders across the country, relaxed laws and additional incentives, funding and infrastructure and help you optimise based on geography and sectors.

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Milk Mantra App DailyMoo, Innovation Tops The Focus

Naina Sood — Wed, 24 Feb 2021 02:35:04 +0000

Dairy food – a space where dozens of start-ups have attempted and failed to serve and survive over the past few years, the Odisha-based venture, Milk Mantra, is thriving.

Founded in 2009, this dairy food start-up has grown in its space at the back of innovation both offline and online. At present, the company has two dairy plants at Puri and Sambalpur in Odisha with a processing capacity of 3 lakh litres per day and sells around one lakh litres of pouched milk per day besides other dairy products like curd, paneer, milkshakes, and dairy desserts under its brand Milky Moo and Moo Shake.

Along the way, the company has raised $39.5 million in funding over seven rounds.

Inception of Milk Mantra 3.0

The start-up relies heavily on mom-and-pop stores/daily subscription service to sell its products. However, the company has started building its way to families by leveraging the power of branding, merchandising and using digital media quite extensively. Launching its flagship DailyMoo app was the first step in this direction.

This is a part of the company’s strategy to start mainstreaming in the near future with focus on a hybrid model and subscription app DailyMoo. Milk Mantra has an advantage over its peers as it holds the entire value chain for servicing dairy products. The tagline ‘Put your everyday dairy needs on auto-pilot mode with DailyMoo app’ is the selling point for the start-up. It focusses on words like ‘hassle-free delivery’, ‘truly pure products’, ‘time for milk’ to make the app a part of the daily drill among households.

Besides heavy marketing and everyday new offerings on the app, the start-up is building up weekly/daily/customised plans for the subscribers where they do not have to go through the process of selecting and ordering a set of items, they require every day.

What Milk Mantra does differently?

Packaging innovation: Packaging innovations is the biggest selling point of the start-up. It came out with the motto ‘no need to boil’, to tackle the trust deficit among people. The start-up re-engineered the packaging and came up with a three-layered design (TripPak technology) which increased the shelf life of milk by four days and paneer by 21 days. Result: users found the proposition tempting. Hence, keeping quality and extended shelf-life was quite a bright proposition and an advantage over peers.

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The tagline ‘Put your everyday dairy needs on auto-pilot mode with DailyMoo app’ is the selling point for the start-up.

The brand: Milky Moo was created with an approach towards innovation in all thing’s ‘milk’. For instance, take MooShake which was created using a ‘sooper ingredient’ – curcumin, a haldi milkshake. The biggest challenge was selling this product which the company tackled by branding, packaging and communicating through comic and pop art, which helped in bringing to life the core proposition – Milk Just Got Sooper.

The character of ‘Super Moo’ was further created in order to be relatable for kids and thus engage them further. Kids, dairy and health is indeed the top seller among parents.

Milk Mantra’s product line is a part of our daily diet and the way the start-up has created credibility with strong packaging, clear communication is commendable.

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