Top stories this week: Bengaluru businesses that became successful by understanding millennial demand
Millennials are a key customer base for many businesses. Here's how these Bengaluru entrepreneurs built their business model around understanding millennial demand.
Millennials, also known as generation Y are people reaching young adulthood in the early 21st century. They are a key customer base for many businesses. Reaching out to millenials on social media is a proven method of marketing a product or a service. But it is important to realise what kinds of products or services millennials are willing to pay for.
This week, SMBStory covered the stories of two Bengaluru businesses whose founders have understood exactly what millennials want.
Here's a quick look at both the stories:
Guesture
Purpose-driven shared accommodation has been popular for quite some time in developed nations in Europe.
Entrepreneur Sriram Chitturi (44) observed this phenomenon on his travels to the UK, Germany, and Switzerland in 2014. Sriram, who was part of the Shanders Group established in 1918, felt investing in co-living could be the answer in a stagnating real estate market back in India.
According to a 2019 Deloitte study, only 49 percent of millennials said they wanted to own a home. And Bengaluru based Guesture seems to have tapped into this sentiment by offering community-driven co-living spaces on rent in Bengaluru.
Guesture was born from Sriram's intention to bring hygienic, safe and good quality shared accommodation to the urban youth in India.
Director Pramod Kumar says that Sriram has invested Rs 75 crore in Guesture so far, and that the self-funded company recorded a Rs 10 crore revenue last year.
The company says its properties are fully-furnished with amenities such as high-speed wifi, swimming pool, sports arena, co-working spaces, event spaces, laundry and cleaning services, meal services, shuttle services, security, and more.
Guesture charges between Rs 8,000 and 10,000 per bed per month. Pramod explains that for a 3BHK apartment, the beds in the master bedroom cost Rs 10,000 each per month. The beds in the smaller rooms cost Rs 9,000 per month, and the ones in rooms without attached bathrooms cost Rs 8,000 per month.
Think Tree Media
Mayur Tekwani and Lanwin Pais started as event enthusiasts during college -planning and organising experiences for F&B clients. They decided to leverage their network of contacts within the F&B industry and start a business.
Both of them quit their full-time jobs to start Think Tree, and the basement of Mayur's house became their first office. They were only 22 when they started up.
Lanwin had been organising events for Bengaluru restaurants and pubs before Mayur. So, when Mayur frequented Lanwin’s events, the two started discussing the possibilities of organising events like pub crawls, screenings, brunches, etc together.
The duo started the digital marketing and production business in 2015, and began organising programmes, marketing campaigns, events, handling artist management, and more.
Despite Think Tree not having a CEO, the business grew to a team of 27 and moved into a 5,000 square foot office in Benson Town.
“We landed over 50 clients across India. Since 2015, we have made over Rs 10 crore on the whole. In 2019-20, we are on track to make Rs 3 crore revenue,” Mayur says.
The business also has clients in Australia. In November 2018, Think Tree registered itself in the country, started an office in Brisbane and started to service outsourced requests from the country through a local partner. The company records a revenue of Rs 3 Crore.