Let’s know more about it from Raddhika Singh, Managing Partner, and Founder, Aletheiaa Legal. It is a law firm specializing in IP, media & entertainment, commercial contracts & IT Law that has advised 300+ startups.

Here’s what we’ll cover in this discussion.

What is an IP?

IP is called Intellectual Property. It is the mind’s creation that’s used commercially. Examples, Inventions, literary and artistic works, designs, names, and images.

Different Types of IP

There are four main types of IPs:

Trademark

Brands claim trademarks as an IP for their products, services, company name, business, slogans, taglines, or domain names.

Copyright

Any business that creates original literary, dramatic, artistic, musical works, sound recording & cinematograph films claims to copyright as an IP.

Designs

Manufacturing companies come up with their own innovative designs and unique aesthetic features on a product, unique products over which they can claim the design as an IP.

Patents

A novel innovative idea having an inventive step is patented and claimed as an IP.

How to Commercialize an IP?

We commercialize an IP in three ways:

• You keep it for your personal use.
• You use it commercially and earn revenue by leasing it to a third party. The third party pays you a royalty. The IP’s ownership stays with you (IP creator).
• You can assign it for a value to a third party or sell it to a third party.

How to Generate Income by Licensing Your IP?

The basic licensing allows a third party to use your brand’s information that pays you a royalty in return for it. Nuances of each IP agreement will be different depending upon the understanding between the parties. There are different modes of licensing your IP. Let’s know about all of them one by one.

Trademark

You can generate income by a trademark in three ways:

Trademark licensing by a parent company to its subsidiaries:

If a company situated in Singapore needs to use the same product in India, their parent company needs to license the brand trademark to the Indian company. The parent company and its subsidiaries enter a licensing agreement that has all the important clauses clearly mentioned.

Trademark licensing by a franchisor to franchisees:

It is the most famous form of licensing trademark. There are several restaurants, they all look the same. A famous food joint, restaurant, or salon license the right to use their brand to entities that are willing to use it. They license it to a third party. They have different models of licensing of franchising basis which they permit the third party to use their brand name. There are certain conditions in respect of that & there’s a royalty & franchise fee that’s payable to the franchisor.

Trademark licensing to facilitate a sponsorship:

A brand sponsoring an event permits the event organizers to use logos. Two brands can have a co-branding agreement. They permit each other to use their brands & they have a licensing agreement amongst each other.

Copyright

You generate income by copyright in two ways:

Copyright licensing by authors of a book via movie contracts & book publishing contracts:

There are authors who write a book & they enter into an agreement with a publisher to publish their books. They license the right to publish a book to a publishing house and keep its ownership with themselves.

Copyright licensing in a software:

One of the most common forms of copyright. Companies that develop software, generate income by giving users the right to download the software/app. In turn, users pay a certain royalty or a certain amount to the owner of the software in the form of a subscription or a fee depending on the arrangement between the parties.

Designs

Design companies design products that are aesthetic. They design it and license it to a manufacturer. The manufacturer takes it and designs it on their own. For every product they manufacture based on the design created by the designer, they give a certain revenue per piece to the designer.

Patents

Entrepreneurs file a patent for their exemplary ideas. They find manufacturers and permit them to manufacture the design. Manufacturers pay a royalty to the designer per piece.

Important Clauses in an IP Licensing Agreement

If you have to license your IP to a third party, here’s what you need to keep in mind:

Nature of IP

Identify the nature of IP if its software’s code, literary work, or trade’s name, etc. There could be different IPs for any tech startup. You need to give the right to use a software’s feature if it’s patentable. This makes the nature of IP is important.

Ownership of IP

The licensor should mention that they’re the owner of the IP they’re licensing to the licensee. It is important for the licensees to get the representation of it. This can lead to a legal battle if there’s no such representation from the owner’s end. The agreement should identify that ownership stays with the licensor to avoid any confusion.

Scope of license

The scope of the license can be exclusive & non-exclusive. The owner of the IP has the right to license it to one person or multiple people. The license’s scope should be non-exclusive if several customers have to use your IP. If you give exclusive rights to a customer, only that person has a right to use that IP even to your exclusion. This will exclude the owner from using it.

Term of the license

IP’s time period is an important clause to consider. You’ll need to mention the consequences for it after the term is over. On expiring of the term, the IP rights must go back to the owner.

Territory

The license’s territorial limits are important. This can range from specific states, countries, or worldwide. It is important for a franchising agreement. Franchisees need to understand the territory where they can use the products. The licensor must mention it.

