A Business Plan for an It Start-Up

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The market share of smartphone operating systems worldwide in first quarter of 2015 was 78.0% for Android, 18.3% for iOS, 2.7% for windows and 0.3% for blackberry.1 As we can see, Android is dominating the market share followed by the iOS. This trend is followed can be seen in India as well because many smartphone brands are present in India and they are providing Android based phones with features like 3G, GPS, better cameras etc. at very low prices and India is a huge potential market for smartphones so we can see a substantial growth of smartphone users in India in near future.

Standard of living is getting better in India as earlier times and internet connectivity is also better, so more people are moving towards e-commerce business and this business has huge potential in Indian market. Now a days everything is available on internet from small items like stationary items to electronic products to huge furniture items. People are moving towards e-commerce because of availability of much wider product range, competitive price ranges with great discounts from various banks as compared to conventional retail stores. In addition, there is a huge market of second-hand products and many online e-commerce websites are available for same where people can consumers can do the dealing of second hand products themselves. There is a much potential in mobile application development also. As the numbers of smartphone users are increasing substantially, daily new applications are coming which users can install them on their phone and use them conveniently. So in recent times many e-commerce websites are also coming up with their mobile applications following the new growing trend of mobile apps. Only e-tailing industry in India is estimated at Rs.3600 Crore in 2011 and estimated to grow to Rs. 53000 Crore in 2015.2

SWOT Analysis of the Industry

Strengths

Weakness

- Facility of fast & cashless transactions

- Ease of Access

- Portable

- Fast and Effective

- Low initial investment

- Unpredictability of the Internet Services

- No face to face interaction

- Relatively lower consumer base

Opportunity

Threats

- Rapidly increasing market

- Government Support

- New areas to focus

- Well established competition

Strengths

- Facility of fast & cashless transactions: As users can pay directly to the merchant through e-transactions like net banking, credit cards and debit cards, so the transaction is smooth and there is no need to pay cash.

- Ease of Access: Internet and mobile applications can be accessed anywhere with the help of internet, so ease of access is also one of the strength.

- Portable: Mobile phones are portable and can be taken anywhere.

- Fast and Effective: Browsing an internet website or mobile application is generally faster than doing the same and collecting information manually.

- Low Initial Investment: IT based services can be started from the low initial investment cost as it does not require the huge setup like other services.

Weakness

- Unpredictability of the Internet Services: As IT services are based on internet, so during internet downtime, user would not be able to use these services

- No face to face interaction: In case of e-commerce, users buy the products online and it gets delivered at their home, so there would be no face to face interaction between consumer and buyers and some consumers may want to buy the products by visiting the store directly rather using the website or a mobile application.

- Relatively Lower Consumer Base: As the number of internet and e-commerce users in India still low, the revenues may not be higher as expected.

Opportunity:

- Rapidly increasing market: Internet and app-based services are still evolving and has a better potential in future to expand and grow and number of internet users are growing.

- Government Support: With the recent Digital India initiative, Government of India is providing support like procuring licenses online and making India better for new businesses, there is a good opportunity to grow your business in India.

- New areas to focus: There are still some ignorant areas which still need some focus in case of IT development like tourism, pharmaceuticals, grocery stores etc. There is an ample opportunity to grow your business in these areas.

Threats:

- Well established competition: As there are already well-established service based IT companies, so they may quote lesser price and hamper the business of a start-up company.

Marketing

For doing the on-ground marketing of our services, we have planned to hire a salesman. We’ll train him well and make him enough knowledgeable about our business so that he can give us our potential customers. The salesman will go to the grocery stores as well as the medical stores and explain our idea, our business strategy and the revenue that they can grow with the help of our services. He will show them a proper presentation if required and then give them a demo of our services. He will also tell them the benefits of using it for free for some time and then take the consent of the customer to use our services if the customer is satisfied. If the customer is not satisfied with the presentation given by the salesman, he/she can reach to us and we will present our idea to him.

For reaching out to schools, we will plan the meetings with the principal or different stakeholders and give our presentation ourselves to them so that they can benefit from our services. As a School is a bigger customer than general or medical stores, we have planned to give the presentation ourselves rather than using the salesman for this initially. If we could get enough schools, we will train the salesman for same and try to bring more schools as our customers.

Initially we are planning