Understanding Indian Startups with Mr. Samar Singla — C.E.O of JUGNOO

Understanding Startups with Mr. Samar Singla — CEO, JUGNOO

The Indian Startup Ecosystem is on its highest peak making INDIA the 4th largest base for startups in the World with over 100K companies getting registered with the government last year. Keeping these number in our minds along with our urge to help Startups and SME’s, we introduce you to our newly launched Segment “Understanding Startups”.

We will be interviewing the Leaders from the Tech Industry who have built their companies from scratch. This will help budding Entrepreneurs in understanding the difficulties and challenges faced by the veterans.

For the first segment, we interviewed Mr. Samar Singla, CEO Jugnoo

Jugnoo provides on-demand services that simplify your everyday living. Be it Food, Rides, Fresh Fruits, Vegetables or Groceries. They have raised a total of $16M in four rounds from Investors like Chris Kolenaty, PayTm, Kunal Bahl, Rakesh Mathur, rocketShip VC and Snow Leopard Technology Ventures.

When asked about the challenges faced during the initial days of Click Labs and JUGNOO

Most of the challenges that we faced were similar to challenges faced by other entrepreneurs- the right team, the right execution to bring the idea to life. However for Jugnoo, our challenge was a little different. Being an unorganized industry, convincing the auto drivers to come on our platform was something we had to spend considerable time on. Educating and training them to agree to a standard fare model and utilizing the Jugnoo platform well to amplify their business was the most important task initially.

His forecast on the growth of JUGNOO in 2017?

Jugnoo has been on a growth trajectory and we are now a hyper-local services brand across almost 40 Tier II and Tier III cities in India. Our other business verticals like Fresh, Meals and Delivery are also now present in most of the cities and we are constantly looking at reaching out to more consumers.

When asked about his views on the ‘On demand business Model’

With rapid urbanization and increasing spending capacity of the masses, more people are giving in to the comfort of having products and services delivered to them sitting at their homes. Thriving on these market trends and harnessing the power of new age technology, on-demand business model is flourishing and merchants are curating products and services that can appease such market demands.

However at the core, the on-demand logistics business is a low margins avenue and companies have to be cognizant of the fact that burning cash and offering discounts isn’t the only way to build businesses. We have successfully managed this aspect and have grown Jugnoo to what it is now. Tookan, our best in class technology that drives the Jugnoo platform is being used by companies across the world for their on-demand requirements.

His take on the Startup Ecosystem in Chandigarh

Contrary to common notions about only metros spearheading the growth of the startup ecosystem in the country, I believe that Chandigarh is one place that is slowly emerging as the first option for entrepreneurs looking beyond the over-cluttered cities. The operational costs for a business are much lower. Apart from the city’s design, Chandigarh and its adjoining areas being hub to some of the best educational institutes, it becomes a lot easier to acquire the right kind of talent here.

Advice to the budding Entrepreneurs

Understanding a real world issue and coming up with a solution is what our objective has been and we have seen immense success in it. Also, being frugal and creating pockets of profit instead of burning cash at the outset will help set up a good business model.

Even if people think your goals are insane, keep dreaming. It’s your dreams that will eventually give you the strength to succeed and turn them into reality.

SODIO’s Take

With a good number of competitors in the On-Demand market, JUGNOO thrived to dominate each segment at a time. With operations in over 40 cities, the strategy to capture Tier II and Tier III cities will prove out to be an advantage for them. While consulting first-time Entrepreneurs, our consultants at SODIO try to pour in the same mindset on them.

With Mr. Singla’s vision, JUGNOO will be among the most followed India startups.