Business Plan / Structure, identifying key differentiators for sustenance / growth, leading to funding

Across 6 months of engagement, VentureBean helped to pivot the business, with multiple lines of business / value-verticals, with e-commerce just an enabler and instead of being a kitchenware marketplace, they are on their way to being a one-stop kitchen expert.

VentureBean value-add has been in the following areas :

Revenue growth : 25% month-on-month – currently @ 90,000 footfalls on website

Increased lines of revenue generation including

Wholesale – Targeting Small Retailers with purchasing power but no accessibility to procure specialty / imported products

Additional channels – Multi-level-marketing – women’s group as hyper-local sales force

Affiliates / collaborations – e.g.,

Happy Roar – Have tied up to serve up complete kitchen segment.

49to499 – Kitchen Segment fulfilled by ABC.com

MebelKart

Lines of Business (LOBs) increased to include appliances, services

Optimized cost of customer acquisition – Focused customer segmentation / targeting – based on analytics of profile / buying behavior – to optimize campaign management and phased Geographical expansion

• Branding including signing on chefs and other key influencers

Financial Management

• Focus on staying cash positive
• Inventory management process optimized to bring in improved turns @ lower cost; hub & spoke / direct delivery model preferred over stock & sell.
• Financial governance and capital structuring

Business Plan / Structure, phasing including go-to-market leading to funding

VentureBean engaged extensively as below :

Part A : Structuring the Business + Building the Business Growth Plan

• Possible business verticals / LOBs (Lines of Business), based on market landscape / potential
• Business projections for 5 years
  • Revenue Model – including Product & Service offerings, customer targeting & acquisition, roll out strategy and timeline for phasing / scale-up, creating USP / differentiators
  • Cost structures (incl. Organisation Structure / Team required, Technology, Branding / Marketing – online and offline etc – for push & pull)
• Financial modelling – including P&L, BS, CF
• Risks identification, quantification and mitigation measuresTAM (total addressable market) / Competitive landscape
• Valuation, shareholding and dilution strategy
• Also included conservative and optimistic / aggressive scenarios based on
  • Business phasing as above
  • Own / external funding

Part B : Fund Raising (on best-efforts basis) : VentureBean worked on the Information Memorandum  to facilitate syndication drive, and assisted with in raising Capital – pre-Series A thru :

• Support in identifying the right category of Investor and taking the proposal to them for raising capital
• Partner in discussions / meetings with interested investors and negotiations of the term sheet.
• Timing of the funds infusion, structuring and governance for utilisation

Firm has secured funding of $ 0.5 M which should see them scale comfortably for a period of 18 months.

• Business Plan / structuring for scale-up
• Management band-width support
• Fund raising

Over a period of 2  years, VentureBean added significant value resulting in :

• Business Planning
• Round 1 funding of $ 4M
• Team scale-up including technology, customer acquisition / business development, operations support
• Client-base now over 10 B2B clients (all global MNCs), with over 1 Million user-base
• Revenue crossed $ 8M; profitability over 40% Op Inc.
• Setting up US on-site location for global expansion
• Generating interest for Round 2 of $ 10M

• Business Plan / structuring for scale-up
• Fund raising

• B2C focused customer plan re-cast with B2B, B2B2C focus, eliminating scale-up risks
• Positioning and Marketing model optimized to include scaleable, stickiness with the customer
• Strategy canvas project managed for better ROI
• Cash burn optimized to make the business cash positive in 15 months.
• Pre-Series funding of INR 2.5 crs lined up

VentureBean Approach and coverage as follows :

• Baselined existing structures and processes with detailed process maps. Mapped desired state end-to-end business processes & identified gaps
• Defined improvements in structures and processes – for improved efficiency / effectiveness + possible decentralisation / empowerment
• Organization and role definition, pan organization – KPIs / KRA identified, defined, linked with performance management system
• Blueprint and SOP Documentation all departmental processes including inter-department dependencies
• Defined governance and reporting mechanisms at organization and shared services levels
• Matrix structure

This has further resulted in next steps of

• Hiring
  • Screen for key positions
  • On-boarding / Induction
• Implementation
  • Establish role clarity / Cascade KRA / JDs
  • Change Management and Training
  • Coaching & Mentoring key personnel
  • Assessment of key personnel
• Governance
  • Set up weekly structure (Incl. Reports, Metrics, etc)
  • Review H1 performance
  • Revised outlook for H2
  • Ensure sustenance of review meetings / improvement
  • Facilitate inter-dept structured functioning

