A simplified taxation like GST will help e-commerce sector more: Gagan Jain

       
         

heoretically government has taken lot of initiatives, however, to see any tangible results it requires to improve the delivery mechanism for government schemes. A simplified taxation like goods and services tax (GST) will help e-commerce sectors more, Founder of RangRage, Gagan Jain said in an Exclusive interview to SME Times.

"Currently, Indian entrepreneur spend lot of time in understanding the taxation and legal issues. While country will get benefits, if he focuses on his core business," he added.

Please tell us something about "RangRage".

Gagan Jain: Founded by Gagan Jain and his wife Neeti Jain, RangRage.in caters to the fashion needs of men, women and kids across apparel, accessories , and home décor while also supporting a whole community of artists. Each of the Rang Rage products- apparels, cushions, tissue box, alarm clocks, bags, clutches, belts are the canvases of their artists. In a way, the products of RangRage is a signature that cannot be forged.
The company has a team of 50+ talented artists. Along with a team of core artists and designers who work on product development, the company is associated with large number of freelance painters who work on project basis. The Rang Rage team comprises housewives, art students, teachers and even film poster painters. The company is happily creating a social impact through a business enterprise that is guaranteed to serve only exclusivity to its customers.
RangRage through its unique business endeavor is supporting artists all across India and strives to achieve the highest level of "Customer Satisfaction". It's cutting edge E-commerce platform, highly experienced buying team, agile warehouse systems and state of the art customer care centre provides customer with broader selection of product, superior buying experience, on-time delivery of products and quick resolution of any concerns.
Going forward, the company plans to expand in multiple directions. The primary focus is to further broaden its product portfolio by increasing the number and also augment the product coverage.

Rang Rage includes house wives and student painters and many more different kinds of artistes.

From where did you get this idea and what kind of response you are getting?

Gagan Jain: We struck the hand painted merchandize idea purely by chance. We used to live in Oman having a comfortable and cushy job. My wife Neeti used to paint to pass her time but she got bored with painting on canvas and hanging it in house, so she decided to paint on apparels. As a hobby she painted denim for me. I wore that denim at Eiffel Tower, Paris. There was huge crowd but every head turned to look at denim.  I wondered that there is some pull in painted denim that most fashionable people can't miss it.

When I came back to Muscat, we decided to take this idea a step further. We bought plain t-shirts and identified few designs to be painted. Neeti belongs from Jaipur and knew few painters there, so we exported the t-shirts there.  After a month we received our first consignment of painted t-shirts.  The response for hand painted t-shirts was very encouraging; we sold all of them within a few months.

We were amazed at discovery of such a cool and simple business idea. Send stuff to India, get it painted and sell it in gulf, nothing could be better. But a good idea may not be always easy to implement. When we approached the artists again with second lot three months later, most of them had left painting. They said 'Artist has no value in India; we can't run our home through this profession.' This was a very affecting statement and something really pulled us to pack our bags and shift back to India. Though there was no business plan in place, but we decided to put our savings in our dream for next two years at least.

How does "Rang Rage" work? What is the USP of "Rang Rage"?

Gagan Jain: At Rang Rage, We create products which have touch of art with supreme utility value for the customers. We believe this journey will not only promote painters but also help customers discover and buy artistic products which they are not able to do otherwise.
We make products like Cushion Covers, Clocks, Coasters, Trays and other Home Décor products. We also enable our customers to make style statements by adding colors to their wardrobe through our T-Shirts, Denims, Bags and other fashion accessories. So, we have very large market ready for the categories we deal in.
Our differentiation is every product is exclusively Hand-Painted by our local artist. Our artist expresses his vision through his painting. Every painting tells a story, every product tells a story. Sometimes it will tell us the importance of team work through a Warli painting, Sometimes it will be an expression of rebel on the current state of affairs through graffiti.
We do lot of customization and our team of artists is willing to paint individual"s vision on choice of his merchandise.

How do you see the growth and development of e-commerce in today's world? 

