Small business
Community as a business
The Better India built community first, then launched products
Anuradha Kedia and Dhimant Parekh, founders of The Better India, successfully launched a direct to customer (D2C) brand during the pandemic. Its monthly revenue reached INR 1cr within 5 months of the launch. Successful D2C brands took less years to INR 100cr annual revenue than the traditional brands.
Anuradha and Dhimant had built The Better India, a successful publication and online community. In 2020 they launched The Better Home kit in Feb 2020. It contained non-toxic floor, dish, laundry and toilet cleaners. 25 days after launching Government announced lockdown. For the next two months they improved packaging as per the feedback. They also worked on the supply chain and recycling of the used bottles and plastic. It worked. They will be launching more products.
Dhimant tweeted that the overnight success took eleven years: Overnight success? No! Many years of building a community @thebetterindia that helped us understand better what we should build. Our readers told us exactly what they wanted and how they wanted it. We listened intently, took that feedback and worked really hard to build it.
The takeaway from The Better Home’s success is:
- Identify a mission
- Build a community
- Engage and listen
- Gain trust
- Identify needs
- Offer solution
- Execute flawlessly
- Take feedback
- Repeat the process.
