CIE conducted an interactive Lockdown Talks with Ajay Jain, Resident Mentor at CIE IIITH, as a part of ResilienceUnlocked series 2.0 – a Lockdown series designed for startups to tide over and unlock their potential during the pandemic.
Key Takeaways from the session
Time to take a step back and contemplate
Startups need to improvise their business strategy by understanding the basics of their business. This is the right time to ponder upon
- product testing and feasibility (whether the product is working or will it work or not?)
- Value offering (whether they are delivering satisfactory value)
- Positioning ( are they able to maintain their USP?)
Rework on Customer Segments
It is important for startups to do segmentation and sub-segmentation to be able to define their customers. Their marketing, pricing and offering must be in-sync with that segment so that their product is able attract a huge customer base during and after the pandemic.
Rethink the revenue model
Pricing needs to be thought on in a deeper understanding as ownership idea is reducing and subscription idea is trending in the current times.
Invest time and capital in Digital Marketing
Digital marketing is playing a vital role during this pandemic. This is the right time for startups to generate some relevant content for marketing so as to attract more and more customers hence startups should invest more time on improving the quality of content on their social media, blogs and websites by using tools that are available online.
Discover new sales strategy
Sales is the backbone of an organisation. The COVID times present a golden opportunity for startups to establish relationships and look for channels and partners. Startups should reset their sales manual and sales targets aligned with the current situation of the market. They should keep looking for better sales strategies and try getting innovative and bring something new in the market.
Keep an eye on the market
The reason why big companies work better is because their processes are better than the startups. To be able to keep up with the leading companies startups must align and enforce their product, sales and implementation processes. Alignment of the processes should be done in a manner where company is able to run without any dependency on people.
True Leadership sustains the crisis
Leaders shouldn’t lose their optimism in these tough times. They should keep their employees updated, while giving them honest reviews. The workforce of the company should be indulged in doing research & up skilling using the available digital platforms while keeping a metric record of their work.
To conclude, Startups should be willing to learn from their failures and improve further as
“Failure is not the end but giving up definitely”
Insightful? Watch this space for more such takeaways ↑→ https://cie.iiit.ac.in/startup-jukebox/
Know more about our ResilienceUnlocked series here https://cie.iiit.ac.in/resilience-unlocked/
Until next time!
– Sunita Kumari, Team CIE