Gagan Jain: India has around 250mn Internet connected users which make it the third largest Internet market in the world. Indian ecommerce space offers huge opportunity. To put in relative context, Internet penetration in US is just 1.15 times of India but e-commerce market is 32 times bigger. This gap is not only due to larger base of e-commerce audience in US (190mn Vs 49mn in India) but the per capita spend is also 9 times of Indian e-commerce buyer.
Till now most Indian Ecommerce companies were focusing on acquiring new customers. But very soon their priority will change. Since it's easier & cost effective to farm existing customers rather than hunting for new customers, e-commerce companies will need to focus on retention and milk the life time value of the customer. Hence, experience of ecommerce shopping will be the key differentiator.
We will also see niche businesses adopting ecommerce with more force. The regional ecommerce will also be an area where we will see new startups disrupting the space. This basically indicates very interesting times for multiple e-commerce allied businesses apart from new e-commerce & e-retail start-ups.

You must be having a cut throat competition with other online shopping portals. How Rang Rage is different from others?

Gagan Jain: Our major differentiation is our products. Actually, we are not an ecommerce company like a Flipkart or Snapdeal. We are Product Company using ecommerce as sales channel.  We know that we do not have same amount of money as the big ecommerce players to indulge in expensive marketing activities.  So the truth is we cannot compete with them, so we do the next best, WE COLLABARTE WITH THEM. We use their sales strength and sell our product through them.
Ecommerce lacks one thing, i.e. personal touch to your shopping. We try addressing that by sending hand written letters, speaking to customers and sharing the story of the artists who has painted their product. This gives an edge over other ecommerce brands.

How do you see the success of Rang Rage?

Gagan Jain: We have defined that we will happy if achieve breakthrough on two counts.
We want to be source of regular income for 1000 freelance artists.
Hand-painting has global appeal; this creates a very exciting opportunity for Rang Rage to become a international lifestyle and fashion brand. We would like to play our part in "make in India" and infuse Indian art as integral part of lifestyle across globe.

What kind of challenges is facing you? And what are your expectations from a government in this regard? 

Gagan Jain: Lots of time, we have realized that most of government offices are busy in doing and no focus on achieving things. Theoretically government has taken lot of initiatives, however, to see any tangible results; we need to improve the delivery mechanism for government schemes.  A simplified taxation like GST will help. Currently, in India an entrepreneur spend lot of time in understanding the taxation and legal issues. While country will get benefits, if he focuses on the core, his business.

Entrepreneur Couple pen insightful book on journeys of 6 successful Start ups

Gagan Jain and Neeti Jain, authors cum entrepreneurs, launched their first book, "The Start Up Diaxies", a collec-tion of real stories on ordinary entrepreneurs with extraor-dinary journey, today at Oxford Bookstore in Bangalore. The book was unveiled by Phanindra Sama, CEO, and Redbus.in, one of the entrepreneurs featured in 'The Start up Diaries: The other entrepreneurs present at the event were Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Founder, One97; Abhinav Sinha, Founder, EKO and Ajit Andhare, Founder Colosce-um Media, who are featured in the book as well The book also features Yo! China and The Loot Store

The Start up Diaries' is a collection of the real life ex-periences of six of the most successful entrepreneurs operating in India. The journeys of these entrepreneurs have been realistically laid down in the book, where the author-couple believes 'The Start up Diaries' will influence the thoughts of budding entrepreneurs and aspirants. Each chapter is dedicated to one entrepreneur, capturing every incident of his journey to success, including his motivat-ing, hilarious and thought provoking moments.

About the book `The Start up Diaries' has covered the creators of the renowned companies like redBus.in, Yo! China, Eko Financial Services, The Loot Store, Colosceum Media and One97 Communications. In each story, the authors have captured the struggles, challenges, and accomplishments; funny and significant moment of the entrepreneur's life in such engaging way that it makes the book an interesting and effortless read. 

