Have you fallen in love with products produced only in certain places? You wish it were available in the mainstream market, but it is not. A heart-led project initiated by Mr Rohit & Mrs Purvi Pugalia, “This or That”, is designed to address this gap in the market. Their love of travelling, exploring, and the desire to imbibe different cultures from their travels led them to create the brand.
Understanding The Brand’s Genesis
This or That are India’s first-ever ‘e-retailer’ shopping destination devoted exclusively to start-ups. Travelling led them to realise that Indian start-ups make unique, creative, and fascinating products on par with other countries. They saw that save for the limited circle who knew about the products; start-ups were usually handicapped in making their brands known. They are targeting this issue by stepping into the gap and lending support. Every start-up deserves a place and a voice in the crowded business environment. With this realisation, they saw the opportunity to act as the bridge making the many fascinating products in the Indian market and making it mainstream.
The intention is to make available exotic brands to every Indian. They got ‘Vocal For Local’ by breathing life into the project and highlighting distinctive products. Their website went live on 10th July 2021. It has been an eventful year for the brand since they celebrated their 1st anniversary and extended the celebrations to shoppers, giving away free products for every purchase to mark their 1st-anniversary celebrations.
Why The Name – This or That?
According to the founders, we make choices in our life: big and little choices. ‘This or That’ aims to create an exciting addition to your lifestyle with ‘little things in life’ like exotic products that are aimed to make you feel good.
The brand’s name is a customer-centric terminology that today’s Millennial or Gen Z would use while making a purchase decision. The idea behind the name is about making the choicest choices and having options available for customers. When we go shopping, we think, “this product and that too”, and that is where the entire idea of the name originated. With that thought, “This or That” was established as the brand name.
Understanding The Business
The amount of effort and time needed to shape one’s ideas is an enormous task, and many budding entrepreneurs fail to pass this hurdle. This or That understands this pain area, and as a brand that prides on being the start-up that supports other start-ups, if they find value and promise in any start-up, opportunities are available to onboard them. They provide support and champion with their dreams so that the start-ups flourish. However, getting onboarding done with This or That isn’t easy. Start-ups looking to partner with the brand must adhere to and meet the criteria given by the brand.
Let’s take a deep dive and check out their criteria and guidelines:
- The brand focuses not only on the money aspect but also is heart-led, and the heart is where the heart-land is,, according to them. They are committed to onboarding and serving Indian-based brands. Therefore, their fundamental guideline is that start-up brands should be of Indian origin. Keeping this commitment in mind, they have denied requests from high-revenue brands that were foreign. The passion is to keep ‘Buying Indian’ in fashion.
- The start-up turnover should not be more than 100 crores. This Or That policy supports budding start-ups and focuses their efforts and energies on building and growing those nascent brands.
- The start-up should not be more than ten years of age.
The brand wishes to encourage new ideas that have come to fruition recently or a few years ago. This is for a better understanding of the products.
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What Led To The Idea Of Creating A Platform For Other Start-Ups?
India has, since 2020, witnessed a boom in the start-up section; being locked in led to ideas being unlocked. Many have achieved success, whereas others are facing teething issues. Understanding and living this, the brand intends to showcase deserving start-ups the marketing, visibility, and promotion required to make a brand successful. They keep customer convenience and trust in mind while curating items from different start-ups onto a single platform.
Through their hard work and ingenuity, This or That has already collaborated with 110 brands in its first year. They have around 50 more brands to collaborate with in the pipeline. The brand’s strategy is to remain true to its values, create the best Indian start-ups offer, and grow together. A mutually beneficial Symbiosis is part of their core strategy.
What’s Different About This & That:
- Extraordinary: Maintain the pursuit to add the ‘extra’ to every ‘ordinary’: Be it the Brand philosophy, the start-up brands that they curate, or offerings for customers – the motto is to go a mile extra and be unique and innovative at that!
- Supportive: They believe in being helpful and available for all partner businesses.
- Discerning: They are duty-bound towards their customers to pick out the most legit and interesting start-ups that offer the choicest products.
- Reliable: They maintain complete transparency in their dealings and help start-ups reach milestones they wouldn’t have thought possible, thereby paving the way for mutual trust and confidence.
- Perceptive: They deeply understand the hurdles start-ups face. They know they must preempt what might trouble the start-ups and ease it for them.
Challenges And The Brand’s Response To Them
Growth comes through change, and change comes through pain. There are challenges that individuals, societies, and businesses face every day. Responding to the challenges is key to success or failure. This or That is nascent, and existing marketing concepts do not confine its strategy. And hence they don’t believe in giving too many discounts.
Rather, the focus is on ‘Value’ in the selected products. For an Indian population hungering for accessibility of off-beat, aspirational products, This or That makes that a reality by offering these products on one platform.
At This or That, the team is ideating, brainstorming, executing, and innovating daily. They work day in and out to ease roadblocks. They believe in meeting the challenges of the brand and of the brand that onboards with them and mitigating problems.
Investor’s Perspective Towards The Business
The brand’s focus is on other start-ups to its platforms. So far, they have housed over 15 start-ups ranging from the FMCG sector to Fashion, Agritech, and Medtech, ranging from a few lakhs to a few crores.
In terms of what investors look for in a start-up business, it must be scalable, profitable, and should be forward-looking business.
E.g., is the start-up scalable for the next 15 to 20 years? The product should be marketed and distributed, keeping in mind the requirements of the Target Groups. The start-up team should be innovative in coming up with a way to resonate with the customers and have them return. Customer Delight should be at the core of all their dealings.
Being a Start-up means opening a can of beans. Riddled with challenges, from having the correct board of advisors and hiring quality agencies at affordable rates to positioning and marketing the brand. Creating space in the mind of the consumers amidst the clutter of many businesses.
A dedicated team chooses start-ups basis experience, country of origin, etc. Before onboarding, each potential partner brand goes through a whole round of data collection, verification, and authentication to ensure that every brand that integrates with This or That is reliable.
The brand focuses on hand-holding start-ups from a nascent stage so that they leverage from This or That’s experience and expertise. They’re not sector specific.
