[YS TV] 10 gaps to success - Murugavel Janakiraman of BharatMatrimony

TechSparks as a platform believes in showcasing Indian entreprenurship story, and we could not have asked for a better storyteller than this man. It was a homecoming of sorts for Murugavel Janakiraman, after his great talk at last year's TechSparks, which won a lot of hearts and minds.

Yes, his success with BharatMatrimony is well known, but there aren't many platforms in the country that would want him to speak about his journey as an entrepreneur. And with an audience which was predominantly entrepreneurial, it was a great sight, watching Murugavel share the highs and lows of his journey, which were previously not known.

There would be no presentation, no flowery language and definitely no pitching. This was a battle hardened entrepreneur who let his guard down and shared some intimate experiences through his journey of ups and downs that is entrepreneurship. As he imparted a lot of business lessons, he complimented them with heartwarming and gut-wrenching stories from his life.

What started as BharatMatrimony has today ventured into many other verticals in the internet listing space, even property, and across the most unlikeliest of geographies, like Pakistan. The hour long talk had audience in rapt attention and we could talk on and on about it. But why don't you see for yourself -

An accidental entrepreneur 

After running BharatMatrimony as a side business for over 5 years, many events in Janakiraman's life forced him to take it up full time. Here's why he thinks that his entry into entrepreneurship was "accidental" -

Revenue Gap

In a business, especially in its early days, capital is scarce. And as we all know, cash is king. So how did BharatMatrimony manage through this time? Watch this -

Value Gap

So you've built a consumer base and business is going well. But you want to scale. How do you do it? One way to do it is to provide more value to your existing clients. Here's what BharatMatrimony did -

Reach Gap 

In the year 2000, when BharatMatrimony was looking to scale, online payment was not a norm and most potential customers weren't comfortable paying online. What did BharatMatrimony do? COD of course! (Only, many years before COD)

Bottom line gap 

Another way to scale revenues is in working on ideas that directly feed into a company's bottom line. These might not be what you started out doing as the main business, but people like buying it anyway. What did BharatMatrimony do? Check this out -

Competition Gap 

Shadow boxing is the art of imagining your enemy's moves and planning against it. BharatMatrimony took this concept a step higher. Here's what they did to beat the competition -

Leadership Gap

What is a company today, would have started as an idea from one person's head. It is built and scaled in its early days on the will and tenacity of the entrepreneur. And at the end of the day, the company will either succeed or fail because of the leadership. How did Janakiraman take the mantel of leadership of BharatMatrimony? Watch this -

Stay tuned for more from Chennai TechSparks and don't forget to book your tickets for Pune.