Induna.com brings to you one of the biggest movie collections online. Now, get a movie delivered at your doorstep

Watching movies will never go out of fashion. We all have a favourite movie we cherish and have an unmistakable connection with. Induna brings together a huge collection of Hindi and Bengali movies just so that you’re not deprived of watching that old forgotten classic. The site is a result of the passion of a few like-minded movie buffs who came together to create something they pined for. Jubin Mehta from YourStory.in caught up with founder, Aadarsh Agarwal to know more about Induna.Why the name Induna?

The website was launched in October, 2007. We know how frustrating it is when we are unable to find a movie we so much want to watch. Or to finally find it and pay for it, only to receive a refund a week later because the seller did not have the DVD in stock. It is our endeavour to change all this and more when it comes to buying movies and music online. Among other things, we assure fair pricing and that every Blu-ray, DVD, VCD or CD will be original, brand-new and sealed. Induna in Zulu means leader or chief. And the 'Ind' part of Induna gives the name a very Indian flavour. We thought it will be an apt name for a website that aspires to lead in the field of Indian Cinema in the online space.

What is your product range?

We offer one of the largest collections of Hindi, Bengali and Bhojpuri movies. We have just started offering Telugu and Marathi cinema and you will see increase in number of titles every month for both these languages. We will be offering Hollywood, Tamil, Malayalam, and films in other languages towards the second quarter of 2012. Eventually, we plan to offer every single music and movie title available for sale legitimately in India. We will also start offering books, magazines and merchandise related to movies and music shortly.

How do you ensure availability of a particular title?

We carry titles from almost all labels. We keep physical stock of every single title offered for sale at the website. Probably, we are the only player in the sphere who does not “catalogue-sell”.

What is your delivery range?

We ship to all destinations in India and abroad.

What is your USP? 

We have stock of over 1,00,000 individual units of DVDs, VCDs, Blu-rays and CDs ready to ship within 24 hours and this is our USP. This ensures that we don’t have to go knocking on the suppliers to fulfill an order or to issue a refund or a partial-refund because we were not able to source a certain title. Once an order is placed with us, we are all set to ship it within 24 hours.

How much capital was required to startup? Have you broken even?

We have been able to bring the portal to this stage from our own funding and profit generated through sales. We plan to move to a bigger facility and built a strong team, invest in stocks, advertise, etc. For this we will require access to large fund, we are looking to forward

to investor/venture capital fund to scale up the business.

How big is your customer base?

When we speak of online space the market is not limited to a geographical territory. We have customers from over 80 countries who buy regularly from us. Since our launch, we find a handsome increase in our revenue every quarter.

How do you market Induna?

Till now we have not spent any amount on advertisement and publicity for this startup. All customers have been won through experiences shared by our customers on various blogs, forums, referrals etc. We started a free movie mailing program SailingFlix where we mailed free movies to individuals to be watched and passed on. This gave several people a feel of the quality of our services and helped translating into business. Very recently, we have also started a referral-program. Website and blogs can put a link to DVDs and VCDs pointing to our site, and they get a certain percent of the merchandise value as commission if their referral leads to an actual sale. It’s in a nascent stage, and we have tied up with a select few websites at present. The results are encouraging.

How has your journey till now been and what are the challenges you face?

Being a self-funded venture, the biggest challenge for us was to be profitable in the shortest possible time. We did not have the luxury to spend on marketing or to have a big team, large space, etc, yet we had to start making sales and generate profit to meet our operating expenses and also invest in stocks at the same time. We were profitable within a year of our launch. I think it was due to the shopping experience we created for our customers that they returned to buy more from us and also referred us to their friends. Another aspect is that we paid a lot of attention to keep the cost of operations very low right from the beginning. The industry in India (DVD and CD supply chain - labels, distributors, logistics partners, etc.) was and still is fairly unorganized. It took us a good amount of time to develop the supply chain and build connections. While designing the portal and the systems we broke every rule in the book, we went by our instincts and experience and today we are proud of the fact that we have been able to build a thriving and stable business at Induna.

Go to www.induna.com for further details!

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