Consideration (Royalty)

The licensee pays royalty in different ways. Here’s more about it:

• A single up-front payment
  Licensee gives a single upfront payment to the licensor. Licensor does not track the number of sales that happened.
• Periodic payment of pre-determined amount
  The franchisee pays royalty to the franchisor for net revenue made every month. It is a pre-determined percentage of the net revenue. You can find it commonly in copyright and design licensing.
• An amount periodically paid based on ancillary conditions
  This agreement allows you to use an IP royalty free and pay royalty if a big client signs up. It depends on basic negotiations between the party.

Permitted use of IP 

A license agreement must mention IP’s use and the restrictions if any. There may be restrictions on reverse engineering or creating something similar.

Indemnification

IP misuse or agreement breaching consequences needs to be clearly mentioned.

Advantages of IP Licensing

Below are the advantages of IP licensing you must know:

• Generates a passive income for the IP owner, without any significant overheads
• Creates new business opportunities for licensor & licensee
• Enables businesses to enter new markets or industries & expand their business
• Provides the potential for better marketing

The post A Complete Guide to IP Licensing and its Advantages appeared first on PayU Blog.

Mivi is an audio electronics brand that started in 2016. The origin of the name Mivi comes from the names of Co-founders, Midhula Devabhaktuni and Viswanadh Kandula. Mivi is a D2C brand & that makes products with customer preferences by manufacturing and designing all products in India. They have more than 850 plus members on their team.

How Did Mivi Begin Its Journey?

Mivi started as an electronics brand. There were no technicians. They started with developing an Id team, then a design team, tech team taking a step forward one by one. In 2020, they started their manufacturing unit in Hyderabad. They were the first & the only brand to begin manufacturing in India. Hence finding a workforce that has experience wasn’t possible.

How Was Working with the Indian Workforce for Mivi?

At Mivi, they ensured that every employee has to be an Indian. It’s a core principle that they wanted to do something for India & this was their chance to do it. On being asked what the experience was like, Midhula said, “It was worth it”. Adding to this, she said, “It’s a very open environment; everyone is Indian, focused & driven”.

They started with a single line & 70 people in December 2020 & that’s when we launched their first product. They had eight lines and about 700 people within the next ten months. By the end of this year, they’ll have 1300 people on their team. It was a step-by-step journey. They figured out the entire process and took the leap of faith.

Here’s where Midhula talked about learning for every entrepreneur. She said, “It’s important for every entrepreneur to take the leap of faith because you are just starting it. Else the hustle in the process increases.”

How has the Customer Response Been for Mivi?

They launched their first Made in India product on 16th December & they manufactured units for a month. As “Made in India” is a very strong sentiment, they were able to give a better-quality product at better pricing & that’s what any customer looks for. Since then, their customers have a stronger relationship & bonding with the brand now. They truly support Made in India initiative.

What Makes Mivi a Unique Indian Brand?

Every country is different & so is India. India has unique tastes, preferences & environmental conditions. When it comes to electronics, devices sold in India are not made for Indians. Indians love bass and thrive on bass. In India, we get products based on the West’s preferences. & here’s where Mivi came in. They make a product first by figuring out what their audience needs, even environmental conditions. For example, a waterproof rating makes it dustproof & dust spoils electronics quickly. This makes Mivi different than the rest.

Midhula’s Advice to Budding Entrepreneurs

Here are the most significant learnings from Midhula for those starting their business journey:

• Don’t plan for where you are today but plan to where you want to get in tomorrow. It slows down your growth.
• There is no right time. Take a leap of faith.
• Today is the best time because you don’t have to risk everything to start a business

Check out this video to know more about their conversation.

The post Success Story of a Made in India Brand, Mivi appeared first on PayU Blog.

Let’s talk about one such D2C brand, Flatheads. It is a brand of casual sneakers for the Indian urban lifestyle & climate, that was launched in November 2019. Read on to learn more about building your D2C brand’s customer experience end-to-end from Ganesh Balakrishnan, Co-founder, and CBO, Flatheads. 

Here’s what we’ll find out about building a D2C brand’s customer experience end to end. 

What Differentiates D2C Brands from the Rest?

A brand that has a physical store, requires enough inventory. There needs to be decent shelf space and this puts the load on working capital. Being online enables brands like you to be very nimble, helps them understand what a customer wants & co-create with customers.

Setting up an online store allows you to take preorders. You do not need a big catalog. This enables you to create from scratch without putting a load on inventories and storefronts. You can talk to customers, get feedback very quickly to iterate to build a better product that the customer wants.

Must-Do Things D2C Brand Must Know!

Let’s discuss a few points every D2C brand must know for building a delightful customer experience. 

Solve a problem

The product you create must solve a problem. If your product solves a problem, the chances of a customer buying that product increase.

