{"id":16190,"date":"2016-03-15T00:38:55","date_gmt":"2016-03-14T19:08:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.officechai.com\/?p=16190"},"modified":"2016-03-15T11:09:16","modified_gmt":"2016-03-15T05:39:16","slug":"why-the-pricebaba-offline-model-failed-our-learnings-and-journey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/officechai.com\/stories\/why-the-pricebaba-offline-model-failed-our-learnings-and-journey\/","title":{"rendered":"Why The Pricebaba Offline Model Failed: Our Learnings And Journey"},"content":{"rendered":"

[This article is a part of our First Person<\/a><\/span> series, in which \u00a0entrepreneurs and professionals share their stories\u00a0about their startups, lives and careers.]<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

As I sit down to write this blog entry on why our offline model failed, a realization sets in. All the hundreds of conversations with mentors, friends, colleagues and investors across the globe over the last three years discussing this business is now seeing a closure. Yes, at Pricebaba our identity has been connecting local retailers to consumers on the web and after INR 2 crore invested, over 2400 retailers in 15 cities on-boarded, INR 300+ crore worth of inquiries and 86+ million visits on Pricebaba.com<\/a><\/span>, we failed to make a business around this.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Pricebaba
Pricebaba founder Annkur Agarwal (Source: myventure.in)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Some of you probably already see where this is going. Let me put it upfront. We are very motivated by a challenge of solving a real problem, not copy a proven western model and paste it in India with our PR folks cooking up a story around our journey later on. What I am doing with this post is sharing a lot of details about how we did what we did, what we were thinking and decisions we took. Thus, we do not want to be just another name written off the race with a face saving acqui-hire or shut down with vague wordings on our homepage.<\/span><\/p>\n

Also, before we begin, let\u2019s be clear. Pricebaba.com is a 25-member strong team and I am incredibly proud of what we have done so far and what we continue to work on. Yes, we aren\u2019t dead. I would have said \u2018we aren\u2019t dead yet<\/strong>\u2019. It isn\u2019t uncommon for every startup to pitch their venture with such vigour \u2014 that their idea will happen and not may happen, no matter how uncertain the outcome. However in the below post, I will keep the pitching hat aside. We are a very powerful team working on a tough problem that accommodates our learnings from running Pricebaba all along. Survived by our user traction and revenues (yay), we are just getting started in our journey to create an impact.<\/span><\/p>\n

So here is the Pricebaba offline model dissected.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Our understanding of the market before starting Pricebaba<\/span><\/h3>\n

A big belief statement and documented analysis of the market is not how we started Pricebaba in 2012. It was a lot of chaos back then, but decoding now, here is what we spoke about and what we believed<\/a><\/span>.\u00a0We didn\u2019t see value in just showing online prices from various sites to a user because that just seemed like a very simple problem and had no USP.<\/span><\/p>\n