How These Women Entrepreneurs Brought Innovation During Lockdown and gave a twist to their Business Model

Understanding the importance of flexibility and innovation in the current times these amazing women entrepreneurs shifted their business model to adding lot of newness and introduction of services that can help them provide sustainability to their business.

Bangalore based Tanushree Ishani D & Pooja Karegoudar, Founders- BodyCafé  an organic grooming and wellness brand were devastated to realize how this global pandemic struck and affected us all physically, emotionally and needless to say small enterprises and start-ups like them financially.

They pivoted over an evening wherein they started making hand sanitizers (which was an already existing SKU of theirs but sans alcohol). They prepared 80% alcoholic sanitizers with the goodness of essential oils of ingredients known for their strong anti viral properties and aloe vera gel.

They kept in mind that their product has to be effective and can be used by people from all age groups.  They slashed the prices by more than 70% even though prices of raw materials quadrupled and in times when giants and pharmacies went out of stock or people started selling essentials at higher prices due to spike in demand, they are  following  the riskier path.

They are delivering across India to direct customers, corporate such as Amazon, FitDay, DrinkPrime, Lalamove, pharmacies, hospitals and social organisations. They have  also partnered with Dunzo (Bangalore) to ensure same day delivery. They have even catered to the Telangana Police department. In terms of revenues, they saw a 4.5x growth and they hope to cater more even after the crisis.

Similarly for Saakshi Choithani as the country came to a total lockdown her venture Mind Dynamics that newly launched its Individual Learning programs for schools, colleges & professionals came to a standstill. With Saakshi being at home with 1.5 year old daughter and her team unable to travel to talk to vendors it has been a challenge at the starting phase.

The first challenge with the schools being closed for undefined time so this led to a full stop on all the summer camps, reversing the contract payments came as a second challenge as procurement of products and required services had started.

After analysing all financial losses they understood their third challenge that was the requests made by the freelancers to help with certain projects that would help them to continue with basic living. Since most of the company’s employees are freelancers and freshers they don’t have much of income through fixed sources.

So now not only did they suffer financially but also they were suffering emotionally as the staff was undergoing through an emotional turmoil. Her designing team and IT Team became the greatest strength at this time.

Innovation they added

From revising their website with all the essential services to designing content for teachers in 48 hours has been a result of their hard work. This gave them hope and they converted their long term courses to short mini courses so that everyone can get benefit out of it.

So they organised online free live sessions and now the detailed one’s are planned as paid courses.

Finally now they are working full in swing with their current processes rightly set up and their team working on online courses, marketing research on the brand’s presence and finding innovative solutions for the clients.

Another such amazing innovation is added by Neeti Bhargava Bagla CEO,  Prettyurparty.com- an online one stop shop for party supplies…With over 300 + themes they are the leading store for everything related to parties.

When the lockdown happened all courier services stopped and it was not possible for the people to meet each other. All the kids are excited about their birthdays and want to celebrate it with their friends.

Even Neeti’s husband’s birthday was on 2nd April and thinking about him she thought of the idea of online celebration of birthdays maintaining social distancing and  introduced virtual birthday party for all the people whose birthday or any special occasion is falling during the lockdown. It’s about hosting a party on either Skype, zoom or FaceTime. An e-invite is created by their team and also setup the meeting for you.

If you have a colour printer at home they can provide digital files to print decorations at home and make them yourself…

You can bake a cake at home..if you have balloons you can put them up.

Sakshi Dutt Bansal, Co –Founder – Apkamart.com shares that at Apkamart.com they had never imagined that work at home could be an option for their  business. When this became a reality the first step was to identify tasks that could be done remotely. The list kept growing after every discussion. Anydesk , zoom and whats app became the tools to connect with the team. Few achievements in this lockdown have been that they launched their youtube channel live and working on making the financial year a big hit.

What innovation you have added in your business during the lockdown due to the pandemic? Share with us too