International Business & Entrepreneurship
Student video
Christopher Gonsalves, MSc student, 2010/2011
Student testimonial
Vishal Jhamb and Rishika Sitlani, two recent graduates of the MSc in International Business & Entrepreneurship, share their experiences launching their own start-up...
We decided to set up a company in the garment industry. We established a partnership firm under the name of RAV Creations along with a friend of ours, Altamash Khan (RAV stands for Rishika, Altamash and Vishal).
Our eventual goal is to have many lines of clothing, including sportswear, formal/occasion-wear, and a line of exclusively designed clothing. We decided that, instead of having one brand and adding new product lines to that, we would establish a different brand for each product line. We thought that this would help consumers identify with each brand and make segmentation easier.
With the prospect of having several brands, we were faced with the problem of how to convince malls and retailers to buy different brands every time. So we decided to register all our brand names under the ownership of RAV Creations, and sell that single firm name to our potential product stockists. This single identity would help us maintain one corporate image with malls and other companies, while our customers would only associate with one or more of our brands that they like.
We then got started on our first brand name. Our first line of products was going to be t-shirts with prints of various themes. We tried coming up a name that would sound appealing to the individuality of our target customers. We came up with around 15 names, and then set up a focus group to discuss the options. We also created a score sheet that we distributed to people in the target age group.
The top three names were: ‘I Am!’ followed by ‘...ing!’ (like the ‘ing’ at the end of active words like dancing, playing, running, etc, to suggest the act of just being yourself and doing whatever you want). The third name was ‘Evolve’.
Since ‘I Am!’ was the highest ranking, we gave the name to a Patent office for running an availability check. Unlike in the UK, there is no online search option in India. Unfortunately, the name was already in use. Next on the list was ‘...ing’. On discussing this name with the Patent office’s lawyer, she said that the finance company ING (that has collaborated with Vyasya in India to become ING Vyasya) might cause a problem. Even if there were no legal issues, people may associate the clothing brand we were to launch as an offshoot of ING Vyasya. So we discarded that idea and went back to brainstorming.
The next name we came up with and gave for availability search was ‘Xyle’. Since it wasn’t a real word, we thought it would not be in existence. However, there was already a brand with the same name. Finally, we decided on JumpGear (as in gear or clothes to jump in). This, luckily, was available and we decided to go ahead with the branding procedure. What we found was that this takes up to two years to get completed, but we get an interim trademark number after which we can use a small ™ next to the name when using it. Only once the entire registration process is complete do we get the right to use the ® symbol. We have received the trademark number as of 10 February 2010.
As with most entrepreneurial ventures, we faced the problem of acute shortage of capital. Our initial plan was to buy a few t-shirts, for both men and women, get the prints put onto them and then launch an extensive marketing campaign to create awareness and demand for the brand. As it turned out, buying a few t-shirts was really expensive because there would be no economies of scale for the producers of our final product. They required us to have at least 300% more product than what we had intended. We had decided that we would also take corporate orders for large quantities of t-shirts so that while we were working on our marketing, we would have some source of consistent income.
In such orders, we are requested to produce approximately 500 t-shirts of one type for a company or organisation, like the hoodies and t-shirts sold at the University of Glasgow gift shop. This solved the economies of scale problem and made the product cheaper to produce. In the face of our increased need for capital, we decided to focus on corporate orders initially and make it a separate brand in our partnership. We will also include corporate gift items such as pen drives, diaries, golf balls, etc. in the near future. We received our first order from one of the Indian subsidiaries of a German company called GEA Ecoflex Pvt Ltd and are extremely excited to report our first profit.
Now we are looking to obtain more orders. We have already applied for an export/import license and have received our IEC number. Now, we can approach companies outside of India for orders.
Now that we’ve gotten our company off the ground, we are looking at offering projects that might be useful for next year’s International Management Solutions projects (part of the MSc International Business & Entrepreneurship programme).
We have just gotten engaged to be married. Our year at Glasgow University on our MSc in International Business & Entrepreneurship has proved to be very rewarding in more ways than one!