Praveer Shukla is an advertising and marketing professional with 35 years’ experience in India, Hong Kong, the US, and Oman. His clients have included Dupont, ITC WelcomGroup, ITC Golf, Uncle Chipps’, DCM,Escorts, Star TV, Rajasthan Tourism, Kashmir Tourism, The Oberoi, Milkfood, HM The Sultan of Oman, HH Mahesh Maharishi Yogi, among others.

He is sharing some of his “secrets” here and introducing his company, Onetree Content.

There’s a practical reason why we exist at OneTree Content. But before that, some quick facts from the Canadian Council of Small Business and Entrepreneurship:

• 85 million businesses start up annually.
• 64 million small firm deaths in 4 years.
• 16 million shut down in the very first year.
• Sad truth – most entrepreneurs will never get to see their dreams come true.
• In fact, in the next 10 minutes, as you read this, 1,522 new businesses will have downed their shutters for the last time. Talk about love’s labour lost.

Here’s my personal take on the business of entrepreneurship, as I’ve seen it over 40 years.

1. Its a winner-takes-all-world – so listen up.

Especially, if you’re a start up, an entrepreneur, or an SME, listen to experienced people, whether it’s professional groups or forums, your investors, mentors, or coaches. That way you won’t have to re-invent the wheel. And, when you fail – make no mistake about that, you will, at different stages – the people you listen to can be the difference between being stuck with failure and moving on to the next level in your enterprise. And, most importantly, you’ll cover the distance between Idea to Revenue in a much shorter time!

2. Money doesn’t buy products or services. People do.

Know your customers. At OneTree Content, we perform due diligence to know your service and your products cold. We get to know your customers like we know our own parents. We also get to know your product’s positioning in relation to your competitors—without repeated explanation from you which burns up your time and budget.

3. ROI

You’re thinking ROI = Return On Investment, right? Our take on this as specialists in market communications, is different. Unlike earlier times, today, a brand is not recognized by its trademark, mission statement, logo or slogan. That kind of branding went out of the window around the time that electricity was discovered.

Our kind of branding is recognized by the kind of conversations or content that our specialists create about your company, its products, its world, the people who use it, and also, the people who do not use it.

These are conversations that enliven, delight, and empower users. They’re created with authenticity, to communicate the uniqueness of a product or service. By participating and engaging in these conversations, customers are created and references are freely provided by them to other potential customers.

At OneTree Content, our version of ROI is this: Return On Imagination.

Talk with us. You’ll enjoy the conversation! That’s why we created the company!

- Praveer Shukla, Co-founder, One Tree Content

Each participating city has a dedicated “City Coordinator”  to link Start-ups with a pre-selected groups of Mentors from a variety of domains and verticals.

So far, successful events have been conducted at Ahemdabad, Bangalore & Mumbai.  Upcoming events are listed below:

• 05 June, 2010 @ Mumbai: http://mentoredge.com/event/mentoring-clinic-mumbai-ii
• 12 June, 2010 @ Pune: http://mentoredge.com/event/mentoring-clinic-pune-i
• 19 June, 2010 @ Delhi: http://mentoredge.com/event/mentoring-clinic-delhi-i

Earlier this month on May 15th, Aditi Gupta (in photo below) & Vineesh Kumar launched the Delhi Chapter by organizing a meeting of Mentors at IIT Delhi.

Mentors present included:

• Amrish Sahgal [First Left in photo below]
• Dr. CK Taneja
• Kris Nair
• Rahul Agarwal
• Rahul Verghese
• Ravi Kikan
• Sanjay Gupta
• Suhail Kassim [Centre in photo below]
• Amarendra Srivastava

Mentor Edge Meeting at Delhi

We had a good discussion on the ‘screening’ process for entrepreneurs: basic policy is “no rejections” but due diligence is taken in terms of helping applicant entrepreneurs to be well-prepared.

There was a longer discussion on ‘criteria & process’  to ‘match’ entrepreneurs & mentors. Ravi Kikan with a ‘backing’ of about 50,000 members in his Linkedin Group ‘Startup Specialists’ was keen to make it more democratic for entrepreneurs. The debate was too long to reproduce here. Suffice it to say that this initiative is from Mentors to empower entrepreneurs and facilitate an access to world class mentoring, long-term partnerships and ‘timely’ funds.

Last Day for applying for Delhi Clinic is June 5 2010. Apply Here: http://mentoredge.com/mentee/for-mentees.

Franchise 2009 Food, Beverage and Hospitality

Thursday, November 26, 2009. Ashoka Hotel, New Delhi. Day 1 of Franchise India 2009. Continued from Franchise India – Entrepreneurship Summit 2009 – Specialty Retail.

Another interesting session was “Business Opportunities in Food & Beverage Sector”. The speakers were:

• Mahmood Khan, Hospitality Expert Virginia Tech, USA
• Pavan Gandhok, CEO, Litebite Foods
• Gary Moore, MD,The Pizza Co., Thailand
• Rakhee Nagpal, MD & Chairperson of DVS (Moderator)
• Luis Daniel, General Manager, KRR International
• Ankur Sharma, General Manager Business Development , Yo China

Mahmood Khan shared how more than 200 fast food franchise brands have been in developed in USA – a critical factor being ubiquitous Highways (necessitating “quick bites”). He claimed that F&B is a recession-proof business because people will NOT stop eating. His another observation was that today’s customer does not have patience. Technology plays a big role in dealing with customer’s “instant needs”. So, you need to know “real needs of the customer” and continually watch “where the technology is going”.

