DARE - Because Entrepreneurs Do

“Disclosure: I’m not an MBA,” the opening line of our guest Speaker, Suresh Narasimha, founder of the Red Herring winner TeliBrahma, has proved his capabilities far better than many who have attended world class management schools.

Citing the fact that people are mostly averse to turning on their bluetooth, he states, “no-one wants to turn on their Bluetooth or receive messages until I give them a reason to do so.” And this is precisely the reason why he had to create a sustainable value for his target customers. In other words, he had to create a brand, which is nothing but submission of commitments that an entrepreneur makes and deliveries that customers can witness.

And thus by creating a strong value proposition, Suresh instigated people to turn on their Bluetooth which was their greatest challenge. The results show today more than 2.5 million people turn on their Bluetooth month on month.

Drawing from his experience, the speaker said it’s crucial to understand the needs of one’s customers. He says, “the most important thing today isn’t in knowing better than one’s competitors but better than one’s customers.” As it’s your customers who can make your revenue multiply. Apart from identifying the gap, it is important for any entrepreneur to have a purpose behind his enterprise. Suresh stresses on the 3Ps—Purpose, Proposition and Profits.

While it’s imperative for any enterprise to be built on a concrete purpose, it is equally important for the enterprise to make the right proposition to lure the customers. Explaining what a right proposition is, he said it could be a small tweet that you post for your customers. The tweet must convey the business message. To keep one’s customers engaged, Suresh suggests, “Keep tweaking the tweet (business proposition) and tweeting the tweak.”

Lastly, talking about profits, Suresh emphasis that making profits should be every entrepreneur’s agenda. He says, “reduction in one’s cost should be made only with the purpose of enhancing one’s profits and not to reduce price of one’s product/ service.”

Strictly advising against lowering the price and waging a price war, Suresh says, “if you are starting a price war, you are likely to lose out first as the bigger companies will outdo you soon for they have huge resources.”

Competitive advantage can be boosted with right partnership. However, Indian entrepreneurs do not entirely understand the benefits of right kind of model. People think they need to do everything. At the end of the day it is to provide your customers with “incremental ROI” and that can be achieved with right partnerships where your and partners expertise can be best utilised for the least cost.

Concluding the discussion, he said the winning mantra is in the right attitude and the right approach. To explain the same, he narrated a small instance, where a man while passing a construction site asked the first worker what he was up to and he replied, “I’m laying the bricks,” on asking the second worker, he said “I’m building a wall” while the third worker answered the same question by saying, “I’m building a temple”. Suresh points out that while all three were doing the same work, there was a huge difference in their outlook. He says to achieve greater heights one should be able see the bigger picture. It also helps in building competitive advantage and sustainable differentiation.

At the end of the session, Suresh took few questions from the audience-
Q. How do you price your product?
A. To price a product one must look at the alternatives the customers has. The alternative available to the customers is the deciding factor.

Q. How do you build reserves?
A. One way to do is conserve cash. Another is to increase your profit.

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