• Business Plan 5 Years (FY 17-18 onwards) incl :
  • Product & Service offerings / portfolio and roadmap for scale-up – value-added services – business phasing
  • Revenue Plan – broken down by Product Lines / Verticals, Services, Geographies, Customers / Key Accounts,
  • Cost structures – (incl. Resource build-up, Technology, Branding / Marketing – online and offline, other OH)
  • Financials : P&L, BS, CF / Funding required
  • Assist in set-up of inter-dept. Budgeting / Planning
  • Annual Plan Meet / Target setting for next year

• Immediate concerns around student:teacher ratios, salary:role inconsistencies,
• Inconsistent and non-standard processes, need for consistent metrics and measures etc;
• Design and deploy a market research and/or survey for comparable benchmarking on multiple factors like:
• Current demand and supply in the current geographies
  • Fees affordability
  • Income profiles / Compensation benchmarks
  • Competition mapping – what facilities / extras offered etc
• HR review and optimization covering:
  • Recruitment / On-boarding
  • Compensation & Benefits
  • Roles & responsibilities
  • Performance Management
  • Retention

Objective: Standardising with best practices that result in measurable indicators  for management on-the-spot decision making & enhancements operationalised. Coverage areas :

• Identifying gaps with respect to overall schools administration + helping with process improvement in
  • Operations
    • Branding / Marketing / Leads Generation / Business Development – for admissions – both online and offline
    • Infrastructure
    • Statutory
    • Recruitment
    • Admissions
    • Administration (detailed below)
    • Vendor Management
  • Academics / Skill Enhancement
    • Content
    • Assessment
    • Training
    • Value-Added Services
  • Sustenance / Growth
    • Governance – weekly dashboards / metrics and performance reviews across metrics, functions
    • Business Planning for growth – covering all the above

Approach followed Six-Sigma DMAICR – Process Diagnostics, Improvement, Certification (as may be required) and Sustenance

Ongoing

• Process driven, System controlled practices, NOT people or person-dependent. Moving from people-driven to process-driven
• Managing by exceptions – at teacher & admin / principal levels
• Transparency
  • For Teachers
    • Teacher-wise performance appraisal linked to goal setting
    • Teacher attendance
    • Curriculum progress management
  • For Students
    • Student-wise performance ratios
    • Student-wise attendance / drop-out ratios / exit – linked to reasons – pareto analysis
    • Remedial assessment for poor performers
  • Parent / Student profiling – background / income / location / profession
  • Financials : Costs & ROI analysis

• Business Plan / structuring for scale-up
• Fund raising

VentureBean engaged to value-add as under :

• Identified and firmed up value–chain, geographical expansion with multiple verticals and value-added services, with one-time / recurring revenues across multiple streams, resulting in broader portfolio of services and products, and improved profitability
• Technology / security assessment and infra requirements optimized
• Firm raised Pre-Series A round successfully $1 M
• Revenues scale-up by 30%

Review and strengthen end-to-end following processes :

• Sales / GTM / Customer Acquisition
• Branding / Marketing
• Operations
• Support – incl. HR, Finance, Technology

Also, firm the strategy for geography expansion into US, products and collaborations.

Objectives :

• Improvement in efficiency / effectiveness + possible decentralisation / empowerment
• Implement sustainable change, as required
• Building blocks for sustainable, profitable business growth

The VentureBean Approach followed broadly:

• Review of past data / MIS / information
• Review of existing processes
• Discussions with leaders, key members, teams to get their perspective on what is working and what is not.
• Participation in business meetings to check governance process
• Gap Analysis / Identification of Improvement areas – including documentation, systems and training requirements
• Course corrections / interventions required across process interlinkages / dependencies, organisation / roles and responsibilities were designed
• Governance mechanisms – to check for adherence / lapses, if any
• Course correction to ensure sustainability
• Coaching / mentoring – for top management + direct reports
• Training – technical / leadership development – for top management + direct reports
• Business research – Secondary – for identification of opportunity / landscape for growth. Execution of the research will be through VentureBean partners (at actuals)
• Business Planning – incl. value chain movement / mapping new lines of business – services or products
• Risk identification & management – Review / strengthen the business, financial governance process, technology risk etc
• Team building and management – profiling and screening for final rounds. Executive search will be through VentureBean partners (at actuals)
• Business Advisory : Operations Excellence & KPI Monitoring – weekly & monthly reviews

Results :

• Role clarity for top and senior management
• Attrition managed to single digits
• Newer and profitable service lines opened up
• Value-addition to existing customer base, improving revenue generation and profitability
• Actual performance @ 120% of targets
• US operations scaled