Bengaluru-based Soldrit wants to be the one-stop solution for electronics repair
Launched in 2015, Soldrit offers an online-offline model for gadget repair. The startup aims to open five stores by end of 2018.
At a glance
Startup: Soldrit
Founders: Deepak Bhatt and Kunal Bhatnagar
Year it was founded: 2015
Where it is based: Bengaluru
The problem it solves: Electronics repair
Funding: Bootstrapped
Sector: Consumer electronics
Soldrit is an independent repair service that provides repairs servicesfor multi-brand products. The categories that are currently operational are smartphones, tablets, laptops, desktop PCs and Bluetooth audio speakers. Repair for smart watches, game consoles and drones will be launched soon.
Soldrit was founded in 2015 by Deepak Bhatt and Kunal Bhatnagar, college batchmates in Electronics and Communication Engineering from PESIT, Bengaluru.
Deepak completed his PGDM in Finance from WeSchool, Bengaluru and worked in KPMG Global Services for three years in IT Advisory. “Kunal has always been a technocrat and was one of the people I knew who pursued BE.in EC because of his passion for electronics. I had always pushed him to follow his passion and do something, as he would build small projects by staying up late in the night during our engineering days. The idea for Soldrit did not happen overnight, with our domain knowledge and need for a technical player in the market we discussed this idea for months and conducted a survey in SP Road, Bangalore and with a few service providers. We were convinced that the market needs a technical service as a majority of the service providers offer only replacement service. Being convinced of the idea, we quickly set up a private limited entity and set up a lab where all the work would get done. Just after launching the service we did ask one of our juniors from college, Nikhil Ambardar, to join and be a part of the founding team. Nikhil is in charge of accounting, logistics and CRM. He is the go-to guy for resolving any issues,” adds Deepak on how Soldrit came into being.
“We started our service on December 1, 2015. Though the start was really slow as it took us a year to understand the market, to establish good relations with suppliers, understanding customer behaviour/expectation when it came to repair.
Our first year revenue was close to Rs 15 lakh. However, in the second year with minimal marketing spend our revenue shot up to Rs 45 lakh. We have had approximately 2000 unique customers and a good amount of business is through old customers. On an average, our per order ticket size is approximately Rs 3000. Our marketing expenditure is just 3 percent of the total revenue which includes partner commissions, online and offline ad expense.
According to the industry trend, the marketing expense is around 15-20 percent. This year we plan to increase our marketing expense upto 10 percent to keep up the growth,” adds Deepak.
Soldrit functions with an offline and an online model. It has partnered with companies such as UrbanClap and other home services companies, receives online orders through the website, has a functional store in HSR Layout and the company is preparing to open five stores by end of 2018. It has also partnered with colleges and receives orders from the student community.
It is the official partner of IIM Bangalore for their student community and plans to reach out to even more colleges to provide their services.
“We are currently bootstrapped, and are working towards raising funds for growth and other specific requirements.. We aim to build a platform for consumers looking to: repair their electronic goods, purchase verified pre-owned/refurbished electronics with warranty, and provide an option to sell their unused electronics reliably. We are however looking out for the investors who will be able to help us with our expansion plans,” says Deepak on the company’s future plans.
“The repair industry is a highly unorganised market and is estimated at approximately. $5 billion in India. The industry has huge potential, however, we need to reach out to the right customers. There are customers who require cheaper service and then there are those who require quality. We are catering to both sets of customers with our different repair plans," he added.
