People Speak — Mohammed Tanveer (Founder Zokcate)
I met Mohammed Tanveer in Facebook where he contacted me based on an FB post on my People Speak blog series. Initially I had no idea who he was and despite plan to meet him last week I could not meet him because of my pre-engagements. And when we made plans to meet today I made sure to keep my promise of meeting him just because of his graciousness to still meet me when I did not turn up the last time.
The Meeting
It was a hot afternoon and took me some searching before I met him at his new work location in 91SpringBoard co-working space besides Forum Mall, Koramangala. Even when we interacted over Facebook I liked his friendly and positive nature and when I met him in person I was impressed with his professionalism. I can say it the most intensive interaction that I had in recent times. As we settled down to discuss after my initial introduction we started talking about his startup and about him, with him showing various websites and aspects of the business that his startup supports.
Helping India Get Online
Zokcate registered under Zokcate Internet Private Limited is a 6–7 Month old company which is founded by Mohammed Tanveer, Zuber Farooq and Govind Choudhary with a focus on providing websites and E-commerce solutions as a SAS model to Small and Medium scale businesses at an affordable price point. But what sets them apart is their initiative to help Professionals and Businesses get online visibility who either didn’t have a digital footprint earlier or were bogged down with high price and dodgy service provided by other Website Service Providers.
They have a very simple pricing strategy with 2 plans focused on Personal & Business websites and 3 plans focused on E-commerce websites. But while pricing is an enabler, its their high quality of service and their focused customer engagement which is fueling their growth as a profitable entity only within 2–3 months of its founding. Instead of waiting for customers to come to their platform and using their plans, they go the customers, explain their product and how they provide them a complete website creation and service package and also show the demos of their crisp modern website designs and when they provide their pricing first people do not believe and even ask if there are any hidden charges, but its the references from their own competitors who are managed by Zokcate that seals the deal for them in the first meeting itself.
Marketing & Customer Acquisition
As Tanveer said, his current focus area is Karnataka and customer segment to start with are the small to medium businesses and individual professionals 90% of whom even do not have a digital footprint. And his clientele is as diverse as Hello Panwala,Koramangala to Politicians, Film personalities, Hotels, Restaurants, Spas, Small Businesses, NGOs and even Dance classes. Out of his 500+ Clients, 400+ use their most popular plan “Business Website” and this is the main plan which is currently driving much of their revenue growth.
Unlike other businesses which focus on social platforms and digital marketing to acquire customers, they have stressed on high service quality, customer sensitization on importance of digital presence and by providing a very crisp website package and killer price point they not only get one customer in the Business Segment but capture the whole Business Segment itself. This strategy reminds me of Rocket Singh — Salesman of the Year where the hero instead of indulging in outdated sales practices and corruption focused on providing value and that drove the growth his business. Similarly even in case of Zokcate by providing a value for money product and service they have been able to drive organic growth by word of mouth.
Understanding Indian Customer
Indian customer is price sensitive and also they want managed services instead of managing it in a self service mode. Hence the product that Tanveer and his team has developed keeps the Indian Customer in the mind. They not only offer the flexibility for customers to choose from multiple themes and drag and drop interface to create their own website, but they also create static websites for their customers which are WordPress based from scratch and provide SEO, Digital marketing, Email, Ticket, Free Facebook Pages and Google Business Listing support all in single package. And once they take the package the same package they get lifetime at the same price point and also they have flexible upgrade options. So now if you have a Business website and you want to upgrade to their e-commerce package, you do not have to pay the full package amount by just paying the difference from your current package you can upgrade to their premium packages.
Typically it takes 3 days from the day they get the payment till the website is hosted. Whats more as many of their customers are people who maynot know about ticketing, emails or website deign, they also support such customers over whats app and calls.
The Product & The Story
The genesis of Zokcate happened from another app called Buytokri which was a hyper local online grocery startup serving Koramangala Area of Bangalore. Tanveer and his 2 co-founders were colleagues from another company where they worked together. When wanted to start out at that time online grocery and hyper local delivery was a very happening market and they also wanted to try their luck in online grocery. Their platform was robust and UI better than many of their competitors, they also did almost 100 orders per day with 5000–1000 downloads of their app and even for an area like Koramangala these are good numbers. But like many other players in this field, Tanveer and team also quickly faces high customer acquisition cost and high cash burn. There was a point where all of their investment has been burn out and ultimately they had to close down the app.
But when they interacted with other businesses, these businesses also wanted a crisp UI experience and a good platform like Buytokri, and from this they got the idea of Zokcate. They had the product, they had platform, but all their cash was spent and they were going through a difficult phase, they even did not have laptops. Still persisting with their idea, from a small room in Koramangala, registering their company using credit card and offering their website service free to Computer showrooms in return for Laptops they started their journey.
They started in November 2016, by Jan 2017 they were registered and though their platform was ready, and in the first few months they got 1–2 registrations per day, they also got feedback on their price point. Once they improved it, they waited for customers to come, again when they did not see much improvement they started focused on marketing and went to the field and started meeting with businesses and people themselves. Initially it was not easy as even big businesses were not aware about the importance of digital presence or had a very bad experience at the hand of other service providers.
And it is here where the team went and explained their platform and helped them get on-boarded. For many their offer was too good to be true, some even offered to pay more but by sticking to their price point and product offering they have created a trust and stickiness which got them more business. In India, good faith matters a lot and when one person has faith in you your business spreads by word of mouth and that also happened with Zokcate.
The Founder & The Generalist
From the first time I interacted with Tanveer, I found him to be a humble, approachable and a good human being, he has spent close to 8 Years in startups starting his career in One India as Webmaster/Business Analyst where he learnt the tricks of Digital Content, Digital Marketing and SEO. Then he worked for Dreamgains & Desitara where he specialized on Digital Experience and Product Development and got exposed to Mobile App development. And after his last stint in Socrase.com, he started his own startup journey. When he told me about his life’s journey one instance stood out where when he had few years of Digital Marketing, SEO and Digital Experience expertise, he wanted to lean to be a developer and for that he went with a clean CV and worked as a developer for 15000 per month. Now how many do that. One of his career highlights I would say that he helped develop the whole mobile website interface for Newshunt which helped to improve the Search ranking for Newshunt significantly.
While as a founder Tanveer is very focused on his Idea but as any startup Entrepreneur he learns and know multiple skill sets. Be it PHP, JavaScript, Python, Django, Cloud or things like Product Development, Digital Experience, UI Design and Marketing, he knows it all and uses all these skills in his day to day work. What he has picked up he also makes his team to follow the same path. With a team of 10 members they do it all be it development, marketing, maintenance and customer support. Such experience you will not get else where and they are also expanding. They have now started expanding out of Bangalore to Mysore and Mangalore and also they are targeting the Kanada Film Industry and also helping politicians, NGOs and social activists go digital.
Finally
When Tanveer said that many websites of businesses in Rajaji Nagar, Koramangala are powered by Zokcate I was surprised but when I did a google search using “Powered by Zokcate” and lo you get tons of websites which are really powered by them.
With a great customer response and an air tight plan and focus on innovation and ease of use they have got the right mix to succeed and they are on the right path. In Tanveer I found a great leader and helpful mentor. Yes this is just the start and if they can keep this momentum I can easily see them to be one the top Startups in India. And with their efforts with simple plans and great 360 degree support I am sure they will bring more and more businesses online.
I am sure there is lot of learning from Tanveer’s & Zokcate’s startup experience and I am sure they can be inspiration for others to focus on understanding what customers want rather than burning cash and creating customer delight by focusing proving on great service rather than waiting to create a perfect system.
