Behind the Scenes Q&A; with Hitesh Gossain from Onspon — The Pitch

We’re back with another behind-the-scenes Q&A, this time with Hitesh Gossain from Onspon. (His episode is out this week — check it out here.)

First, I asked Hitesh about when the idea for Onspon first hit him.

I was the CEO of India’s biggest EMC company owning one of the biggest Music Festivals. It was facing challenges in streamlining the best way to sell it, and was willing to pay for these services. At the same time, when I had a chat with brands — they said ‘Hitesh — why don’t you give us the right events at the right time for my brand instead of just recommending that one event that you own?’ — and I thought the famous ‘Eureka.’ It’s a simple marketplace based aggregation problem which can be sorted by a information arbitrage management.

I was also wondering about the moment when he realized ‘whoa, this thing is working!’

We launched it softly in the market without a single dollar in marketing. In one of the event forums, I was chatting with a few event guys and they instantly recognised Onspon and acknowledged that they had listed their event on the platform. Our website matrices went up from day one and within a month almost every leading event by category was listed/engaged with us. Unlike hundreds of startups, we were P&L positive within a few weeks of launch, and I guess figures don’t lie.

Next, I asked Hitesh about his approach to pricing in a freemium model, since it seems like a tricky balance to strike between profitability and attracting paid users.

As I have been on both sides of table — as a brand and as an event IP owner — I understand the problems and concerns first hand. Entry barrier for supply (events) and/or demand (brands) can prove fatal unless the value proposition is clearly established. It’s just been over an year, and more than 40% of the website registrations are happening by referral — and this has directly impacted the incremental premium listings. The value proposition is getting clearer and we think that freemium has been managed pretty well.

I was also curious about why Hitesh thinks that Onspon will be a success in India, given the number of failed/pivoted startups in the same space in the US.

One word: disorganized. Developing economies like India have more than 1 million events happening annually. The SME segment is among the biggest in the world. Hence the problems of US are not there in India. The US problem is of standardisation, quality and automation using tools. In India, it’s basic — discovery. We have seen a similar story in segments like marriage where shade.com could create a huge dent in the market (with almost no peer in US) by managing a permanent marketplace between crazily segmented (read caste, age, region, language based) market.

Finally, I asked him to talk about the one thing that he feels has contributed the most to his success in business.

We believe that there are two kind of startups.
 1) Those who create a problem and then solve it.
 2. Those who identify a problem and solve it.
 We are proudly the second. We have spent enough time validating that it’s a highly visible problem which can be solved — and in that process significant economies of scale and scope can be achieved. This can be done by a razor sharp focus on consumer and an ability to delight them — I guess numbers just fall in place then.
 What we recommend to new founders is: Understand your consumers and execute to a T. Simple.

Until next time!

Interview has been lightly edited for clarity.