You’re reading an eChai Interview, an insightful and candid conversation with Entrepreneurs — a publication of eChai Ventures.

eChai Showcase : SkinSecrets.in

Today we are introducing one of the startup which demoed at the 9th Ahmedabad Edition of eChai Demo Day in association with MICA Incubator - SkinSecrets.in - One of the largest online platform in India to discover only the best spa, saloons, skincare clinics and products .  They currently have the presence in 7 cities and are rapidly expanding into other cities.

Here is the eChai with Tejash Mehta, Co-Founder, SkinSecrets.in.  Tejash has 11 years of professional work experience and before starting up SkinSecrets.in he has earlier worked with startups in Web Analytics and eCommerce space.

How did you come up with the idea of ‘Skinsecrets.in’?

Back in 2012 I wanted to start an ecommerce business but after researching and talking to lots of seasoned entrepreneurs I learned that eCommerce is not my game as of now but still wanted to enter the internet and online business so thought why not to start a content based online business.

After doing some Google keyword searches and market analysis trend, I got stuck with upcoming boom in beauty and wellness Industry which is pegged to be multi-billion $ in India. 97 million+ online customers searching for specific brand information and reviews in India . 40 Million users check reviews online first and then visit the place or make purchase decision. Due to increasing income there are huge number of spa, saloons, skincare clinics providers coming up and consumers will be interested in knowing and finding about them online.

That’s it. I decided to go ahead with creating a service/product discovery platform for skincare segment and started Skinsecrets.in. I was alone at that point of time and did not had enough money to go ahead and recruit people for my start up so following The Lean Start Up concept , I started blogging about skincare clinics , trends , tips , reviews on products on my website so that I can test the market and validate my idea. During that time I applied for incubation at icreate and got selected as well however I was not able to join the batch due to some reason. As per my expectation it worked well and I started getting 10k visits a day from India and US. The domain got Google page rank 1 in the first 3 months only without spending even single penny on paid marketing or link building ( frankly I did not had any money at that time to spend :-) )

I was going steady for almost a year and half and then I met my old friend Dhaval Shah ( we used to work together at Vodafone India for more than 5 years ) and he was interested in this concept and said we can work together. I was more than happy since I needed a co-founder who can bring more values in terms of business skills and of course somewhat money!!

Dhaval is successful business men having tasted good fortunes in business verticals like internal lead generation business , account process outsourcing , recruitment process outsourcing hence he was best fit for me to learn business dynamics and it could not have been got better to work with your old friend

So now it is great combination since I am good at web analytics , spotting upcoming trends , seo and internet marketing and he is good at hard core business skills , we complement each other well. Even in nature also we complement each other well because he is very aggressive and outspoken and I am little calm and speak very less.

What problem are you solving?

There are thousands of spa, saloons and skincare clinics established and many more are coming up hence it becomes very hard for any consumer to find which one is best and which one is not. We wanted to provide a dedicated platform where consumers can find the list of spa, saloons, skincare clinics with details like address, contact number , operation timings , offers , menu/services offers with charges and most important ratings and reviews of real users or those who have been at this place so that if a person is looking to visit that particular place then he can get fair idea before visiting it.

How does it work?

To find best spa, saloon, clinics on Skinsecrets.in, it is very simple and easy. Just log on to Skinsecrets.in, type name of the spa, saloon or clinic and hit search, you will get them on your screen. Although we have provided more search filters in case consumers need it.

What is your target market?

Broad Target Market is males/females who visit and/or are interested in visiting a spa, saloon or skincare clinics and are searching for detailed information before visiting these places.

Specifically for Spa our target market is – Girls /Females mainly who are working or are in college , have disposable income , are decision makers themselves and use internet to find information on first hand r

Specifically for saloons – males+ females who are looking to change their existing saloon and wants to have new haircut or style ( generally people do not change these saloons since they have been going to this places since ages ).

Specifically for clinics – males + femalse who are suffering from skincare diseases and are looking for best doctor to cure such disease.

What is your competitive advantage?

Our platform is not only the largest dedicated online platform for skincare segment but we have most accurate information and are coming up with exclusive deals for our consumers which cannot be find anywhere else.

It is simple, fast and easy and we have dedicated vendor relations manger to assist them on real time basis and we have dedicated feedback number for consumers to share their views.

How much time did it take you from conceptualization of 'Skinsecrets.in' to actually launching it in the market?

It took around 1 and half years. Initially as I mentioned earlier I wanted to test waters hence I started only blogging about my concept, after getting huge response luckily I found my co-founder and we planned a commercial launch in April 2014.

Tell us more about your team.

We have in total 9 people right now with us and are working full time. Two founders , 3 web developers , 1 content associate , 1 web developer trainee, 1 listing verification tele caller and 1 vendor relations manager

Our team has an average experience of 2.6 years and average age of our team is around 25 years , so we have youngest team with full of energy to crack the market :-)

Also we are in process of recruiting 10 more people for Business Development in cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Pune.

What is your technology stack?

We have developed our product on core php since it is most robust and scalable as well. Our hosting is on cloud with well known Amazon web services to make sure our consumers have one of the best experiences when they visit us.

We will be launching our new website design by 20th Feb and also our android app as well.

How do you plan to market your product? What are your customer acquisition strategies?

We have two platforms for our consumer’s web and app. We will be starting our paid marketing campaigns majorly focusing on our app downloads. We have finalized vendors who have decent success ratio in digital marketing and customer acquisition hence we are hopeful to generate lot of buzz nationally in next 3 months

To give little light on what we have asked our vendor to do is email marketing + social media marketing to start with and once we learn from this first phase we can add or delete channels of marketing.

What is the revenue model of ‘Skinsecrets.in’?

Vendor listings are free on our website however of a vendor want to promote their business and generate more leads and business they have to pay us which depends on which page they want to get featured and how aggressive want to generate leads . Revenue channels like website, app, our email database and sms . We also do on call promotions and customized campaigns as well. Prices depends on elements to be included in marketing which can range from Rs 5k to 50k.

What do you want to achieve from this? What is your larger goal or vision?

Our larger goal to enhance lives of end users which are consumers who are searching information online and our vendor partners to generate more leads in this competitive environment .

Our platform will have close to 90% of vendors registered and verified with us and exchange best practices between them. In a way we will be creating a community itself for vendors to increase their visibility on their expertise, share their pains, etc.

What sort of support and feedback are you looking from the community?

We are looking for open feedback and suggestions to improve our product . It can be technology, revenue model anything.

SkinSecrets.in - screenshot.

Tejas Mehta presenting SkinSecrets.in at eChai Demo Day in association with MICA Incubator.

SkinSecrets.in co-founders - Tejash Mehta and Dhaval Shah

Team SkinSecrets.in