ENTREPRENEUR/ STARTUP SPECIAL (5) Desert Safari

ENTREPRENEUR / STARTUP SPECIAL (5) Desert Safari





After the failure of his first startup CVBhejo, Nikhilesh Tayal may have given up on a job-hunting portal but not on Udaipur

CVBhejo could easily have been Rajasthan's naukri.com.

Started in Udaipur in 2011, the online hiring portal had a promising start -it got loads of resumés from candidates hunting for jobs in Rajasthan, recruiters were thrilled with the talent pool and the startup even managed to attract funding. But it shut down in October 2013.

“The business could not be scaled up and lack of paying capacity of people meant time was running out for us,“ recalls 33-year-old Nikhilesh Tayal, founder of CVBhejo.

Tayal, however, persisted with his dream of starting something of his own; last November he flagged off Stagephod, a marketplace for independent moviemakers.

Started with a seed capital `10,000, Stagephod has a list of over 200 filmmakers across India who have closed 30 deals in just seven months. The startup charges a commission of 10% from the filmmakers for every deal inked.

“Stagephod will not grow as fast as OLA or Snapdeal or Flipkart. A startup in smaller places like Udaipur needs time, patience and money,“ says Tayal, who had a harrowing time after the failure of CVBhejo.

Financially, it became difficult to survive and emotionally there was a void as his family didn't support him and Udaipur didn't have any startup entrepreneurs who could have empathised with his situation. For Tayal, a software engineer, leaving Bengaluru after three years at Infosys and a year thereafter with a startup to shift to Udaipur in 2011 appeared a Himalayan blunder.

To be sure, Udaipur has its advantages, vis-à-vis the metros, a lower cost of living and cheaper infrastructure being two of the bigger ones. But as Tayal puts it: “The cost of survival was low but the price of continuing was high.“

In his second attempt at starting up, Tayal decided to com bine his passion -he had a tryst with theatre when in school -with business. But didn't he ever think of bailing out from Udaipur?
“Startups can survive in Udaipur and flourish as well,“ he says, adding that one just needs to be a bit more patient. And Tayal is ready to play a patient game this time. The business model of Stagephod is such that it doesn't need to bother about the paucity of local talent or any infrastructure is sues as it's not just confined to Udaipur or Rajasthan. Recently, an NGO contacted Stage phod for a filmmaker in Dantewada in Chhattisgarh. “To our utter sur prise, we did manage to get hold of one,“ says Tayal. In a year or so, he reckons the business will hit a critical level, and that's when he will start scouting for investors.

“If investors see value in a scalable busi ness model and an efficient team, then I don't think location matters at all,“ he says. Clearly, Tayal believes even a non-metro can allow him to take centre stage.

Rajiv Singh

ETM31MAY15