Bewakoof.com - Not So Bewakoof!
What happens when you learn to capitalize on memes? How about turning INR 30,000 to INR 100 crore in 9 years?
When you have a customer base of over 4 million and you sell more than 650,000 products per month, Bewakoof is the last title one would give you… but that is not the case with our topic today: because we are going to talk about a startup that grew from a capital investment of INR 30,000 in 2012 to INR 100 crore today & named itself Bewakoof.com!! Industry? Fashion!
Fashion is ever changing, and with an altogether new set of consumers, mostly comprising millennial youth who have grown with technology and essentially with their favourite characters from TV shows, movies, etc. Character merchandising or licensing has evolved as a new business and apparel segment has especially leveraged this to its benefit. What really is character merchandising? Well, it refers to the exploitation of a famous character to gain profits by selling merchandises with its name, face or tagline on it and it can be done by both the owner of the character or the licensee of the character. The size of our domestic licensing industry is about Rs. 4,000 crore, of which 80 per cent is ruled by characters and entertainment segment.
And when you talk about character merchandising in India, Bewakoof.com is too big a name to miss!
While startups like Swiggy, Zomato, Netflix, are always a part of discussions, Bewakoof.com – the only profitable start-up in the pool – is relatively talked about very less. Unlike many other startups in this fast-pacing world, Bewakoof.com has shown profits for three continuous years from 2017 to 2019, though the trend took a dip in 2020 due to almost zero sales of their merchandise in first four months owing to the pandemic.
Bewakoof has been around from quite a while now and from a t-shirt business, the founders have expanded multifold to other customised merchandising.
Did you know? Statistics show t-shirt printing market-share will reach $3.1 billion by 2025.
After a recent fundraise of $11.2 million (INR 80 crore) from Investcorp in October 2019, the brand is already set for another round of funding of 100 crore in 2021. Let us try to de-weave what investors like Kunal Bahl, Rohit Bansal, & Nikhil Bora saw in this brand when they seed funded it 9 years back.
#1 What’s in a name? Apparently, everything!
Do you know Zomato was earlier named FoodieBay but changed its named to Zomato after 2 years as the founders wanted a “powerful” brand name? Another example – Google was earlier named Backrub? Can you imagine someone saying – Let me just Backrub that for you? So, Yes, name means a lot when it comes to brands.
The name “Bewakoof” not just resonates with the young generation, which is into memes and quirky taglines, but also creates a lasting impression on this target group – and why not? Who would be such a fool to forget the name Bewakoof? Not just that, this brand name also left them open to genres other than t-shirt printing – quite an efficient name, eh?
#2 Social commerce before an e-commerce store!
While the start-ups enter into social media once they have set-up the business, Bewakoof took a 180 degrees approach. They started selling on social media through facebook, set up an Instagram page where they posted only memes (and not their products), gathered up a social community of more than 75000 in a matter of 3 months – and the rest is history! It was after getting a confidence through social media selling that they decided to go full-hog on e-commerce.
As of today, their website receives half a million visitors per month, mostly redirected from their own social media channels. What is interesting is that this might be the first brand which started with social commerce (selling via fb), moved to e-commerce and are now rolling back to social commerce via whatsapp. A few months back, they started selling through whatsapp and the founders claim that 15% of the orders now comes from whatsapp. How cool is that?
#3 First Mover Advantage is underrated
The year when Bewakoof started, there were no other players selling customised clothing for young people - people who wanted to stay cool by keeping up with the trends. What made them popular amongst the young people was their prompt reactions to the latest trends that morphed into memes. From movie references like “Apna time ayega” to “Rasode me kaun tha?” to office jargons like “Sab moh maya hai”, they got it all. Thus, they appealed to the young audiences as they connected & resonated with them very easily.
Their unique appeal also made them popular with the production houses. As of today, they have already partnered with Yashraj, T Series, Viacom18, Excel Entertainment etc for their movies as their exclusive merchandising partner. Their offline promotions include college tie-ups and associations with popular events like Comic Con, NH7 and Mood Indigo, etc.
While above are our top 3 picks of the factors that contributed to the constant growth of Bewakoof.com, we appreciate the business model and the careful strategy that the founders built around their business. Who ever thought of entering into only t-shirt business? T-shirts are one form of apparel that never go out of trend and are here to stay. Moreover, t-shirts signify a style statement for college crowds. So, why not give everyone a unique style, that reflects their personality?
All in all, a brand which is built by the customer himself is bound to succeed. We have numerous examples around us –
Mamaearth : built by parents searching for non-toxic products for their newborn ;
iD Fresh Foods: built by south Indian brothers who longed for fresh idli and dosas= batters ;
Bira91: built by a young guy looking for authentic craft beer in India ;
And then we have the case in point,
Bewakoof.com: built by two friends looking for cool style t-shirts while in college!
And what else in common amongst these brands?
All of them are here to stay!
By: Anmol Gupta | Isha Garg
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Amazing story!