A few months ago, I decided to become an entrepreneur, obviously by launching a tech company.
Brick-and-mortar concepts are so yesterday – no one disrupts anything in that space. And disruption is the name of the game.
There’s no point in launching anything without disrupting something. In fact, everyone is disrupting so much day-to-day stuff that I decided to take disruption up a notch, by disrupting a disruptor: Blinkit.
A few years ago, Blinkit disrupted home delivery in India by delivering anything you need in 10 minutes flat.
So, how to disrupt this formidable disruptor?
I would offer delivery in eight minutes. That’s 20 per cent faster than Blinkit. And, if you’re mathematically inclined, you can see that Blinkit would become 25 per cent slower than my company.
And I didn’t pluck “eight minutes” out of thin air. I did it after meticulous research. Not the focus group discussions or quantitative conjoint analysis done by the brick-and-mortar dinosaurs, but my personal, authentic research: Watching my cousin preparing paneer makhani for dinner.
Halfway through cooking, she suddenly slapped her forehead and cried: “Oh no! I’m out of coriander.”
Turning to her phone, she placed an order on Blinkit. Nodding wisely, I started my stopwatch. After a few minutes she turned off the gas, explaining to her curious cousin staring at his stopwatch that if she left it on, the curry would dry out before the coriander arrived.
I nodded without looking up from my phone – eight minutes had passed. Exactly two minutes later the delivery came.
A light bulb turned on in my head – not literally of course. If the coriander had arrived two minutes earlier, my cousin would not have had to stop cooking. My mind raced at the mindboggling way this would improve cooking time, therefore culinary excellence, therefore family health and harmony, therefore India’s GDP.
A huge unmet consumer need and disruption opportunity was staring me in the face. And the ideas rushed into my head, almost crowding each other out.
I’d call my company Thinkit and my slogan would be: Don’t Blinkit. Simply Thinkit. Of course, that would provoke Blinkit to complain, but I would then move to my backup slogan: We deliver in eight. We won’t be late.
The ad had literally just been played out for me. An actress – Deepika Padukone? – is cooking paneer makhani. She realises she has no coriander, but showing no sign of panic, calmly launches the Thinkit app.
Cut. Doorbell chimes. A smiling husband – Shah Rukh Khan? – hands her the coriander. She continues cooking without once turning off the stove. Cut. Close with a shot of the family enjoying a delicious dinner.
“How will you deliver faster than Blinkit?” may be your question.
Simple. I need to cut their time by 20 per cent, so I’d increase the infrastructure by 20 per cent. If Blinkit has 100 warehouses in Chennai, I’ll build 120. If they employ 2,000 delivery riders, I’ll hire 2,400. If they procure 575,000 delivery bags per month, I’ll ensure I procure 690,000.
“How will you know how many warehouses and riders Blinkit has?” Another tedious question, another easy answer. I’ll recruit someone from Blinkit.
I ran the idea by some investors. One venture capitalist became positively emotional after hearing about my cousin’s coriander crisis.
“Paddy, paneer makhani is just one dish,” he said, tears of excitement glistening in his eyes. “We have biryani, sambhar, pav bhaji, chole... each requiring some random ingredient you only discover you’re missing once the oil’s already hot.” He put on his reading glasses, lifted his phone to his face and began calculating the market size.
When I told him my financial projections showed I’d certainly lose money for five years, he could no longer hold back the tears. “If all goes well,” I added, “perhaps even seven”.
Speechless, he clapped me on the back. Venture capitalists adore companies that lose enormous sums of money. The bigger the losses, the bigger the vision.
He later took me aside and told me confidentially that if Thinkit lost enough money in its very first year, Blinkit might buy us in the second.
Unfortunately, just as I was preparing to launch, the Indian government announced that delivery companies should stop promising “ten-minute delivery”. At first I thought that would not apply to me: After all, I was promising “eight-minute delivery”. But apparently it would.
So, reluctantly, I let go of the idea. I’ll continue writing humour for now.
Paddy Rangappa (https://www.linkedin.com/in/paddyrangappa/), an ex-CEO, now teaches humour for leaders; happiness at work; and marketing through consumer.
