𝙀-𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙢𝙚𝙧𝙘𝙚 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙀𝙣𝙩𝙧𝙚𝙥𝙧𝙚𝙣𝙚𝙪𝙧𝙞𝙖𝙡 𝙏𝙖𝙡𝙠𝙨 𝙒𝙞𝙩𝙝 𝙇𝙖𝙠𝙨𝙝𝙖𝙮

ABOUT LAKSHAY

Lakshay is a young entrepreneur. He owns an ecommerce agency and loves scaling brands in the ecommerce landscape.

Lakshay is specialized in conversion optimization and ecommerce growth.

He is tech savvy and started off his career as a python programmer and worked as a freelancer, and later on started his own agency.

He loves meditation and is a spiritual person, he loves to read books related to entrepreneurship, spirituality, business, psychology.

Co-founder of 1percentmedia

How did you get your idea or concept for the business?

So it’s hard to say what got me the idea of starting my own ecommerce agency since it was a gradual shift for a traditional website development agency. I have been a web developer since I was around 13, so it was very natural for me to start a website development agency. Almost a year back, when I met my co-founder who is a marketer, we combined both our skills and realized E-commerce is a booming industry that we can easily grow in(due to all the pandemic and stuff)

How do you continue to grow and develop your business?

Growing my business has always been about the perfect mix of creativity and analytics. I am constantly looking for opportunities to collaborate with brands that benefit both of us. And our pipelines are filled with leads through our marketing campaigns that we run on Facebook, Instagram, youtube, and other platforms. And another important aspect of this for us is, referrals!

As a successful entrepreneur what are the biggest lessons you have learnt so far?

It's hard to say, since I’ve been learning lessons every day, every minute.... But one thing that I believe is very important for every entrepreneur out there is to think rationally while making decisions. I'm a huge believer in stepping back and looking at the bigger picture before making any moves, this allows me to have a deeper insight of the situation, anticipate and prepare for what might happen after my actions. I think it's a huge advantage to have while running a business and even in life in-general.

Can you share one personal business highlight that you’ve had over the past year?

Absolutely, so if I have to pinpoint one point in the past year in my business then that would be the shift we made from a website development cum Digital Marketing agency to a full-fledged Ecommerce Agency, it started to do wonders… Even though we already had some ecommerce clients that were doing fabulous, this official change meant alot! And Personally, the whole past year has been a highlight for me :)

What are your responsibilities as the co-founder?

My responsibilities as a co-founder is to keep the operations in check (even though I'm not always interfering in the operations as one of my co-founder does that..) while I decide where the future of the agency is going… What are the new ways that we can improve our services for our clients and give them more ROIs.

Being a young entrepreneur comes with its own sets of challenges. What challenges have you faced?

Oh, the list is way too long for me to recite. But one challenge that I faced a lot was being under-estimated by prospects, team members, family, friends, literally everyone because of my age. I can’t even count how many projects I’ve lost just because of my age! The challenge still continues but it’s going away gradually now, as people are becoming more aware of young entrepreneurs nailing it in their respective fields!

How do you advertise your business?

We are currently using several methods to advertise and get more leads, leading the list is Funnels, and cold out reaching. We have designed several call-appointment funnels to have our prospects schedule a call with our sales team! And yea Referrals is still one the most powerful sources of advertisement for us.

How does your company help small ambitious businesses who are starting their growth?

I’ve always had a soft corner for small businesses. That’s why we offer a variety of services to boost small businesses’ growth! And I personally go on calls with the owners of these businesses to understand their goals and how we can prove to be a helping hand in their growth.

How is e-commerce necessary and why do some e-commerce sites fail?

Well this is a very irrelevant question to ask since everyone has seen the power and the necessity of using the internet for your business. As far as the second question goes, There are multiple factors that contribute to the success or the failure of an ecommerce site. The most common reason is lack of expertise and knowledge. A lot of business owners try to run their e-commerce stores on their own while having absolutely no knowledge about how ecommerce basically works. And how to execute the right strategies and tactics to get maximum results!

What are the significant developments in the area of e-commerce in india?

That’s a good question. When it comes to developments in the area of e-commerce in India, in my personal opinion, awareness is the biggest advancement that we’ve made. This industry is wildy promoted and supported by the likes of Meesho, Glowroad, etc. We still have a long way to go when it comes to awaring and educating our population about the benefits of ecommerce and how it can help their businesses touch the skies. But I think we’re off to a good start.

What do you think, will the online business suffer when the pandemic ends or will it accelerate?

Online businesses have shown their importance and capabilities in this pandemic. A lot of businesses have seen such a great increase in revenues and profits even during this pandemic situation. The E-Commerce industry is still in the growing phase, so now when the pandemic ends online businesses will continue to grow at an insane rate!

What internet marketing instruments do you think are the most effective?

So this is a very relative question, every niche, every industry has different requirements and requires different measures to cater to the needs of its consumers. For instance, the best place to market for a fashion brand is generally Instagram. While the best place to market an IT consultant services would be Linkedin, or something like that.

What new can be done in indian e-commerce economy considering the recent drives of make in india and digital india ?

This is a very deep topic I would say, but on the surface we need to educate traditional business owners and shopkeepers about the ecommerce industry and how they can leverage this into benefiting themselves and grow their businesses. One barrier with this is the language.. We need to try out more regional languages to encourage local businesses to opt for e-commerce on their own and compete nationally rather than just a small area.

What is the reason behind e-commerce giants getting into the physical market and setting up physical stores across india ?

This is a very interesting thing tbh, so the reason behind this is because a large portion of Indians are still skeptical about making purchases online and don’t trust E-commerce whatsoever, and to top that the Internet Penetration rate in India is less than 50% in the year 2021. Now, to tackle that and to build more trust among the people of India, These giants are making their moves into the Physical markets. And setting up physical stores will allow these entities to connect with the people and understand the demographics alot better!

If you had to give one piece of advice to someone just starting out, what would it be?

Well, if you’re starting out as an entrepreneur.. Make sure you research, and mark my words… googling stuff up and reading the first result isn’t research. Do you research and most importantly, never stop learning! When you fail or anything like that, instead of dwelling on it, analyze it and see what you did wrong and rectify the mistake in the future!