The Fundamental Flaw In All Indian Startups

Everyone loves startups. Who doesn’t? I mean they have opened the doors of possibilities to make life easy and comfortable and do things that couldn’t have been done had those startups not been present. They have made the never thought before things easy to do. They have created demand for things that never existed. Now they have become more of a ‘need’ than a ‘want’. Millions of Indians use them use these apps on persistent basis and now you need not sweat it outside to get things done. All can be done from home with the internet. Almost everything can be delivered at your doorstep at easy. India has slowly been switching from the traditional business to these startups.

Talking about The Fault in Our Startups, there is a flaw that no one seems to have sorted and I still cannot wrap it around my head how no one has raised any argument about that. If it is fixed, it would open doors for a new customer data base and would raise the revenue exceptionally. So what do all the big startups have in common?

Most of the startups don’t have any night operation. For the working class, it is impossible to avail any services of startups like Flipkart, eBay etc. So basically they are losing out on business from them. They are losing out on business from bachelors and the bachelors are the highest paying people as they want to find the alternatives to the jobs they have to do on their own. What the startups fail to understand is that weekends, for youth, are for social activities and not chores. They don’t want for the delivery boy to deliver the things on their day-off. Add to that: Waiting for the laundry man to show up; and Get household cleaning done.

The solution for this is as following:

• Use combination of employees for different shifts.

• Use AI and automated response system for better services.

• Have a dedicated staff to respond even at odd hours.

• Have option for users for the time slot when the services would be rendered or goods delivered.

• GPS tracking on delivery agents to assist them to find the location and quicken the process.

Some startups have tapped into it and are understanding that the largest of their customer service database runs on odd hours and those who have not, it’s time for them to do this or they would be losing out on customers very soon. Uber, Ola, Swiggy, Foodpanda, Zomato, Faasos have done well to adapt to the situation.