Quirky, magnetic, very Indian

It’s almost a Bollywood story. The lead pair has a dream: to run a business selling quirky knick-knacks with an Indian feel and soul. As they don’t have much money, they sell their house to set up the business. And like in the movies, their products become a hit. Money starts pouring in and they are rolling in profits within six months. In the next three years, their products go international; and in certain circles, it becomes uncool to not know of Chumbak — the Bangalore-based start-up that has made owls, elephants and moustaches trendy.

In 2010, husband-wife duo Vivek Prabhakar and Shubhra Chadda began Chumbak to manufacture fridge magnets that foreign visitors could buy as souvenirs from India. “But we soon realised that we would have to sell millions of them for a viable business model,” says Prabhakar, who is Chumbak’s CEO.

Family and friends chipped in with more innovative ideas. Somebody suggested T-shirts with an India theme, another mentioned coasters. “We began with six categories, including coffee mugs, key chains and coasters. Since we were a design brand, not necessarily in the souvenir space, we started looking at options like bags and furnishings,” he says.

The ₹40 lakh from the sale of their Bangalore house became their seed capital. They moved to a rented apartment and began working from there — discussing ideas with designers and commissioning products. And when business outgrew the house-cum-warehouse, Prabhakar and Chadda moved to an aunt’s place. “From there, we moved to a warehouse within a year,” he says.

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Unlike most manufacturers, Chumbak first created the merchandise and then approached retailers. “Some stores agreed to stock our products. One thing that worked (for us) was that there was nothing like this in the market. Retailers lapped up our products and we got traction early. After 8-10 stores, people started getting in touch with us and the network expanded,” he says. This rapid growth was despite the presence of brands like Happily Unmarried and Play Clan, which also offer somewhat similar India-centric knick-knacks.

Chumbak now has more than 2 lakh likes on Facebook, the platform that helped make it what it is today. “One of our biggest advantages in 2010 was Facebook. The FB page back then was very different, as it was not focused on advertising. So if I posted a product, people were checking it out without us paying for it. That was great for a start-up,” says Prabhakar.

Chumbak’s strategy from day one was to not push products down people’s throat. He says, “The reason our social media strategy worked is that we didn’t look at it as something that required a return on investments. When the focus is only on getting fans, the quality of interaction suffers.” Social media also proved handy for customer service. “People would get in touch with us online. It helped build loyalty.” Even now, Chumbak doesn’t rely on aggregators to sell online. “We ship directly and deliver within 24 hours,” he says.

But while social media may have boosted Chumbak’s popularity, especially among the youth, only 22 per cent of its sales comes from online. “We built the brand on social media. But we are not Chumbak.com. We are Chumbak,” says Prabhakar, adding, “In the next year or two, online will play a stronger role but I don’t see it going beyond 30 per cent. It is a hybrid model and we are comfortable with it.”

Quirks unlimited

For now, the company is focusing on adding more product categories and making them more widely available. New products and categories are decided based on the kind of business they can fetch. “We did it for fun in the first year, but at the end of it, we started taking calls around pricing, usage and how displayable a product was at stores.”

Phone cases, which didn’t even exist as a category at Chumbak even about six months ago, are now bringing in 30 per cent of its revenues. It now has more than 30 product categories including bobble-heads, boxer shorts, cushion covers, bags and laptop sleeves.

For wider distribution, rather than shops, Chadda and Prabhakar are now banking on kiosks within malls as that is more economical for them. “Chumbak is an impulse purchase, not a planned one. We tested the first one, a 150 sq ft kiosk at the Forum mall in Bangalore. Just two weeks of data was enough for us to expand the format,” says Prabhakar. Chumbak now operates 14 kiosks and expects to close the fiscal with 20.

After that, Chumbak will pause and think matters over for a few months . “We’re putting in place technology to better understand trends on design,” he says. Now, that should be a magnet for more curious customers.

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