Future well engraved

‘Coincidentally, my mother runs a 15-strong workshop that has been churning out made-to-order women's outfits since 1988.' That was the footnote on some slides of Mr Nimish Adani's presentation on www.engrave.in made to potential investors. Engrave.in is the first of his company Craftby's offerings, and Craftby is a part of ‘The Morpheus' gang.

Early days

Born to entrepreneur parents, the engineering graduate from BHU and post grad from IIM Lucknow qualifies as a serial entrepreneur in his own right. After stints at FMCG major Pepsico and one in advertising, he read an interview with internet pioneer, Mr Murugavel Janakiraman, of Bharat Matrimony.com, where he spoke of diversifying beyond matrimony.

With strong views on the online potential in the automobile and loans spaces, he wrote a mail to a Bharat Matrimony ID he found on the Web at 4 a.m. sometime in February 2006. He got a call from senior staffer, Mr Michael Bala, (now at Snapfish.com ) at 9 a.m. The pace of response resonated with the budding entrepreneur's ambitions. Mr Adani left the company after launching Indiaautomobile.com and loanwala.com to set up his own shop in end-2008.

His first attempt as entrepreneur was Workosaur.com, a job site “for seven digit salaries and above.” It was a tough decision to shut that down in mid-2010.

“I wasn't able to steer it in the right direction,” admits Mr Adani. When he received offers from established job sites that wanted to bring Workosaur into their fold, he thought they weren't offering enough. There was a lot of traffic in favour of his judgement, but monetising didn't happen the way he wanted it to.

What perhaps aided the decision to shut Workosaur down was Salt Social, which he launched in the March of 2010.

With reselling partners in Singapore, the social media tracking (brand monitoring) tool RADR from Salt Social is today white labelled by several technology majors. Differentiated by elements like human intervention to track ‘sentiment,' the tool is continuing to find takers, but that didn't stop Mr Adani from thinking of the next thing to do.

The eight people team at Salt Social was mature enough to be put on auto pilot when Engrave.in found its roots — in a friend's i-Pod with his name engraved on it. The e-commerce venture offers customised plaques, frames and wall hangings, in an assortment of materials like wood, brushed aluminium, acrylic, crystal and veneer. It has done business worth Rs 10 lakh since it was launched in November 2010, with a gross margin of 45 per cent.

“I started searching for vendors after I saw that engraved i-Phone. It started part time, as a hobby, in November. I was amazed at the response we generated merely by word-of-mouth. The run rate is Rs 1.5-2 lakh a month now, with average value of transaction at Rs 600,” explains Mr Adani. Sixty per cent of his transactions are from existing clients.

Even as the business grew, Mr Adani got to know of The Morpheus, which was incubating 12 entrepreneurial ideas a year in two batches, through a friend. In end-June, on the last day for applying for a batch, he met with Mr Sameer Guglani, founder of The Morpheus, which has incubated Interviewstreet.com and Instablocks.com among others, and helped them grow.

“He saw the site. In 15 minutes, he said, ‘I think we are on.' I filled out the forms,” Mr Adani recalls.

The two-week ‘live in,' where either party gets to walk out, got cut short to five days for Craftby. What has been enriching for Mr Adani is the bank of around 35 companies incubated by Morpheus, which forms ‘The Morpheus Gang' that each can reach out to for assistance. The initial working capital of Rs 5 lakh was secondary. This group also helped Engrave.in get in corporate orders.

A four-day camp in Goa — something like a ‘Gurukul' by the beach — saw the coming together of technology companies, investment companies and other domain experts. Two-minute presentations on each entrepreneur's business accompanied a party by the beach. Presentations were fine tuned before ‘demo day' in Bangalore. Craftby saw 8.5 per cent stake being picked up by five people who believed in the business — the total inflow of cash, at not more than Rs 75 lakh, will fund expansion over the next year, says the entrepreneur.

“Now that Morpheus has become a brand, investors are more confident. From the business perspective, there will be screw ups – and in our weekly business review, Morpheus takes care of everything. For an individual in business, that's a critical support,” Mr Adani explains.

Rise in working capital

With Workosaur, the entrepreneur went through nine to 10 rounds of talks with some investors; promises were made, funding was due in 15 days more than once, but nothing came. While Salt Social is making money, the support from a community of entrepreneurs and faith expressed with the proof of funding is sweeter for Mr Adani.

With the increase in working capital, an expansion of the portfolio is due. Craftby is also set to expand from the current headcount of two. His office boy who does the trips between the factory (where a laser engraving machine is engaged for three hours a day) and the office will remain. Joining him will be a design head, and a few more people to handle the increase in orders. Until now, each customer was responded to on phone and mail by the founder CEO. He intends to find the time to research more avenues for expansion.

And as his mother moves to another workspace, Mr Adani is also inheriting her workshop.

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