Startup Name : Pink Guava Consulting Services

Start year : 2017

Founders : Dr. Amrinder Kaur ; Mrs. Rinku Bhardwaj

Location : Delhi/NCR

Website

About Pink Guava Consulting Services founders.

Dr.AmrinderKaur

Amrinder is having more than 12 years of experience in diverse academic and corporate profiles. She is a researcher with analytics and insights as her core areas of expertise. Academically she has a B.Tech in Chemical Engg., MBA, PhD and the journey continues with international & national publications in peer reviewed journals.She also has academic interests and works with academic institutions to be in touch with the budding professionals.

Personally, she enjoys learning and sharing new perspectives through books and engaging conversations.

Ms. RinkuBhardwaj

In her 21 years of professional life, Rinku held several leadership roles in large firms like Hewitt, Xerox etc. Process re-engineering and unlocking hidden potentials in systems and people has been her forte maintaining the core philosophy at work of high performance culture combined with empathy and employee friendly policies.

With a career span of more than two decades, she has delivered number of projects driving business excellence through product implementations, transformation via technology intervention, operation excellence, change management, talent assessment and customer experience management.

To pursue her passion of mentoring she also provides career coaching and training to professionals, students and guide them through career choice process.

The reasons motivated you to become an entrepreneur?

I have to admit this was an impulsive decision. We were working as a team for a certain project and just realised that our skills complement each other and it won’t be a bad idea to do something together! One thing led to another and we ended up creating this startup, starting from our concept, , our mission and vision, to offerings, setting up a website and we were set to go within a month. It’s already one year since we took our first step as Pink Guava!

About startup? What is your motto and vision of your startup?

Our tagline: ‘Writing Customer Success stories’

Our Vision: “To inspire customer centric culture by connecting organizations to customer emotions and expectations”

Our Mission: “Drive aspiring professionals, early stage ventures, enterprises and community service initiatives to achieve higher business results by building capabilities in the field of customer experience”

What problems you are solving with your startup?

Today’s customer is very aware of his/her needs and more demanding than ever. There are multiple options available and the digital era that we are in expectations are no more restricted to a good quality but also about product/service being trustworthy, fast, relevant and personalized with minimum effort from them in the entire buying life cycle.

It is becoming more and more difficult for providers to retain customers and incurring more and more cost in customer delight, acquiring new customers.

There is only one way customer is going to stay with enterprises. We have to connect to the emotional needs and understand the consumer perspective to build trust. The vendor-customer relationship has to be strong to keep them engaged.

We help enterprises build customer perspective and include outside-in view when defining their organizational strategies for revenue growth and improved customer retention.

Why your startup? What sectors you are covering in your startup?

Pink Guava consulting Services provides assistance in building customer connect and including their perspective in business strategy for growth. We do this using best practices and latest techniques and do not come with any biases for a particular technology or product. This helps us look at your problems from your point of view and not force any gaps in systems or processes to a product.

Our objective is to simplify business problems for you with practical solutions that suit your ground reality and not complicate with expensive, tangled solutions.

Also, enterprises have the flexibility to choose various engagement models. Our offerings are also designed to provide choices to our clients depending on their goals and vision. We could setup a complete program for a Customer Experience Management Strategy and vision to more of a step by step approach. If you have most of the understanding and just need some guidance we have ‘Customer guru’ option that provides mentoring. We believe in complete solution and hence have inbuilt culture shift or Customer Experience Awareness programs also in offering.

Customer Experience is industry agnostic and applicable to all kinds of businesses irrespective of sector, offerings or size of business.

Have you come across any situation which made you think about quitting from startup?

Startup journey as we are discovering ourselves is full of daily challenges and very unpredictable at times. It has not been easy and I have to admit there have been times where we doubted our stance but as a team we believe in our mission and work with a strong mindset. We keep moving ahead and evolve our strategy basis our learnings.

The biggest challenge we have is that although Customer Experience is a popular terminology and being used quite extensively, however, there is a lot to be done in terms of making sure we really understand what it means for our business and how we can use it to our advantage.

Everyone is racing to adopt the buzz word in technology and end up investing a lot of money in digital transformation without understanding what they really need to make a difference. We come with helping organizations know their truth and be aware of their roadmap and not get tempted with excitement of being digital. It takes a lot of effort from us to help business leaders understand that and help them consider CX as integral part of their business rather than treat it as ornamental display.

As there are many e-commerce sites which are doing the same thing. What’s your startup specialty?

No, Customer experience is not a commodity that could be sold off the shelf. It is a concept that needs understanding and work on your processes, people, systems and policies.

How did you raise funding for your venture?

We have intentionally not gone for funding yet as we are very thoughtful of keeping ourselves self reliant and take our time to grow.

What are the services provided by your startup? Is it solving a real-time problem in society?

We provide consulting services in Customer Experience Management. Today 90% of startups shut down within two years of their starting and one of the reasons is that they fail to either sell or retain the customer base. We help solve this real problem and urge enterprises to reach out to us for ensuring that they build customer perspective in their entire business life cycle, be it sales strategy, product strategy or marketing strategy.

Do you feel your venture is successful? If yes? Explain about it?

It really depends how you measure success. We are just one year old and it will be too early in the game to measure our success or failure. We look at it as a journey where we have set certain goals and have a strong business plan to support our endeavors.

I would say we have been successful in getting our word out, making some early wins and been busy doing some great work.

What your stack on the competition? Who are your competitors? How you are overcoming them?

There are many products in market and consulting organizations, big and small that are serving similar offerings. While we spend time researching what is new in the market, latest trends and practices but essentially our focus is not overcoming any particular competition but re-evaluating what market demand is and how we are meeting that demand.

Is the team necessary for a successful company/startup?

There is no battle that one can fight without a team. Team is not always about people you hire but also individuals who help you go further in the journey. We have had some amazing clients, our collaborators, partners who have been a great support and made this journey worthwhile. We have a few industry experts on our panel who work with us on need basis and not an operating cost for us as of today. They are more like assets and it works wonderfully for all of  us.

What piece of advice would you give to college graduates who want to become entrepreneurs?

Just don’t become entrepreneurs because it’s a buzz word. Spend some time thinking what you want to solve for and align it to what you love doing. It is always advisable to have some industry experience and develop some business sense under someone before diving into ventures. We always hear the success stories of under 30, under 40 but they are only a few say 1% of entire population that has made their mark.

The reality is success doesn’t come easy and requires hard work, perseverance and resilience and it is so important that youngsters spend time thinking what they want to achieve in life and not think only about money but an overall picture with regard to how they want to spend this precious gift of life they have!