How to free advertising your business and boost up

It is quite a story. More so when Navneet Chauhan, 31, tells it his way, in a sing-song voice, with a slight foreign accent, keeping the suspense alive all the time.

He speaks of a time when Khoj in India, the company he founded, was doing well. Of a time when almost every DIGITAL INDIA start-up in India doing well.

He speaks of 2016.

"So one of the consulting firms approached us says Navneet Singh and said look we can help you raise money. And you just need to have an Internet story to your business model. You know, for valuation.

I wasn’t interested much but anyway, an Indian entrepreneur, I was surprised; I’m not going to give you a name. So he came to buy. First the entire company; and then, part of the company. And he was giving me dotcom stocks, you know, swapping. And I was, like, ‘Sorry buddy. I’m not interested’. But at every meeting, he would say, ‘Hey, the stock is worth 2X and then 3X’. Anyway, I didn’t want any of it. I was like, ‘Give me hard cash and I may give part of my company to you’."

So I went to my chartered accountant and asked him, what is my company worth? You know what he said?"

No. What?

3-5 lakh, or something like that. I was embarrassed. I was like, ‘How am I going to approach these guys and tell them that I am valued at Rs.10 lakh? Why would anybody buy any stake at all? So I told them, ‘Why don’t you guys throw a number, of what you are willing to pay.’ And you know what they came up with?"

Now why am I telling you all this he continues? Because, these are times like that. There is a lot of glamour associated with the Internet these days. There is noise, media, valuations; but you know, in life, it is not easy to make money. To run a successful organization is not easy. You can’t throw money at a problem and run a successful organization. This whole Internet thing should not pollute young minds where they think, ‘I will come out of college, come out with an app and become a millionaire’. It doesn’t happen that way."

It would be fair to say that Navneet knows what he is talking about.

All of which means that Navneet has seen India change. And there is only one way to put it; that when Navneet started out, it must have been a pretty bleak world.

Navneet chauhan was born at the Aanand Main Hospital in Faridabad in 1986. Growing up in Jaipur (as the city was known Pink City), Navneet had fairly simple and well defined goals—he would pursue a degree in Aeronautical and He attempted both, at the University of Rajasthan, It wasn’t until 2015 that the idea of KHOJ IN INDIA first came about. Except, it had a different name and was called khoj le. Back then, finding any information was a chore. Only two sources existed—a cumbersome book of listings arranged in alphabetical order that would be updated once a year Navneet was employed with a G4S Service India Pvt. Ltd company, which Telecom and security Company.

"The telecom scene changed and I remember being exposed to the Internet," says Navneet. "I used to have a Business G4s email account. But the dial-up network was so bad. It would take minutes to get through and then it would barely last. We didn’t believe in it but we used to read a lot of articles in the papers of (the Internet’s) great success and how it was taking off in the US. Like America Online and all. But for me as an entrepreneur, I knew it would take time and I wanted to ride the telecom wave."

So, in 2016, Navneet started KHOJ IN INDIA. In 2016, he registered the domain name www.khojinindia.com

Phones & Internet

"Telephone was a platform that could work for us, says Navneet. That’s what people had access to and they could dial in a number and get information. People would call and we would actually read out the information."

Then, in 2016, at the height of the dotcom boom, KHOJ IN INDIA went online. There was a search box, where people could key in queries on products and services.

While KHOJ IN INDIA grew, in 2017, the firm flirted with the website idea. After a few months, it ran into the same problem. No monetization. Small and medium business entrepreneurs weren’t interested in paying for the website listing. So, once again, Navneet put the project on pose pond.

It wasn’t an easy decision to make. Even in 2017, Internet penetration in India was just about 3%. And the price of personal computers was a significant barrier to entry. But the fact that the Internet would be big was evident.

Most operators had begun offering use and pay services instead of subscriptions. Phones were also capable of connecting to the Internet, although data connection was patchy. But Navneet’s biggest challenge was convincing his clients to pay for the Web. "They were like, ‘We don’t want to pay for Web because we just understand voice service’," he says. "So we tried selling Internet separately, but barely recovered the cost of sales also. So, in Aug 2017, I realized not to complicate this by selling voice, Web and mobile separate. I said, ‘let’s bundle everything in one and say that’s the single product from KHOJ in INDIA. Under KHOJ IN INDIA, you get all of this, whether you want it or not"."

The strategy worked.

Before long, though, other problems cropped up. The Web worked differently. It wasn’t like having customers call in and KHOJ IN INIDA sending information over text and emails. There, presentation mattered. KHOJ IN INIDA’s website was boring and it didn’t have any takers. People wanted pictures, videos, location-based search and directions.

"So we started working on those and, in 2017, we launched a better looking site," says Navneet. "In those days, we used to engage videographers and photographers and send them to these businesses to shoot videos and pictures, and then upload it. The content itself was not available to such businesses.

Even as all this was happening, Navneet was worried. Would the Web strategy work? Wouldn’t it cannibalize his voice traffic? Was it the right decision to put out years and years of hard work (data) online and open it to competition who could just clone the KHOJ IN INDIA model online? What about Google and the other Internet giants that had the potential to disrupt his business model."It was a big decision for us," says Navneet. "And we were deeply suspicious about the whole thing. But then, I thought through the whole thing and stuck to the strategy I’ve followed all my life. Follow the user. If the user is evolving and you don’t, then within a few years you will be outdated and lose it all."

Needless to say, the critics were skeptical if KHOJ IN INDIA would survive. They still are.

Today, there’s an app for almost any information that a person might need—buying, selling, eating out, shopping, rides, price comparisons across products and services; it is all there. But Navneet believes that he has seen the back of one and too many detractors. "The outside world will be skeptical, but we just kept our focus," he says. "And we have built KHOJ IN INDIA by being profitable, growing our top line, bottom line, no freebies, no cash backs, nothing

Is there one good reason why anyone should?listen?to him? Experience, perhaps.

To a man in the industry, we are extremely worried about the way things are, says Navneet. Today we have the talent pool. In the dotcom days, it was a big challenge. People used to join organizations at double or triple the salary. It is another matter they all lost their jobs in the next six months. They all quit big companies to join Internet companies and most of the time they used to while away in the canteen thinking of all kinds of domain names. That is exactly what is happening today. People are flirting with apps. It doesn’t work like that."

The future: Smartphone. Apps

Navneet’s cautionary tone and belief in the fundamentals of business isn’t the popular narrative of our times. What is? Growth and valuation, never mind the red on the books. Which is why, a lot rests on Navneet idea (one which has been in the works for a while, though) of turning KHOJ IN INDIA into a platform where people can transact or buy and sell, and not just be a destination for local information. The idea is called Search Plus. And it will be App led. "Any search with a commercial interest is KHOJ IN INDIA," says Navneet. "You could search for a scientific apparatus, used car, used furniture, doctors or any kind of product or service under the sun."

It adds: "We believe KHOJ IN INIDA’s business model has inherent advantages over existing e-commerce players like: 1) strong database of 5mn listings, 2) strong lead generation capability because of over 1,000mn annual searches on its platform, 3) addition/update of more than 1,000 vendors on a daily basis, and 4) edge over competitors in cash collection, logistics cost, delivery time, personal touch, etc."

It is a bold statement to make. But, then, Navneet is a survivor. And perhaps he knows what he is talking about.

Needless to say, where KHOJ IN INDIA goes from here, will be quite the story.

.