Today's #StartupsInAhmedabad story is about Alagrand.com. 

Here's the candid an insightful conversation with Mitesh Shethwala, Founder, Alagrand.com.

How would you describe Alagrand.com in 1 Sentence?

Alagrand.com is Fastest Growing Hyperlocal Fashion Marketplace for Unorganized Brands, Factory, Manufacturers, Traders, Designers to Sell their products across INDIA hassle free.

What was the eureka moment? When did you get started with your venture? How did you acquire the early customers for Alagrand?

There have been multiple Eureka Moment but the one I can’t forget is our first seed round of investment. 

After meeting more than 100 Investor one on one we managed to receive our 1st seed round of investment at a valuation of 20 Cr. 

The first thought of starting this venture was on the day Alibaba did a turnover of around 9,000 Cr in 24 hours on 11 Nov 2014. It took 11 months to design a POC for us post that. The early sellers were acquired through one on one meeting and the customers through educating them in the various events about our products and pricing and a bit of social media too helped us.

How did you meet your co-founder and/or the first employee?

I don't have a co-founder, however, the first employee is not less than co-founder. 

I met him at Kitli (over chai) at Paldi, NID while I was talking to one my friend about my aspiration to start a business. 

He was just sitting behind listening to my conversation, interrupted to ask if he can join. It has been 6 years now he is CTO of Alagrand.com today.

What is your traction? What are the interesting numbers about Alagrand.com that you would want to share with the community?

Alagrand.com hosts 1000+ Sellers, 30,000+ Live Inventory of Unique Products, 6+ Delivery Partners, 15000+ Deliverable Pin Codes, 8+ Payment Options and total Inventory of Value above 200 Crores!

The Interesting Number is our Alexa Rank: ~17000 without putting a single penny in any paid Marketing Activity since the launch.

Below numbers are far ahead than any Fashion E-commerce store you know or you have heard about including big brands like Jabong, Ajio, Myntra, Voonik, Limeroad etc.

Bounce Rate: 26.60%

Daily Pageview Per Visitor: 8.90

Daily Time on Site: 16:49

Which is the most recent challenge you faced and how did you overcome that?

Out of a number of challenges that we face every day, Creating out of the box Inventory Management System was a key challenge. 

We have carefully crafted state of the art Seller Inventory Management System which not only lets each and every seller create/manage their inventory over fingertips but also reduces the number of hours spent on managing this product every day.

Inventory management system: Alagrand.com/Seller

One of the most recent challenges was to create a fashion blog and let fashion blogger create their unique content and publish on our website. Our in-house team has managed to create the blog: Blog.alagrand.com, we received more than 140 Application to become a blogger on alagrand.com in just 24 hours of creating an internship.

What are your growth plans for the next 1 year?

Our new Web & Mobile App Design is under development, also we are creating one of the industry's best Referral System. 

Once we complete both we are going aggressive for vendor acquisition and selling activity. Alagrand.com will bring the best of the best products at the most amazing price on the platform in the next 3 months. 

We are expecting a good number to cross this year in turnover :-)

What was that key moment of Alagrand.com's journey that put Alagrand.com in a high growth trajectory?

There are a couple of moments which has helped and it is still helping us to grow at a faster scale. One of them was Receiving First Round of Private Investment and a Government Grant of 21.2 Lakh which has helped us to hire the right resources.

You can ask more questions to Mitesh in the comments section.
..
ps: Get Your Annual eChai Pass for Startup Networking Events (50+ Events) in 15+ Cities in India for Rs. 1000 at eChai.in.