Build a USP (Unique Selling Point)

There might be a latent need in the market for you to understand. You can know more about it by talking to customers, observing what they do, and creating a better proposition. You need to have a USP, solve a problem, and need to talk about it as a differentiator.

Go beyond choice and convenience

Removing the friction of going to a shop and convenience is what every brand does. Doing something that differentiates you from them is important.

Tell the story to the right audience

Identify your segment or audience. Define your customer and craft your identity. You need to tell customers, what you will do & what you won’t as multiple brands can exist in the same category. As the proposition and customer segment is different, the communication is different.

Building Your D2C Brand’s Customer Experience

Here are a few touchpoints that’ll help you build a great customer experience. 

Build awareness

You must have a story that connects functionally and emotionally with the audience. This helps you build your brand’s awareness.

Make a promise

The promise you make is very critical. It should be powerful enough for somebody to come & notice you. You need to have a compelling proposition.

Build trust

Build trust by bringing in people who talk about your product, getting their reviews, and testimonials.

Keep value proposition consistent

Your website has to say the same thing you made a promise for. The messaging and language need to be consistent. It should talk about customers’ needs getting fulfilled.

Chain of post purchase engagement

You need to solve for customers’ building anxiety as your product hasn’t reached them yet. Communication post-purchase is important for affirming the brand’s promise. Here are a few things you can try to solve for that anxiety:

• Send out messages on emails telling your customer.
• Break friction at every point
• Keep engaging with your customers
• Educate customers on why they made the right choice with educational drips

Return and Refund

Try to quench the anxiety if the customer doesn’t like your product and understands their problem.

Customer support

It is an important part of the customer experience. This defines the DNA of the brand. It has to be a 360-degree experience.

You need to understand the context, the persona of the customers, and what resonates with them. Your brand will stay in your customer’s minds if you understand and cater to their needs.

The value that you are giving to the customers is always measured in terms of money. It cannot be just a feature. Differentiate your brand from the rest of the players in the market. If you are able to build that, you crack the most difficult part.

What is the Future of D2C Brands in India?

Here is what Ganesh had to say on the future of D2C brands in India,

• This is the most exciting time to create a customer brand in India. This decade of 2020 to 2030 is going to define the landscape of what India brands will stand for.
• People want a lot more functional aspects and they want an emotional story to connect. They need something that caters to their uniqueness.
• There will be sharper communication and segmentation of customers based on their needs.
• Exiting time for D2C brands as curve for e-commerce has changed and this has accelerated presence for D2C brands.
• It is time to build an interesting brand and great ride for customers in terms of product they’ll get.

Check out this video to know more about building a D2C brand customer experience end-to-end.

Find more such events on PayU India’s YouTube channel and subscribe it to stay updated with every event.   

The post How to Build Your D2C Brand’s Customer Experience End-to-End? appeared first on PayU Blog.

Read along to know the key metrics, email etiquettes & challenges in email marketing by Aquibur Rahman, Founder, Mailmodo (YC S21 & Sequoia Surge). Here’s what we’ll be discussing about email marketing.

What are Key Metrics in Email Marketing?

Two Key metrics in Email Marketing are open rates & end conversion rate.

• Open rates are now tracked less. They can be improved by giving a good subject line.
• End conversion rate is used to determine revenue from users and engagement.

Never stop at just open rates. Email sending & managing emails involve a lot of technical things. Some other important email metrics are Domain reputation, IP reputation & DNS records.

• Setup google postmaster to get data from your email recipients, domain & IP reputation.
• DNS records consist of SBK, DKIM & DMARC records. It proofs your email from getting hacked or your domain controlled by someone else.

How to Drive Conversion & Brand Engagement Using Email Marketing?

Engagement of users & their acquisition are the two most crucial parts of marketing. Users are not in your control. You can build a relationship with your users using their emails. This helps you create a journey with your users. You do not have to pay anybody else to talk to your customers.

Email marketing has a high ROI. To drive conversion & brand engagement, focus on segmenting your user base & making emails more usable, actionable & relevant. Take care that you do not spam your user base & only send them what’s relevant.

The important points to consider for Email Marketing: 

• Check the engagement of users with your emails historically. A user unsubscribing your emails is considering you as a spammer & this reduces the open rates.  
• Email marketing works like social media. If you get more users, your reach will increase as well.  
• Take care of your domain & IP reputation. If your domain has a bad reputation, your emails are likely to go spam/promotion folder. 
• Your reach will reduce if your email’s content. Making better content will help you get a better open rate. 
• Content should be matching in subject line & body.  
• Fulfill the promises you make. If it’s useful, user will expect mails from you.   

