Once Michel de Montaigne, a French philosopher and writer said, “Wit is a dangerous weapon, even to the possessor, if he knows not how to use it discreetly.”
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Rajat Tuli and his friend Rahul Anand surely knew the art of using wit in a way that was not much known in India. They started their brainchild “Happily Unmarried’, a retail store of fun products in the year 2002. Since then the entrepreneur duo have been spreading and selling fun.
DARE recently spoke to Rajat Tuli, a sneak peak of the conversation goes under-
q) How did you come up with the idea of launching Happily Unmarried?
Happily Unmarried emerged when me and my partner Rahul were trying to look for accommodation. We both had joined a company in Hyderabad and none was giving us their place on rent because we were bachelors. This led us to the thought of creating a brand which caters to the need of the young bachelors. Since everything in our country is targeting families be it malls or movies.
q) What do you call the concept as?
We are in the business of selling fun; we do it through products, through live music festivals and now by providing our skills to design spaces.We organise a music festival called music in the hills, we have done 6 so far. The idea is to bring live music performers and good audiences together in a beautiful setting this is usually in a resort away from the big city. This is an ideal chilling out time and our idea of fun. The next one is in August in Khimsar which is a beautiful fort hotel.
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Designing spaces
Lately we have been getting offers to make spaces fun and youth friendly. We have done a bowling alley in Noida and are presently designing 3 bakeries. For the bakery we are doing communication, designing the bakery per se and a range of merchandise to sell at the bakery itself.
q) What was your prior occupation before launching Happily Unmarried?
Both Rahul and I were working for a tech company in Hyderabad.
q) What was the initial funding? Where did it come from?
We had no funds to start with. As the company we were working for went bust and did not pay salaries for 6 months. They had given us a Dell laptop we pawned the laptop for Rs. 50, 000 and started.
q) What challenges you faced to establish Happily Unmarried?
Challenges were aplenty from convincing people about the idea to raising funds. When we started there was no concept of fun products for Indians so we had no references. We pretty much created our own path based on what we felt could do well.
Raising funds is always a challenge.
q) Do you retail online also? Who designs your products?
Yes, we sell through our website www.happilyunmarried.com we are very optimistic about the net business. It’s got a huge potential.
We work with over 23 designers who design our products.
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