Pavan Gandhok, CEO, Litebite Foods, opined that the challenge is to present local cuisines in an interesting manner – these items (like vada paav, paav bhaaji, samosa) account for 70-80% of the market and whosoever cracks this code is likely to make lot of money.

Gary Moore, MD, The Pizza Co., was excited about India and said that India is the biggest potential market we have seen in a long time. He emphasized on having “systems in place”. He said, “Brand is a promise of consistency” and successful entrepreneurs achieve that by engineering opportunities for the long-term. Apart from adequate capital, an entrepreneur needs to ask him/herself:

• What have I developed?
• What have I grown?
• What is my passion?

Luis Daniel, General Manager, KRR International, (who started his career as a McDonald crew 25 years ago) shared that after about 3-5 years when operational systems of a business have been set (facilitating smooth expansion), an entrepreneur can “work less and make more”.

Ankur Sharma, General Manager Business Development , Yo China shared that capital needs of a franchise business range from Rs. 3 lakhs to Rs. 1.5 crores. At the smallest level, Kiosk models can yield 100% ROI in one year. A full-fledged restaurant model  can yield 30-35% ROI in one year.

franchise restaurant services market size

Franchise India 2009

Thursday, November 26, 2009. Ashoka Hotel, New Delhi. Day 1 of Franchise India 2009 saw scores of enthusiastic entrepreneurs eagerly evaluating various franchise opportunities (300 brands) in India.

Billed as “Asia’s Biggest Franchise Show”, the event came alive in various sections - Brand License 2009, Entrepreneurship Summit ’09, Food & Beverage, Fashion franchising, Knowledge Series, Licensing and Retail.

What aroused our curiosity was the “Entrepreneurship Summit 2009″ conference series. Some of the speakers at “Business Opportunities : Specialty Retail” session were:

• Aloke Banerjee, CEO, Rosebys
• Vivek Bali, Group President, Spice Hotspot
• S.Ravikant, COO, Titan Eyewear
• N.P. Singh, Director, Samsonite
• Rajiv Agarwal, The Mobile Store
• Naveen Rakhecha, CEO, Cartridge World

S. Ravikant, COO, Titan Eyewear  was representing Titan, India’s “Largest Specialty Retailer” with turnover of Rs. 3000 Crores. He talked about his franchise offer, “Multi-Brand” Eye+ Retail Stores, as “World Class Optical Stores”. What makes this an attractive opportunity is the fact that most consumers in this space are clueless about quality parameters, concerned about accuracy of lenses and confused about lack of transparency in pricing.

N.P. Singh, shared how Samsonite’s innovations (from 1910) have made it a global leader with 34% of global luggage market share. He presented his Rs. 25+ lakhs franchise opportunity (3 year payback) with a unique offering – “obsolescence replacement”.

A recurring theme was “World Class” – world class products, world class operations, world class systems, world class training, world class technology and so on.

Rajiv Agarwal showcased “The Mobile Store” as a world class shopping experience for the existing fragmented mobile market with a chaotic shopping experience.

Naveen Rakhecha, CEO, Cartridge World shared his gyan, “Look beyond traditional franchise opportunities (Education, F&B, etc). Go for distinguished offering. Unique ideas are likely to give better returns”.

NEXT BUSINESS CAPSULE: Opportunities in Food & Beverage segment.

How CLEAR are you about your business goals, most profitable market segments, long-term strategy, day-to-day business operations and the integration of all these with your life goals?

You may have an immediate sense of what you think you want. It could be one or more of the following:

• Better Margins, More Profits, More Revenues
• More Customers, High Ticket Customers, Customer Retention
• New Market Segments, Products, Services
• Get out of day-to-day Firefighting (Crisis Management)
• Create more time for creating new avenues for your business instead of being stuck in day-to-day crisis handling
• Find better employees (who own their work and are proactive)
• Build Better Systems
• Streamline your operations in such a way that your employees take ‘complete responsibility’ for their roles & solve problems proactively instead of making excuses

Whatever is on your list, it is often difficult to decide where to start.

Seth Godin has a riff titled “The Priority List”. He says, the ability to decide “what to do next” is an underrated skill. For example, he says:

Is it better to email an existing customer, send a brochure to a prospect or improve your product a bit? Should you tweet or post a new blog post? Should you have a meeting to coordinate your team or spend ten minutes returning phone calls instead?

His tip:

Do you have a list? Have you figured out which metric you’re trying to improve? Can you measure the impact of the choices you make all day?

I see this mistake in business development all the time. Assume for a moment that the goal of someone in this department is to maximize profit. Why then would this group spend most of its time tweaking existing deals (looking for a 3% improvement in yield) instead of spending the same time and effort doing new, game-changing deals?

If you already have your LIST along with corresponding MEASURES, and you are still struggling to “Get Clear”, then what could be missing is clarity regarding your goals.

When did you last review your Goals? What are you REALLY up to?

Stephen R. Covey said “Priority is a function of context.”

So, WHY are you doing whatever you are doing?

Is that CLEAR?