All Indians have faced situations where we need urgent services for our homes, be it an electrician, a plumber, someone to look under the hood of the car or just clean our carpets. Usually, the process is tedious where we ask our acquaintances for references or go to the Yellow pages or Google it and take our chances.
Then comes the agony of waiting for an unpunctual repairman and not knowing his reliability and background apart from his charges. Enough to send a shiver up the spine.
The Solution: Aurospaces
A Passionate IITian has brought the best of tech and built a common platform for a variety of services to ease the process of maintaining our homes and make it a pleasurable experience.
With a deep understanding of what a common Indian goes through in accessing basic services, Rajamohan J, Co – founder and CEO of Aurospaces has patented a technology to bring you the best in your neighbourhood and ease your search for services.
Aurospaces is not only a business idea or a startup, it is a mission to create an integrated arena which is the one stop platform for all services. The umbrella of services is all encompassing and caters from Health Care to PhysioTherapy, from Nursing Care to Doctor, from Pests to pets and Painters to Carpenters. They even take on mobile and appliance repairs and beauty treatments.
The platform also enables local professionals and skilled, honest workers reach a broader population base and market their skills.
Aurospaces Software Private Limited was a customised development to provide all professional and vocational services at the comfort of one’s home/office.
Pixr8 caught up with Rajamohan, the founder and CEO and picked his brains to get the to know “Aurospaces” better.
The Idea
Rajamohan felt that in India, getting services is an extremely bad experience. We usually travel long and far to get the required service and do not really know and exploit the expertise available in our neighbourhood. Also, we have no knowledge or information on the quality of services and type of product. Rajamohan wanted to solve the problem with tech. He felt that bulk of our basic services needs can be fulfilled in our neighbourhood itself. We can save on travelling if the information is served well. He calls it “Neighbourhood technology”, that he brought back with him from the US five years back. Then it was a strange idea and not many were convinced, now it has caught on.
The Team
The co-founders of Aurospaces are Rajamohan J, Swapna Veldhi and Pramod Ghorpade. They have a background mix of Tech and MBA.
The team is a lean one comprising of 22 right now. It is divided into engineering, operations, sales n marketing, partner on board, quality check, training and field force. They have plans to expand later.
Aurospaces is aware of competition in their line of work, but they are confident that the power of technology and that too customised, patented technology is behind them. The bulk of the other businesses in the same line of work have the inferior technology and cannot provide as smooth an experience, as customised a service and at a faster speed than Aurospaces.
Aurospaces understands that their target customers are the common people of India, who are tech savvy and are looking for a seamless service and avail services from a trusted professional. The aim of Aurospaces is to give them a superior and reliable service experience.
They have a simple mantra success
No Plan B – Never quit
The USP of Aurospaces is very quick and reliable service. Their superior technology ensures that their robotic algorithms identify the best service person for the customer creating a situation for maximum satisfaction.
Challenges
There were several challenges in setting up Aurospaces. Once they developed the technology and obtained the patent, they discovered that none of the funding houses were interested. The definition of cutting edge technology was way behind what was there in the US. Some thought that a mere website was hi-tech!
They felt that they had gone way ahead and overengineered. So they changed the user interfaces and brought it back to the current market to fit the requirements of the customers.
This led them to realise that one of their biggest strengths was agility and adaptability since they quickly realised their drawback and modified their product.
Another challenge is funding. There are several names that have attracted funding but are lacking in technology. Rajamohan believes that most of the lean funded companies are going through the same rough phase, where they cannot afford large salaries. However, they are clear on bringing advanced technology for superior consumer experience. They are positive about their technology and its superiority.
The major challenge is to expand the customer base. In effect, they get paid to get customers.
Price Wars
They would not like to get involved in a price war. They have had experiences where their customers compare and ask for deep discounts.
However, they believe in quality and sustenance. They don’t want to offer deep discounts where they end up paying to get a customer. This is happening a lot in e-commerce in India. To that end, they want to be a self-sustaining company in 18m.
Future Course
In future, they aim to be the market leaders in the field. To obtain market dominance, they may look at acquisitions as well. Currently, they are managing a customer base of 10K with a staff of 22.
They have a base currently in Bengaluru and Hyderabad and plan to expand into Pune, Mumbai and Delhi/NCR.
They know that they provide close to 90% satisfaction to their customer base. They want to grow to a bigger scale and may aim to grow to 100K customers in 18 months time.
They are aware that they need to do more to grow in the prominence in public and are strategising their advertising in a more focused manner. They are aligning with the TOI ad channel for this.
In five years from now, they see Aurospaces as a market leader with a clear hold on the Tier II Market. They want to expand in India as also abroad.
Aurospaces App
And they are betting big on Tech. They have a nifty app on Google plays which is rated at 4.8 stars and promises a great user interface and experience.
Rajamohan has a simple advice for other start-ups. He feels that the biggest problem is underestimating your financial requirements. If you feel you want 5 lakhs – plan for a budget for 50 lakhs. Almost everyone underestimates their finances. Failures are mainly due to people running out of capital.