Mukesh Singh of ZopSmart on building a Rs 800 crore bootstrapped, profitable startup
In this episode of Prime Ventures Partners Podcast, Managing Partner Amit Somani speaks to Mukesh Singh, Founder of ZopSmart, as he shares valuable insights on building this mammoth Rs 800 crore company at about 70%-80% margins.
ZopSmart is a retail tech startup that helps offline businesses go online by providing the required tools and techniques to set up their digital store. It serves a range of customers across the US, Middle East and Southeast Asia, including a small furniture shop to multinational retail chains.
The startup offers solutions, such as an ecommerce platform, a point-of-sale system, an order management platform, automated logistics systems, and IoT devices.
Maverick entrepreneur and Founder of Mukesh Singh has staged an unimaginable dramatic pivot, shutting down a 70%-80% revenue business to focus on a newer product based on market estimation and gut.
In this episode of Prime Ventures Partners Podcast, Singh talks about how his inspiration from Lego and Intel helped in building this mammoth Rs 800 crore company at about 70%-80% margins. He also offers a glimpse into the habits that buoy his entrepreneurial spirit.
With over 130 marathons under his belt and a voracious reading and writing habit, Singh exemplifies endurance and continuous learning that form the cornerstones of success.
Entrepreneurship starts with stupidity!
“Don’t do a startup because you want to make money,” says Singh. The only time he didn’t make money was when he intended to make loads of money from the startup.
Interestingly, he says that an individual, over some time, will earn higher riches if they stick to their corporate jobs as against trying the risky waters of the startup world.
Singh admits his naivety in his initial days led him to start up and fail several times, but he yielded several important learnings that eventually led to his success.
As an MIT drop-out and Amazon India’s founding team member, Singh believes his entrepreneurship journey helped him in self-discovery, moving from stupidity to wisdom with age and experience.
The crazy pivot
Before ZopSmart, Singh and his team ran a company called ZopNow—one of India’s first e-grocery delivery startups, much before Zepto, Blinkit, etc.
While Singh grew ZopNow to about Rs 400 crore business (nearly Rs 1 crore per day) in 2018, he shut it down as he found no way to establish its growth further with new entrants, like Amazon and Walmart, entering the market with billions of dollars.
In one of his most pivotal decisions in life, Singh recalls resorting to history to help him decide. As a life lesson, he urges entrepreneurs to identify the ‘core’ of their business, which will ensure success in the long-term.
His decision-making is embedded in using history to gain belief and focus on the core of the business. In this case, he leveraged the story of Lego and Intel—who shut down about 80%-90% of business lines and focused on a negligible business unit. For the core of Singh's business, he believed and bet on their tech stack, which was their biggest asset.
The rest is history. About 7-8 years later, ZopSmart stands extremely successful as a bootstrapped profitable business.
ZopSmart’s global expansion
‘If you really want to understand a tiger, you have to go to the jungle, but if you really have to monetise the tiger, then you build a zoo’.
Singh uses this amazing analogy to explain why India is the best market to understand software or retail, but not the best place to monetise in terms of growth and revenue.
His experience, process, and insights on how to crack these markets are invaluable for any entrepreneur thinking of global expansion.
For example, he describes his meticulous process of preparing for about 300 hours before his first sales meeting with his customers to understand their real pain points and provide the most valuable solution from their stack.
This thoroughness and perseverance have helped ZopSmart stand out in a crowded market.
Singh’s journey with ZopSmart serves as an inspiring blueprint for aspiring and current entrepreneurs. It's a masterclass in the art of entrepreneurship, illustrating the true measure of success extends far beyond profits. It's about passion, innovation, struggle, continuous learning, and the indelible mark one leaves on the world.
Timestamps:
0:00 - Entrepreneurial journey With Mukri Singh
4:10 - Discovering self and startup lessons
14:42 - Entrepreneurship journey
19:00 - Challenges and opportunities in ecommerce/retail
28:53 - Importance of core in business strategy
36:59 - Value over uniqueness in startup growth
49:09 - Entrepreneurial insights and reading habits
Edited by Suman Singh