Each story focuses on the goals and the mistakes that a person makes during his initial stages of growth. And eventually, how these mistakes teach him the lesson and succeed further. The stories depict the strong determina-tion and will power of these entrepreneurs who despite various challenges pursued their dreams and ultimately succeeded, overcoming the odds. This book doesn't seek to glorify entrepreneurs, but presents a very realistic per-spective of their hardships, mistakes and proud moments. It tries to shatter the common perception that only Ivy League or IIM qualified people can create successful new age businesses. 

Indore-based Rang Rage employs housewives, gets them international exposure

Rang Rage is a hand-painting design studio based in Indore. A niche design studio, Rang Rage decided to tap the hitherto unnoticed talent of housewives and the latter are now their most loyal employees. What’s more, their art is now travelling the world. 

90% of Rang Rage’s total workforce of 60 in-house artists are housewives with a track-record of the most professional, the most dedicated and the most dependable employees. Take for instance, 31-year-old Manisha. She wakes up at 5 am every day to prepare meals for the family since she also has to leave at 8 am for school. She gets a call from Rang Rage about a last-minute order at 11 pm. Manisha stays awake until 2 am to finish it and gets it delivered on her way to school at the workshop.

Each employee at Rang Rage has a heart-warming story of social stigma, oblivion and internal struggles. 40-year-old Nidhi Jain hails from a traditional joint family where women are not allowed to do any jobs. 

When her children grew up, she returned to her long-lost love of art. However, she soon grew weary of the indifferent attitude of her family. And so when Rang Rage happened, she was ready to face opposition. Eventually her husband understood her passion for art and the recognition she received at the workshop. “Since Rang Rage pays me for each hand-painting assignment, even my relatives have started treating me with more respect,” testifies Nidhi. “At these workshops, the women feel a sense of belongingness. We organize monthly gatherings and have inter-personal interactions to encourage them to come out of their shell and feel free,” shares Neeti. Then there’s 26-year-old Divya who is usually found painting an apparel or a table clock while the rest of her family watches television. “Rang Rage allowed me to take work home. Ever since I have started waking up earlier than usual so I could finish my chores quickly and get back to painting,” she shares.

The Rang Rage model

 Rang Rage sells hand-painted apparels like denims, tee shirts and home décor goods like table clocks, decorated bottles, cushion covers, mini paintings and accessories like sling bags, passport holders, handbags, clutches etc. through an e-commerce website. The artists are either paid on the basis of each assignment or they can choose to be on the rolls of Rang Rage on a monthly salary. What makes it exciting for the artists is that their art travels across the globe. They have found willing takers in Dubai, Oman, Singapore and the US. When a product is delivered at the doorsteps of a customer, he/she also gets a tiny card that tells the story of the artist who painted that particular product. So who are their competitors? “Really nobody. There are a few Korean and Japanese professionals doing hand-painting on denim and other items but nobody has a business model like ours. This is a market that remains untapped and unorganized,” 

His finances were always dwindling. But because he had to continue his son’s education, he shifted to Indore. When he came to Rang Rage, he saw for the first time what a white collar job looked like. “I don’t have to go out in 44 degrees to paint a hoarding anymore. I sit inside this cozy workplace surrounded by what I love most – art,” he says.

At Rang Rage, Ramadal has the distinction of having the most controlled and balanced brush strokes. In addition, he is now a trainer who recently trained more than 100 artists in a series of workshops at a nearby village, Manawar. Rang Rage has wall putty painters, peons, fine arts students, computer graphic designers in their team of artists who now have a respectable job and  actual recognition. This kind of social impact couldn’t have happened overnight. “It takes 15-days to several months for a walk-in artist to really become good at hand-painting. We work with them through positive motivation. There have been times when Gagan and I would pack our dinnerbox, take our two-year-old daughter and deliver order parcels at the doors of our artists. We assured their families and counseled husbands,” recalls Neeti. “From the time we employed these amazing artists, it ceased to be a business for us anymore. Our greatest reward is after a day’s work we hear some amazing tale about a certain artist or when we see the transformation of these hobbyists into professional painters,”.