18/05/2012
The first question that pops up when I talk to someone about joining the SPD Network is how much would they need to invest? And when I say, that we have built a business model where we don’t need any investment, the sceptic look I get is sure amusing – as though they are going to be lured into some con deal.
Yes, how is it possible to start your own business without any capital?
My first business cycle lasted 10 years. I chucked a well-paid corporate job in Dubai, UAE, with all possible perks to plunge into the world of business. I was just fed up nodding my head in agreement to policies that within me I was in disagreement with. If I spoke my mind, it was construed as being negative and if I kept silent I had an attitude.
Regardless of the fact that, I didn’t have the foresight to understand, what the word ‘recession’ meant, we built a Group of Companies on four business verticals – Consulting & Advisory, Logistics, Trading, and Steel Fabrication. The business was set-up in the UAE and Oman. By the last quarter of 2008, within four years, we had clocked a turnover of US$ 10 million, with about fifty staff in Dubai, Sharjah and Muscat.
September 2008, was when the trade volumes and revenue dropped line nine pins. My confidence or over-confidence, saw me hang in there from end 2008 to end 2010, by which time I had exhausted all my reserve funds and went into minus. I went into ‘freeze mode’. I was just not able to take critical decisions, even when I as Captain could see the Ship slowly sinking. By the time I tried to pull back, it was too late and I had to throw in the towel.
Deep introspection followed and the lessons learnt were clear – the conventional way of raising funds from friends, relatives, bank loans, investors was not for everyone. The success stories looked good and were highly motivating. You could get sucked into the whirlpool of debt and the more you struggled the more you would get sucked into the quicksand. The model sustained for a while, but, when the markets contracted, the overheads were way beyond the revenue.
The challenge then was on how to build a structure where you didn’t have to raise funds or borrow money as working capital your enterprise. I went one step further; I built a structure where anyone could plug-in without any investment and within 3-6 months be on the way to financial independence.
How?
We fused together an e-commerce platform with our expertise in Supply Chain and Logistics – the result was a portal that could handle the front end and back-end for launching just about any product into the market.
How do we start?
We begin with understanding the potential trading opportunities within your circle of family, friends, associates, workplace etc. We focus on the gaps in the marketplace. This is the keyword. Everything that you see around us has been conceptualized by someone or the other, who saw a gap in the marketplace.
We need to be absolutely realistic. A friend I met spoke passionately about his idea of building an underground conveyor belt transportation system connecting all metro and satellite cities across India. No need to transport anything by truck, rail or air, just place it on the conveyor and key in the co-ordinates and off it goes to the city of choice.
All of us can conceptualize ideas by the hundreds and thousands. We are talking about a need we identify for a particular target segment where SPD can be used as the interface to showcase the products, process the enquiry, submit a quotation, confirm an order, accept payment which is what we call the front-end. Then, we can arrange the collection of the product from wherever the source is located to delivery to the end-customer, the buyer getting milestone alerts from receipt of payment on our site to delivery to his residence or warehouse.
How do you plug-in?
Once we have identified couple of gaps in the marketplace, we brainstorm and build a business channel. You become the driver of this business channel. You have a source and we have identified a target segment. As an example a couple I met few days back, while in discussion, the husband, suddenly said that he had one of his close friends who bred lobsters. Wifey said, yes, it fits in, we can approach the hotels. I refined it further and said, why waste time with hotels, let’s target the end-users in the affluent parts of the city. The only investment would be printing fliers and hiring few part-timers to distribute the fliers. One gap identified and converted to what we call as a business channel.
Another old friend in Melbourne Australia came online few weeks back and asked how SPD could help him come out of the rut he had got himself into. High taxes left him with little or no disposable income. We brainstormed for a while and we could list out five gaps we could start with. Toys and garments into Australia and a few products into India.
We are talking about an approach where we are not learning by experiments, trials and errors. We do a thorough research on the need v/s profitability, risks, threats, whether we can leverage the SPD platform in a way that we get paid in advance for what we intend to sell. Once we put the nuts and bolts in place, we are ready to make it happen.
Once you understand how SPD can add value, you will be amazed at how it can plug-in to virtually any gap you identify.
How do you earn?
We work on a collaborative system. SPD would on an average earn 15-20% of what we bill the customer. We share 15-20% of what we earn with you. We spread the message around and bring in new members to our Network. We have an over-riding commission structure for every new member you introduce upto one level. A couple is taken as one unit.
