Here’s how you can make your startup stand out from the crowd

Mushrooming startups in India have taken the competition one level up as entrepreneurs are looking for aggressive and innovative ways to make their company stand out from the crowd.

In a country where two startups are founded every day on an average, it is important to ponder over the fact that why would someone invest in your venture.

So how does one stand out?

The idea is to start from the very beginning when you pick the industry you want to enter, advise successful entrepreneurs. Take on-demand tea provider Chai Point, started in 2010, which now sells 1.25 lakh cups of chai every day across four cities.

"We had come to something that is very close to the heart of all Indian consumers, given it a contemporary sheen and credibility," Amuleek Bijral, a Harvard Business School graduate who cofounded the company told Economic Times. When Chai Point started, online tea retail was an untested concept in India.

Chai Point is currently partnering with other companies to create more products, including breakfast items and packaged teas.

ET reported that investors cite a few basics to consider ahead of every investment opportunity - whether the market is large enough, the business model is sustainable, the technological platform is robust, the team has that all-elusive X factor, and importantly, whether the startup stands out from its league.

Now, once a startup has its territory marked out, the most important factor is to build a great product. "It's not enough for it to work or be functionally complete. Does it delight in an experiential way? Do you have an extraordinary product that people love to interact with?" Shekhar Kirani, partner at Accel India, told ET.

The next step in differentiation is to ensure that your product or service reaches customers seamlessly. As Talwar of Lightbox says, "Scale is
critical in India, and equally crucial is scaling at the right moment." The common bottom line weaving through all the elements is the
differentiation a customer perceives.

"The power to decide who is going to win in India has shifted from large companies to consumers. They have much higher expectations now than they ever had," Sid Talwar, partner at Lightbox Ventures, told the financial daily.

Lightbox Ventures has invested in one-of-a-kind companies such as InMobi, MapmyIndia, education tech startup Embibe and renewable energy company Kotak Urja.

The online world has changed the paradigm of distribution, which now varies differently across industries.

"The only way to start a brand today is to look at it in a holistic, omnichannel way, rather than the binary approach of online versus offline," said Bijral of Chai Point, whose consumer and corporate on-demand delivery services are growing at double digits every month. Chai Point provides a flask of hot tea on call, which can be booked online.

The last leg is to bring loyalty in a differentiated way than being perceived as a pushy sale. Nothing sells more than a good validation or a referral by a customer to his or her own peer network.
To do this, "you have to build stickiness into the product so that customers can be re-engaged," said Gaurav Dahake, founder and CEO of price comparison site BuyHatke told ET.

The three-year-old company came into prominence last year during Xiaomi's first phone sales in India, when its embedded browser extension helped customers order Xiaomi phones automatically whenever stock was available.

(Image: Thinkstock)