What is in a name? Quite a lot for a startup

When Vishal Gondal founded a tech-based fitness startup in 2014, the health-and-fitness category was already cluttered with names that started with ‘fit’ and sounded similar. Vishal wanted a unique name that was short and would be easy to remember. He finally zeroed in on GOQii.

“The word is a combination of English and Chinese—Qii means force; our tagline is Be the Force,” says Vishal.

Naming a startup needs a great deal of thought; it has to be unique, meaningful, attractive, and definitely positive. The name, when done right, can kickstart a startup’s journey and attract the right customers. In fact, the country’s young entrepreneurs swear by the significance of the company name in marketing, especially during the early days.

“If we search ‘GOQii’ online we are the only result—it’s a made-up word, like Google,” says Vishal. ‘Fitkarma’ and ‘Fitkee’ were the other names that almost made it. Not everyone was happy with the name; many told Vishal the name was difficult to spell and pronounce. “But we said we were going to be a category creator. When you are doing a consumer brand in the B2C space, these things are very important. People tend not to give emphasis to it, and later they spend crores to change the name and logo,” says Vishal. 

The world is divided into two

When it comes to naming startups, there are two kinds of entrepreneurs. One set directly describes what their venture does through the name—the best example being the real estate website housing.com. The other comes up with a name, which they can give a meaning to through their service, like the fashion e-commerce portal Jabong.

Praveen Sinha, Founder and Managing Director at Jabong, has a set of criteria for naming a startup: “The name should preferably have only one or two syllables; it should be available for company registration; and as a domain,” says Praveen. According to him, it’s better to think of a name that does not mean anything; it must get associated with what the startup does. “The word you choose as the name will come to imply a meaning by what you do. We were looking for a young, vibrant name and zeroed in on Jabong, which doesn’t mean anything! It is just catchy, but now people associate that name with us.”

Meeta Malhotra, a brand practitioner and angel investor, agrees: “With a name that has nothing to do with your offering, you can use it as an empty vessel that you mould as you like. You have to spend time and resources building the name—think Blackberry, Yelp, Apple, Yahoo, and Uber.” But she cautions against the more common method of choosing a name that reflects the startups’ focus so people know what you do as soon as they hear it, like Snapchat, Housing.com, and Grabhouse. “If you don’t do this well, your offering-based name runs the risk of becoming generic,” says Meeta. For instance, the various online car sales sites all have some combination of car as their name. How will a customer differentiate one from the other?

The one and only

Uniqueness is definitely the key in deciding a name, like Jugnoo, which in Hindi means firefly. “The word has a nostalgic feel to it. It's a name that one remembers when one sees an auto with a Jugnoo sticker zip past. It definitely added to the market value because of its curiosity quotient,” says Samar Singla, CEO of Jugnoo. Samar jots down names whenever inspiration strikes and maintains a list of names.

Navneet Singh went through 150 names before finalising on PepperTap for his online grocery startup. “We wanted the name to sound good, denote groceries (pepper), and denote mobile focus (tap on the phone). Of course, the domain should be available too,” he says.

Charm of the exotic

One curious trend is to use a word from an exotic language to christen the startup.

When searching for names for the online lingerie store she founded, Richa Kar wanted a name that could connect with women at a deeper level, as she believes that lingerie as a category reflects how a woman feels about herself. She came across a Hebrew word called “Ziva” which means ‘radiant’. I liked the word and attached a ‘me’ to it. “The words together meant ‘radiant me’, exactly the thought that I wanted to convey,” says Richa, adding that the availability of the domain name made the decision easier. “When investors came on board, they found the name to be distinct. They also felt the meaning reflected the philosophy that we as a brand believe in,” says Richa, Zivame’s CEO.

In the case of Amarpreet Kalkata, a curious little Punjabi word encapsulated what his startup stood for. “Frrole, in Punjabi, means ‘serendipitous discovery’. Social media has got tons and tons of conversations, and you don’t really know what exists out there. Frrole looks at billions of conversations and digs out exactly what you are looking for,” says Amarpreet, who launched the social data intelligence startup in 2012.

It is all about product

Anirban Majumdar, Co-founder and Chief Technologist of Urban Piper, a tech startup that helps retailers connect better with their customers, says, “We wanted a name which was about merchants being able to ‘attract’ customers, with something more meaningful than just discounts using technology,” says Anirban. That is when he thought of ‘Pied Piper’. But that would have caused trademark issues and getting the domain name would have been impossible. “We were stumbling around various permutations of ‘pied +’ and ‘piper+’ when ‘Urban Piper’ surfaced,” says Anirban, who co-founded the startup in 2014.

Varun Rathi, Co-founder and COO of Happay, a business expense management solution startup, chose this name as he wanted to make payments a ‘happy experience’. “Businesses have very complex payment requirements. Happay makes the whole process paperless, cashless, real time, and mobile,” says Varun.

The fate of any startup undoubtedly lies in their final product. Who would have thought the name of a fruit whould become synonymous with the most aspirational consumer product of this decade, but that is what Apple has done. As Praveen of Jabong says, more important than the name is what you do with that name.