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.