eChai with Santosh Kalra, Co-Founder, Rukmani Arts n Exports

Our today's guest for eChai with an Entrepreneur is Udaipur based - Santosh Kalra, Co-Founder, Rukmani Arts & Exports, which is a leading manufacturer and Exporter of Natural Stones, Marble, Granite, SandStone and Handicraft Items.

Here is the insightful and candid conversation with Santosh Kalra. Join the conversation to ask any specific questions to him.

Early Years : When did it first strike you to begin this venture and why? Your Eureka Moment (the moment you decided to be an entrepreneur).

I was working as a freelance web developer in 2003-04. During this period I needed to explain (do marketing) a lot many potential clients about getting a website done to promote their business in cyber space. It was not easy. During the same period my younger brother Pradeep Kalra was doing Masters in Internation Business. He suggested that instead of convincing export businesses, let us become exporters. That was the moment we decided to take risk and start our own company.

He only suggested that India is rich in heritage art and crafts, so we should set up an art export company. Hence Rukmani Arts & Exports was born in 2004 August.

Business Venture : What is your business model and what problems does it solve? What are market opportunities? How is it different from your competitors? How do you generate revenues ?

My business is not any IT business or service in a sense. We use our website to generate inquiries & business. We are engaged in Ethnic Arts & Crafts Products. Specifically we deal in Art Décor products, which are used in Interior & outdoors Décor. We have a little art showroom at Udaipur. We serve needs of individuals, Interior Designers & Architects & Luxury Hotels & Villas.

There is tremendous market for Décor and out of that Ethnic Interiors is a niche area and preferred by NRIs & Wealthy & Prosperous Indian clients. Our website offers them choices to select from around 14,500 products.

We have our own manufacturing Units and quality artisans. So we offer best quality art & craft décor products at attractive prices.

Sales : How did you make your first sale and how much time it took you from starting up to closing the first sale ? How long is your sales cycle ?

We did our first sales in the first 3 months of launching our website. It took some 2 weeks to get our first client. The project was to décor an NRI house in New Jersey.

Company Culture : What kind of culture exists in your organization? How did you establish this tone and why did you institute this particular type of culture?

We believe in age old tradition of doing business. Team Work, Hard Work, Commitment, Honesty. Responsibilities are only given to those who are able to take it. It is simple. We ask our team to take good care of clients and the company will take good care of yours.

We believe the biggest social responsibility of any organization is to make profit and make team members happy. And to make profit an organization needs happy & paying customers. So every dedicated & responsible team member is rewarded to encourage others to perform well.

Partnerships : What are your views about finding the right Co-Founder ? How did you find your business partner? According to you who is the ideal business partner?

Finding right Co-founder(s) is important. An organization needs a vision & objective. In our case, we were so lucky. My younger brother Pradeep is Co-founder. As brothers & co founders, we have very well clearly understood objectives of our organization. We have same goals. I feel brothers or friends are best business partners. Disagreement and argument between co-founders and brothers are not uncommon.

Hiring - How did you hire your first employee ? And in general what's your hiring policy ? How important have good employees been to your success?

We hired our first employee from a friend’s referral, currently we use news papers, facebook and other local news media websites to find employees.

The most part of our organization are artists & craftsmen, we need to train new craftsmen under our existing master craftsmen.

We believe an organization is only as successful as the people working there. Every person need to be good at doing the job in best possible manner he is responsible for. Besides one should be able to identify new opportunities for growth of organization and oneself.

Learning : How did you handle your disappointments and failures?

This is part of life, it hurts to fail & disappoint. We try to look inside what went wrong and where we were lacking. If it is possible to improve, we work hard to improve on those areas otherwise it is perfectly ok to accept failures sometimes. One can not be sure of successes in every venture or efforts. We believe in what Dale Carnegie said (Rephrased a little, I could not recall the words exactly), “any person is only 49% or right in making decisions, if one is 51% sure of ones decision, he should go to WALL STREET and speculate every day, millions of dollars are waiting for him.”

Vision: What's your vision for your venture. What do you want to accomplish in your life ? What are your future aspirations?

Our vision for our company in next 10 years is to take up extra ordinary projects in the field of Art Decor. We wish to be first choice of contact to the worlds Best and Creative Interior Designers & Architects. Our company’s mission is to create marvelous products for them, when they are looking for a reliable team to do their dream jobs.

Our understanding of accomplishment is to have happy & satisfied clients. Obviously a large number of clients feels more accomplished. We always try to be better than yesterday in our field, every single day.

Our future aspirations are to set up a world class Autonomous Institute to Preserve Heritage of Indian Arts & Sculpture in Marble City - Udaipur. We wish to maintain ethnic & tradition arts & crafts legacy of India. We wish to offer training to new students, students from NRI & abroad. More Specifically, We wish to help our nation by preserving our heritage of traditional arts n crafts of Havelis.

Work-Life Balance : How do you find a balance between work family and social life?

Indeed it takes some time, efforts & determination to balance work-family life balance. It is not easy. As a business entrepreneur you have responsibilities for your business. You think of your venture all the time. The family & personal life time is consumed to grow and maintain your venture. It is hard to balance but possible.

We need to understand that your dream venture is just one thing which will make you happy. At every age your friends and family are important. There health & happiness should be your priority. They are the people who will be happy for your success, you will be happy with them only. So it is necessary to spare some time to enjoy the life outside your dream venture. You must spend sometime

It is necessary to be with your friends and family in good n bad times of life. Chetan Bhagat has said “Nobody remembers those perfectly pitching PowerPoint Presentation & revenue graphs & business successes at the old age.”

Risks : Which was the boldest decision you ever made to have this venture work?

In 2004, We did not know whether our website will generate business for us or not, so we started an offline showroom of art pieces to support our venture. Setting up an art store required an handsome amount. We believed in our choice of art exports, so to arrange the money we mortgaged family home to get a bank loan to start our business. It was a bold decision to make, incase the art field would have not worked for us, we would have been struggling to even repay the loans. Luckily we got some decent clients in the first year itself. We were able to repay our loans in the first year itself.