Email Etiquettes to Improve Business

Here are a few practices to improve email etiquettes:

• Be conversational and friendly in your email.
• Share your achievements & failures with your users. This builds trust & engagement.
• Segment your audience well depending on their needs.
• Remove users from your email who haven’t been engaging with your emails. Refrain from sending them emails as they may not open it again.
• Be more consistent.
• Build your domain or IP reputation or IP by sending small volumes of emails every day. This builds the reputation in eyes of your email clients that you haven’t been spamming or sending a cold email to your users.
• Collect feedback using emails by adding survey forms.
• Use tools like Freshdesk & Front for customer support.

How to Ensure Less Email Bounce Rate?

To make sure there’s a lesser email bounce rate,

• Try getting organic users this will reduce your bounce rate.
• Avoid sending emails to the publicly available lists.
• Ask users for their email ids everytime they attend your events.
• Verify your email list by using tools like Neverbounce and Kickbox.

What are Challenges in Email Marketing?

People start email marketing without having experience & send a huge number of emails without any domain reputation. To get better visibility on what’s working & what’s not, follow best practices. Try experimenting with different formats of content & subject lines.

Email doesn’t give the flexibility to add different kinds of content. You can make it actionable using tools like Mailmodo.

Common Email Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

Do not send the same email to all users like a shot. Emails sent to a large user base without any historical data get classified as spam. Do an email domain warmup. Start by sending emails to very small numbers. An increase in user’s positive engagement will gradually help your emails reach their primary folders of Gmail or Outlook.

What Would be Your Advice to Every Budding Entrepreneur?

Here are a few suggestions by Aquibur for getting started as an entrepreneur: 

• Just start, don’t plan too much.  
• Build a good team of passionate & talented people. 
• Keep going irrespective of your doubts or fears.  
• If you believe in something, keep trying to make it better. 

Check out this video to know more about email marketing.  

To see more such events, subscribe to PayU India’s Youtube Channel & stay updated with every event. 

The post Handy Guide to Drive Conversion Using Email Marketing appeared first on PayU Blog.

As you know, the growth of the business is a function of several factors. Here’s what we’ll be catching up on while talking a bit more about growth.

What are Stages of Startup Growth?

There are three stages of a startup:

• Finding product-market fit
  This stage has lower retention because it is more about acquiring new customers.

• Early scaling
  There is decent retention while the acquisition is doubled in this stage.

• Mature scaling
  The startup focuses on becoming a marketing leader to monopolize it further.

Well Known Growth Hacking Examples

Hotmail used one such growth hack. They hyperlinked Hotmail in every email signature. This got them a whopping 12 million users, of which 2.5 million came due to the signature back when there were only 70 million internet users.

Engineers at Airbnb & Craigslist also figured out one such hack too. They found out they can post on craigslist through Airbnb without using any API with a URL.

Why Move Away from Growth Hacking?

Hacks are short-term in nature as they do not have the same effect when repeated. These hacks do not work every time because these hacks are the rarest moonshots. It is not the way businesses can grow. In hindsight, every organization must adopt an organization-wide growth strategy. Growth comes only using a systematic & structured approach to solve for it. It won’t come by using pop-ups or leads.

How to Look at Growth?

One of the biggest myths startups have about growth is, a growth hacker can magically scale their company. But they need to stop looking for a superhero to solve growth. Thus, it’s necessary to know the factors that drive growth in a company. They are shipping a product, finding a product-market fit & growing the product.

Shipping a product depends on understanding a user’s pain point, validating the scale of the problem, finding out its possible solutions & building a minimum viable product.

Finding a product-market fit is a function of the product launch, receiving feedback, relaunching until there is a flat retention curve & referral effect. This flat retention curve can also be obtained when there’s a strong word of mouth while the referral effect comes into play when there’s a willingness to pay.

Growing the product is dependent on growing revenue. This growing revenue depends on the number of paying customers & lifetime value per user. The number of paying customers is a function of total users & percentage of users turning into paid customers.

The growth framework by Udayan will help you understand the other factors that the above 3 factors depend on. It’ll help you find all the connecting dots to know the points of focus in your business. Click here to check the framework!

How to Build a Growth Team?

A growth team normally consists of, growth lead or product manager, a t-shaped marketer, a full-stack engineer, a designer, and a product analyst. This changes as per the kind of industry because the definition of growth for every industry is different. For example, a delivery service app focuses on operations while a cab service focuses on demand-supply management.

Growth lead in the team prioritizes the growth roadmap, understands how the different tech stacks work, always researches because of being highly data-driven & always questioning the why making them excellent stakeholder management.

