My Dream Store — Giving Wings to your dreams

Arunlekha Sengupta — Writer, MyDreamStore.in

My Dream Store a start-up built on the novel idea of crowd-funded merchandising is hell-bent on giving people a chance to fulfill that ultimate dream of ‘Making Money Online from Home.’

Anyone with an idea for a T-shirt can ‘launch a campaign’ by creating it in our design studio and market it to relevant groups and sell them via our platform. Everything else — manufacturing the exact sizes, flawless printing, delivering the t-shirts to the buyers all over India and then replying to customer queries will be taken care of by our team. We wire the profits to the campaigners. Some very smart young entrepreneurs from all over the country are taking advantage of the feasibility of this money-making platform

Enter Shyam Kaushik…

On the surface Shyam Kaushik, is a regular engineering student, currently living in Silchar, a small town in north-eastern India. But what sets him apart from a lot of his classmates is that he is a born dreamer and an Entrepreneur-at-Heart! Born in Bihar, Shyam travelled around for higher studies — first completing his Higher Secondary from Delhi and now pursuing his B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering from NIT Silchar. His zeal and passion to start something has seen him earning close to Rs. 2 Lakhs with My Dream Store without a single rupee in investment.

When we asked him how his My Dream Store journey began, Shyam talks about his dream of creating an online community that unites all 30 NITs from across the country. Shyam says, “We keep updating everyone about the activities that are taking place pan-NIT network. This way we pass relevant information to all community members.” Clearly, this is an important aspect of his life. And it was for this online community, that his entrepreneurial skills came alive.

“I first heard about My Dream Store about a year ago when it was just starting out.” Shyam says, “Karthik contacted me on my community page of PTBN and asked me to take a look at the website and the business model. I started out a year ago, and I haven’t looked back.”

Shyam first launched his very first campaign back in April’14 targeting NITians. And he says that launching campaign on www.mydreamstore.in was very easy! Shyam looks back, “I remember I sold around 97 tees in 8 days time. As I already had a design, it took me just 2 minutes to launch a campaign. All I had to think was the right price point.”

Shyam Kaushik had always wanted to create and sell t-shirts online. He figured that this could be a good way to start earning money. However, before he found My Dream Store; he didn’t know how to do so without putting in money himself. “In every other website, I had to invest some money to get the products made and I was not sure if I would be able to sell all the products I had invested in.” Shyam says. “The best part with My Dream Store is that there are no upfront costs. So I need not worry about anything.”

Becoming a Marketer

He made INR 9,500 as profits from his first campaign. From then to now — Shyam has sold about 1200 t-shirts. Not all of his campaigns were always successful, but he soon learnt the ways of internet marketing and became adept at it.

At first he promoted the t-shirt campaign on his community page which has a large following. On our website, we list down the ways to promote a campaign. He followed the route and came out on top. The basics ask you to use all social media channels and that is exactly what he did. At first he promoted the campaign link to all social media channels. He then contacted all his potential buyers through emails.

Shyam then went a step further and this made all the difference. Karthik, our co-founder helped Shyam get used to running a Facebook ad and then there was no stopping him. Shyam used Facebook ads and targeted a larger audience which gave even better results.

In April ‘15, we ran a contest and asked everyone interested to participate and launch a T-shirt campaign. Shyam came out right on top and won the 22-day long contest and won the grand prize of Rs. 1 lakh.

This has been his journey that included 1200 t-shirts sold and earned him Rs. 1.8 Lakhs and it’s still an on-going process. Shyam Kaushik is an elated Engineer/Entrepreneur and a Dreamer as well and his advice to all other campaigners is to stay focused and not give up on goals easily.

Launch your own T-shirt campaign at My Dream Store!