Have you pedaled The Yellow Cycle? Gift an out oftheordinaryexperience!

Talking over a sinful chocolate indulgence, I caught up with Neha Arora, founder at The Yellow Cycle, to talk about experiences. Arranging the meet in itself was an experience which made me aware about the perils of ‘abundance’; two Costa Cafes within 2 kms and the ensuing confusion! Contrary to this, The Yellow Cycle is a gifting service which allows you to gift your loved ones amazingly pleasant experiences; ranging from a picnic at a vineyard to a helicopter ride over the city skyline!It’s all in the Name

The logic is pretty simple. “In this fast paced world, I want people to take a dose of the ‘Chill’ Pill and according to me; a cycle represents this mood the best. And as colour theory tells us, yellow is the colour of happiness. This gives us The Yellow Cycle”, explains Neha with a smile. The name arouses a certain amount of curiosity and the website layout and execution manages to grab eyeballs. The Yellow Cycle certainly gives an admirable first impression.

Neha, who is a graduate from St.Xavier’s and holds a post graduate degree in mass communication from Symbiosis, Pune, has worked with some of the top notch companies like HCL Technologies and Hewlett Packard. Having worked for more than half a decade, Neha always had the entrepreneurial bug and took the plunge in October 2011. The idea originated from the quandary she entered into when she was looking to gift something unique to her husband. Her husband, who is a foodie and would have loved any experience related to food but she couldn’t find any. There are many such gift experience providing services in Western countries and this is how the idea of The Yellow Cycle was planted.

The Pedaling Mechanism- How does it work?

The site lists various experiences which one can gift to a person. After sieving it down to one which can be a pretty daunting task, you can confirm the order by calling The Yellow Cycle. The payment can be done by cash or cheque and then the recipient can redeem the gift within the next 6 months.

“Supposing you gift someone an experience to fly a plane, the Yellow Cycle team manages the entire process and a unique point here is that the whole facilitation process is carried out by the team members to ensure care to every detail”, says Neha proudly. This is possible at the current stage as the service is offered only in Bangalore but it’d be interesting to see how the processes are set up once the business expands.

Inflating the tires- How is the money made?

Gifting an experience through The Yellow Cycle could cost you from anywhere between Rs 2,850 to Rs 24,500. Yellow Cycle has tie ups with different agencies from whom they earn a cut. “A strong foundation and a thorough research was necessary for laying this groundwork before starting The Yellow Cycle and the whole process took about 4 months of focused effort”, explains Neha. Being hardly 5 months old, The Yellow Cycle manages to carry through about 12 transactions a month and the number is growing steadily.   

Maneuvering the Cycle- Obstacles and the road ahead

Every entrepreneur takes a certain sort of pleasure about the hurdles one has to cross in this arduous journey. This feeling basically emanates and founds essence in the quote, “Duties are given and responsibility is taken”. Yellow Cycle is no exception and has its own set of problems. “Once a customer had booked a BMW ride for a person and the whole experience was planned. But on the morn of the day, the car agency sends in an Audi saying that it is a car from the same range! And this is when I start pulling out my hair!” exclaims Neha.

Sorting out these problems has its own pleasure and The Yellow Cycle intends to pedal on. Moving ahead, they want to enable online payment and allow team experiences wherein they can have a bigger ticket size by targeting the affluent companies. Talking about goals, we concluded the talk with an ambitious short term goal for Neha and the team, “We want everyone in Bangalore to experience the YellowCycle!”

Ride The Yellow Cycle here, tring tring. 

- Jubin Mehta