Flora2000.com delivers flowers to 153 countries across the world. Only around 1% of the orders that it receives are to places where the company doesn’t have coverage
Chances are you haven’t heard of Flora2000.com. But the eight-year-old online flower retailer may well be the biggest Indian e-commerce company.
Flora2000.com is also one of the few Indian companies with trading partners in more than 150 countries, despite being just eight years old. DARE caught up with Flora2000.com’s founder, 37-year-old Rehan yar Khan to find out the secrets of running a successful global startup from India.
How the journey has been so far?
I am from a non-business background. My father is a working professional. I was studying in the UK to be a chartered accountant in the early-mid nineties when I saw a newspaper article saying the rules of agricultural import to India have been liberalized. But I noticed that the import agencies for most of the big commodities had been cornered by the big guys. So I chose a niche area, flower seeds, for import into India. Soon I also started dealing with the flowers, exporting them. In terms of capital, an agency is one of the easiest things to set up.
I ran it for about five years, till around 2000. But the industry was not growing fast enough because of regulatory issues, land laws, etc. So, I turned my attention to the retail side, to the US market. I saw that most of the flower vendors were focusing on the domestic US market and if you wanted to send flowers from the US to any other country, you did not have many choices. So Flora2000.com was born eight years ago. We had a full marketing effort and targeted up-market customers in America who typically also sent flowers abroad.
Today, we deliver flowers to 153 countries across the world. Only around 1% of the orders that we receive are to places where we don’t have coverage. By revenues, we are the number one e-commerce company from India, though there are no published figures.
What was the biggest challenge you faced?
The biggest challenge we faced as a startup was HR. It was extremely unstable. People were moving around a lot. I was determined to solve this problem. It took me three years to stabilize HR. What I realized was that we were not looking for the right kind of people. We did not know what to look for in people, what kind of traits to identify. We were recruiting people and they wouldn’t gel. Market is never the problem. The problem is maintaining quality and the ability to execute. Putting the right processes in place can help you achieve quality.
The first few people in the organization should be very passionate about what they are doing, relentlessly pursuing better quality, better growth. Unlike in a mature organization, which has the ability to absorb some of the faults of its members, the margin of error in a startup is very small.
Was being perceived as Indian a quality issue, especially in markets such as Western Europe?
Never be shy of being an Indian. Many people think that presenting yourself as an Indian is a disadvantage. Look at the Johns and the Janes in the call centers. A lot of Indian software companies have American addresses. People know who you are, they will figure it out.
That said, you know as well as I do how good or bad India’s brand is. That cannot be avoided. People will look at you in a particular way. The only way to beat that is to be even better than they are, more accurate, more quality-conscious.
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What advice would you give to smaller Indian companies looking for tie-ups on a global scale?
The first thing you have to realize is that there is such a thing as a global business standard. If you want to do business with global partners, you have to adhere to global practices and standards, whether you are an Arab or Korean or Japanese, everyone must adhere to the global standard.
One of the most important things to watch out for is time. On the global platform, you cannot afford to be late. In fact, you have to be early, not just on time. If you have to make a call at 4, call at 3:50. The same with payments—always be very, very early.
Another thing that we pay less attention to in India is presentation. I am shocked at how bad the presentation is, even of companies dealing with overseas partners and clients. You can be in the best of companies in India, but you may still give reports that are not aligned properly. In India, people think ‘what is there in presentation?’ We are fine as far as logical structure and content is concerned, but we don’t pay enough attention to the art of presentation, not just in documents, but also in displays and shops. On a global scale, these final finishes matter.
Another thing is promising something you know can’t be delivered to win a contract. If you can’t do it, say you can’t, and give a good explanation. You have to intelligently manage expectations. After telling your prospective client or partner what you can and cannot do, if he says yes, he is the right partner. Otherwise, you end up in a fantasy relationship.
Finally, a lot depends on the first few words that you say. First impressions are very important and it is crucial to ensure that you make the right one.
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