After finishing masters at Northeastern University, in 2011, Raj ventured into developing an independent video-streaming platform, Athlatinum, for Sports Learning. After 1 and 1/2 year of developing the platform and securing 5+ clients, Raj ran out of funds to support the development. Lesson learned – never go alone, especially, when it comes to developing a startup.
Around the same time, an opportunity came along to develop IT solution for E-Services domain. As the saying goes, first focus on activities that bring revenue, Raj put Athlatinum on hold and began developing Cromshield as E-Services Platform AS A Service. CROMSHIELD front-end further transformed to an IT Product based E-commerce platform. Its back-end is used by 7+ vendors, and, in its 2nd year of operation, CROMSHIELD achieved close to $1.5M revenue in US in 2015.
Republiqin is an idea that was conceptualized while solving a real-world problem of finding a pocket-friendly bar without going through the hassle of knocking the doors of bars.
Interesting Story Behind Start
One evening I got out of the metro station in Connaught Place in Delhi, and was waiting for my friend to join for couple of drinks. When we met, first conversation was where we should go. Even though, we were familiar with the area and bars, we had no idea which bars were offering happy hours during those hours. Calling every bar was not a good idea since it was painful to locate their phone numbers. On top of it, finding out how far those bars were from where we were standing was another pain. Only way left was to go around the area, and, either read out their boards or ask inside the bars about their happy hours, which, not to mention, would have been embarrassing. At that moment, we wished if we had an app that would tell us the location of the bars from our current location, and type of happy hours going on along with the average price of the drinks.
Few days later, we seriously thought of the idea and looked at the existing apps. Some did not have data about Delhi (or even India), and others were loaded with information and graphics, which made getting to the needed information many clicks away. Our concept was, open the app and done. We are glad to say that we are very close to achieving the functionality where user just need to open the app and they would be displayed with the information as per their preferences stored in the app. From that point onward, every click would be about discovering a new place.
Why Use Republiqin & its App
Help locating pubs and bars that offer Happy Hours – that is where most of the other apps are focusing on. Republiqin has a larger mission. We understand that consuming liquor is a taboo in societies like India.
We also understand that over-consumption of liquor leads to unintended consequences. Our mission is to create awareness of consuming liquor for soberness, not for intoxication.
“Have couple of drinks for enjoyment and fun, as often as you want. You can overcome your inhibition with couple of drinks, but don’t let the liquor overpower you.
“Currently, App is available on Android. We will soon be releasing it for iPhone and Windows phone. Web version will also be available in future. Our proprietary algorithm would help users discover new offerings at their favorite places, along with discovering new places as per their likings.
Tie-up with Liquor Brands
We are making our ways to connect with more than one major liquor brand to evaluate how can we collaborate with them, and what unique value we can deliver to them, given the fact that most of the promotions in the pubs and bars are offered by brands and not by the bars.
Team & Funding
6 Core Developers, 2 SEO pros, all located at 812 West End Mall, District Center, Janak Puri, New Delhi 110058, India.
Seed Funds:
Raj K Arora / Rs. 5,00,000
Bala Narayanaswamy / Rs. 5,00,000 / Early Stage Investor
Total Seed Funds: Rs. 10,00,000
Mentors
Initial Process & Future Expansion Plans
We are too new for that. We started marketing only about 15 days ago. 1 Week was spent in debugging site and app, and last 1 week was spent building marketing strategies. I guess, it would at least be a month before we have some predictable analysis coming our way.
In future plans, Phase I is to cover metros in Delhi. Phase II is to cover entire India. Phase III is cover metros is major international destinations. Phase IV is to covers major cities globally. Phase V is to cover global.
Message for future Entrepreneurs
Keep going. There are opportunities in disguise. Don’t hesitate to change course, no matter what the cost has been of your previous endeavors. However, if the underlying value proposition of your idea is small, revenue generation is also going to be small (limited, I meant).