How A Start-Up Achieved Break Through In Intensely Competitive Indian Personal Care Market Within 45 Days At Low Cost
AmberSun Lifescience is a Bangalore based start-up focused on India’s fast growing personal care market. Its founder — young entrepreneur Mr. Karthik Shashi wanted to introduce innovative products — simple and practical solutions, that can impact daily lives of millions. After researching for 2 years — he identified few innovation areas, one of them being a 100% safe earbud.
Earbud is a popular consumer product, used extensively for cleaning ears of infants and children. Its popular among adults also. However, there is a danger of earbuds accidentally damaging eardrum. Eardrum is a thin membrane separating outer ear from middle ear, playing a very important role in hearing process. It converts sound waves entering ear into vibrations, for brain to decipher. Apart from helping in hearing process, eardrum prevents water, bacteria etc. from entering middle ear — keeping one safe from infection or other ENT diseases.
Karthik, the young entrepreneur designed a 100% safe earbud that guarantees zero ear canal penetration. He has applied for patent for this unique innovation and wanted to sell commercially under brand MEGABUD. However, he had no idea about market and B2B sales channels. Besides, market entry was not easy as Indian earbud market is dominated by large multinationals like Johnson & Johnson, Unilever and Indian players like Manward Healthcare, Copan Diagnostics, Chicco etc.
To compound his problem — being a boot-strapped start-up, he had limited resources to spend on marketing for entering this extremely competitive market. He was desperately looking for help who can introduce his brand to distributors, dealers, stockists at lowest cost.
Fortunately, he came to know about vanik.com from a social media advertisement and registered there as free member. Vanik.com is India’s largest online platform for distribution trade. After a discussion with vanik customer success manager and distribution expert, he planned to subscribe for a premium paid membership of vanik.com
Vanik back-end team created his distribution catalog, special creatives — focusing on unique features of the product. Distribution experts in Vanik helped Karthik decide on margin structure, product positioning and other distribution related areas. Vanik.com’s vast database of distributors, dealers, wholesalers, stockists and agents of healthcare and hygiene products was put to use for identifying potential channel partners. Emphasis was on pharmacy stores, supermarkets and healthcare clinics in Karnataka and other South Indian states.
Within a short span of two weeks, the brand started getting response from not only Karnataka but PAN India market.
Team Vanik also started email campaign and targeted online promotion. Result was spectacular — Ambersun Life Science received response from Pharma and Healthcare distributors from Bihar, Kerala and Bangalore. Ambersun is in discussion with them and are about to finalize distribution contracts.
Another lucky break — a very large, national travel portal was looking to set-up a new business vertical for travel related products. One of their founders came to know about this innovative product and immediately contacted Karthik. They are in discussion now. If the deal gets finalized, the travel portal will buy Ambersun’s entire production.
Ambersun achieved this spectacular market breakthrough in less than 45 days at a cost of only Rs. 20,000 (less than USD 300). Karthik is now busy planning scaling up of production capacity.
