Bluegape | Make it your own

Past life

Sahil Baghla, 22, and Ayush Varshney, 20, met at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur, in August 2011—Baghla was in his final year of chemical engineering and Varshney in his second year of electrical engineering.

The initial idea of Bluegape.com was to sell posters online. “My room-mate was looking to buy a poster of actress Megan Fox in Kanpur or online and could not find anything. So I decided to set up a website to sell posters. Ayush was introduced to me by some friends and helped me make the website. That’s how we became partners,” says Baghla, who is from Bathinda, Punjab.

The enterprise moved to Delhi after Baghla graduated because their idea was selected by TLabs (a Times Internet Ltd initiative which nurtures ideas and projects of Internet and Mobile entrepreneurs) for initial funding and a six-month mentorship in March 2012. Baghla had written to them explaining their idea and was called for a meeting.

At the time Bluegape was doing close to 20-25 sales transactions per day. “For the initial six months they provided us with office space in Gurgaon—mostly a desk, computer, two chairs, and introduced us to the basics of marketing and business development. The incubation programme included mentoring sessions, understanding the basics of email marketing, what kind of software is effective, how to read a balance sheet, etc.,” explains Varshney, who is from Mumbai.

Eureka moment

Baghla and Varshney say the people at TLabs were not initially as excited by their idea of selling posters online as they were keen to understand how the boys were running a business while at IIT. “They said this idea (of selling posters online) is not scalable since there is not a big market for posters in India. Scrap it and do something else was their advice,” explains Varshney.

The duo say they were clear they wanted to build a company that would reach out to college students and people in tier 2 towns with products these people were keen to buy with their limited purchasing power. “People in such places also want to own fancy things such as bean bags or personalized coffee mugs, but cannot always afford or even find them. We decided to shift focus on making our site a place where college students can find cool stuff,” explains Baghla.

The idea for fan merchandise came when the duo met the creator of Garbage Bin, a Facebook page with more than 300,000 “likes”, at a Comic-Con event in Delhi. “He has created some great characters and has a lot of passionate fans. He wanted to monetize his page and we saw an opportunity to reach out to his fans with products that had these characters,” says Varshney.

The first collection of posters with Garbage Bin characters sold more than 500 posters in 30 minutes in November. “We realized this is a big market. When people are fans of something or someone, they will buy those products,” Varshney say. This is how Bluegape went from being a site selling posters to one specializing in fan merchandise and customization.

Genesis

This is not just about setting up an online sales site. The duo say they are at a stage where they are trying to understand how users behave while shopping online. “What are the distractions, how many people actually purchase the goods, how can we convert viewing into sales—we are trying to figure all this out,” says Baghla.

“We realize what we are doing is similar to what Disney is. We are now looking at how this market works in the West. In India, no one is making money from fan merchandising except perhaps Chhota Bheem (a character created by Green Gold Animation Pvt. Ltd) because manufacturing set-ups and distribution channels are not well established. Handling individual manufacturers is a real pain. We have studied their model (Chhota Bheem’s) and are trying to work along those lines,” says Baghla.

The site is concentrating on acquiring the rights to tag lines such as Mountain Dew’s “Dar ke aage jeet hai” and Tata Nano’s “A promise is a promise”, and also looking to tie up with car companies to make the merchandise available for sale at showrooms. “We have pitched to these clients with suggestions on what kind of designs to use on T-shirts, etc. and also suggested product lines,” says Baghla.

Bluegape has closed deals with Tata Motors for the Nano (for coasters, travel bags, water bottles) and the band Indian Ocean (for T-shirts, posters).

The duo have divided up their work for now since Varshney is still in college and cannot be present in Delhi all the time. “I handle the business and Ayush looks at the technical challenges,” explains Baghla. Product designs are updated every fortnight on Bluegape and new products are added once a month (in May they introduced tank tops for girls).

Reality check

Brands want to understand why people are likely to buy T-shirts, mugs, etc. with their tag lines, logos or characters. “We have to explain how and why fan merchandising works abroad and why it will work here too,” says Baghla.

Plan B

Both say they have no other plan. “There is always the option to take up a job or study further, but as of now, we have no plans to do either,” says Varshney. “I don’t believe in an MBA anyway. A course does not teach you business sense,” adds Baghla.

Secret sauce

The fact that they have technical expertise and are tuned to how young Indians shop on online retail stores. “People are mostly shopping from 11pm to 3am, especially when they want to buy things for their own use. We have noticed that this is the time period during which we get maximum transactions, not just hits. This is the time when both of us monitor the website,” says Varshney. Also, they don’t spend the profit they may make—they are still using their old laptops and aim to conserve funds so they can expand.

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