T shaped marketer owns the market strategy with proficiency in at least one channel. Being the biggest customer champion in the room knows how to craft a compelling story for your user, highly data-driven, bonus if they can query data on their own, and does stakeholder management from a business point of view.

The product designer owns the entire user flow. 70% designer & 30% visual designer own qualitative data like user research, customer calls, surveys, always question the why & work with tech team & own the UAT end to end.

Full-stack engineers only exist in pockets. The front-end engineer has an eye for great visual detail, demands tracking across all user touchpoints, and looks past just code. Back-end engineer owns API codebase, database scaling, understands DevOps & isn’t shy in using 3rd party tools to ship faster.

Product analyst understands the pulse of the product, automates all dashboards for every single team member, owns growth modeling, forecasting & impact assessments. This individual works with backend engineers to operationalize stuff irrespective of the model type, simple or complex.

Here’s the simplified view of how your growth team should look like.

What Would be Your Advice to Every Budding Entrepreneur?

Here are thoughts by Udayan Walvekar for all startups:

• Think about midterm & long-term goals.
• Prioritize the thing that’ll give 80% of your result.
• Creativity thrives in growth.

Check out this video to know more about growth. 

To see more such events, subscribe to PayU India’s Youtube Channel & stay updated with every event. 

The post Is Growth Hacking Already a Passe? appeared first on PayU Blog.

Vahdam Teas is a native Indian wellness brand that believes in taking the authentic taste of Indian herbs & spices to other parts of the world. They tapped into the well-known fact that India is a rich producer of tea & turmeric. This paved path for their success. Here are a few tips from their conversation that can benefit entrepreneurs through their journey.

How did Vahdam India come into Being?

The founder, Bala said, there were a lot of events that came together to redefine this journey. He always had an entrepreneurial bent since undergraduation. He spent time researching ideas that create an impact in Darjeeling. That’s how Vahdam India came into being in 2015.

Why did Vahdam India get into the Tea Business?

Bala realized quickly that India was making 25% of tea that was produced worldwide. Tea, being the second most consumed beverage, had a market size of around 50 to 80 billion dollars. It is one of the largest employers of organized laborers after railways in India. As most tea brands in India were not Indian, he chose to build a brand from India. He took it to mature markets like the US & retained profits from the country.  

Bala understood there were two problems that need to be fixed. One, there was a gap that could be filled in terms of product quality. Second, the supply chain was too fragmented. He focused on building trust around the brand as India was not known for building a high-quality product in premium categories. Their ticket to win was high trust with origin products and the internet as their distribution channel.

What were the Challenges that Came in Vahdam India’s Journey? 

One of the major challenges that came their way was scaling their business. They were confident to take it to next level in two years. This came with a new set of rejections. The next major challenge for them was to reach the right investors. They were struggling on multiple fronts for funding and in the end, their persistence paid off. 

What was it that kept Vahdam India going?

Great customer feedback, positive reviews, and word of mouth kept them motivated. They spent a good time understanding the science behind the supply chain. It reflects eventually.   

How Funding helped Vahdam India? 

Funding played a critical role in clearing the air around the time span they wanted to take to build the brand. They raised their first round of funding which was an inflection point for them. The rounds got easier. This helped them get the right people on board, who deeply believed in their story. Bala added, “When an entrepreneur stops thinking about money, it helps their mind space get more allocated on the product”. 

How does Vahdam India Support Environment and Society? 

They understood that the global consumer cares about environmental issues and appreciates brands that can offer sustainable packaging and solution. Vahdam India redefined their motto to, “Do well by Doing Well”. They took the initiative to be a climate & plastic neutral brand.  

They launched a Teach Me initiative three years back, a funding scholarship for children in tea estates. 1% of their revenue is directed to children’s education of tea growers. There was an issue with a high-quality education. They partnered with Byjus a year back. It helped them get access to 100,000 academic programs. These programs were distributed to children in tea estates.

What Would be Your Advice to Every Budding Entrepreneur? 

There’s no better time to go global than today. These are highly mature consumer markets when it comes to understanding consumers, packaging, and sustainability. Knowing the market and a clear understanding of your brand’s positioning is always helpful. 

These are a few suggestions by Bala for paving one’s success path. 

• Do not seek external validation. Focus on structuring your thoughts 
• Maintain focus on the end goal and build a strong foundation for your business  
• Turn up no matter what and that’s where half of your work is done. The rest can be figured out.

Check out this video to know more about their conversation.

To see more such events, subscribe to PayU India’s Youtube Channel & stay updated with every event.

The post Learn to Grow Your Business from an Inspiring Home-Grown Brand – Vahdam India appeared first on PayU Blog.