Nothing beats a gift with a personal touch. Nothing beats owning an item that is unique and no one else owns it. And that precisely is the mission of German incubator, Rocket Internet backed startup Printvenue.com.
Printvenue was founded in 2012 by Saurabh Kochar who was previously associate at McKinsey and Co.
The startup offers a range of customized gift items such as photo-mugs, photo-notebooks, pen drives and iPhone cases. The online portal can also be used for ordering office stationery, business cards, letterheads, cardholder and other personalized accessories. It provides its customers with about 40,000 designs available across products. According to a study, the market size for printing services is about $12 Bn with a growth rate of 15% Year on year. Thus, the market demand shows the opportunity.
“The main idea behind it was to actually bring the ease of customization in the printing sector to the homes of the Indian customers in a big way,” says Saurabh Kochar, founder of the company which has served a million Indians, and serviced 300,000+ orders.
Printvenue was launched with 5 products and 11 employees in the year 2012, which has now grown to 300+ products and 80 employees. It has been doing business with individuals and corporate as well, and has a pan India presence, including cities like Delhi NCR, Bangalore, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Pune, Ahmedabad, Chandigarh, Indore and Jaipur. It also has an international presence in Singapore.
Its clientele includes youth based out of tier-1 cities and self-employed professionals. The startup is experiencing the growth of 21% month to month in last 2 quarters.
Funding and Capital
The company does not get a ball point figure, but receives funding completely based on their needs from time to time. “ We have been getting calls from various domestic & international venture capital funds who are quite interested in this model,” said Saurabh.
Challenges
Handling an ecommerce business comes with many challenges. However, the three key challenges that Printvenue faced includes – targeting the right audience, infrastructure and execution. “First one is – how do you induce/ change buy behaviour, especially for very touch and feel subjects eg. Print. Secondly, it’s about knowing the right technique of over delivering on execution basically to bind customer interest. Lastly, there is a dire need of great infrastructure so that all activities fall in place and result in smooth functioning of an organization,” shares the founder Saurabh Kochar.
Marketing & Creating awareness
It’s important for every startup to create awareness of its products via marketing. Printvenue is focussing on online marketing and social media to create awareness about the concept and its products. Regular It also sends out a regular newsletter to customers and fans to stay in touch with them. Previously, it has also done a wave of TV commercial last season to create mass awareness.
For future, Printvenue would like to broaden its reach in the home and décor sections with main focus on female population and personalized gifts.
