About Bewakoof.

com:
It was April fool day of 2012 when the company was launched by the 2 IITians Prabhkiran
Singh and Siddharth Munot. Bewakoof.com has grown up in a leading brand with their
products shipping in over 90 countries. The company has its business running through catchy
and funny messages printed on its products.

Both the founders after completing their graduation started their career separately. Prabhikiran
was running his Lassi business named ‘Khadke gLASSI’ outside his college which later
suffered a loss and the business was closed soon. On the other hand, Siddharth was working
with an educational startup.

In initial period, they lack in the money for investing in the business and both started the
company Bewakoof.com with their personal investment of Rs30000. They worked harder and
harder. Researched over the current market trends among college students and finally
established a cool business.

The domain name “Bewakoof.com” was bought two years before the brand was launched. It
was chosen for the company name due to its catchiness and distinctiveness. “Once we get
people’s attention with our brand name, they remember it for the rest of their lives”, said the
co-founder Siddharth Munot.

Finally, the wait was over for the founders and moment came when they received funding from
one of the top leaders in e-commerce industry Snapdeal, and Former IDFC Securities MD,
Nikhil Vora. Now it was the time for them to enjoy and cheer up.

Currently Bewakoof is doing a business of INR1.5 Cr. through its own portal constituting 100%
of the sales. The brand claims to have developed 3 times in the past 6 months and more than
50% of their business coming from mobile. The company is targeting to reach 100 million USD
turn over in the next 5-7 years.

A team of 100 creative young and energetic nerds are giving their 200 percent to achieve the
target. Engagement with masses through social media platform like Facebook and Twitter
proved to be a panacea. The creativity and popularity of the brand has made them a favorite
merchandise of Bollywood.

The success story of the company may be concluded with the fact that the firm now receives
orders worth 25-30 thousand a day on an average and is still growing. In terms of transaction
it gets more than 4000 visitors per day on Bewakoof.com. It is growing 100% month on month.

Nothing can speak more about the venture other than its stats and turnover. Within a short span,
with an annual turnover of Rs10crores and monthly transactions of worth Rs1.5crore,
Bewakoof.com claims to be a profitable e-commerce site. “We are self-sustainable and
growing 15-20% month-on-month,” said the co-founder Prabhkiran Singh. A report issued few
months ago showing stats of Bewakoof.com is displayed below.
Journey of Bewakoof.Com:
It was in 2010 when Prabhkiran Singh & Siddharth Munot was searching for
some domain name for their business & come across the idea of taking Bewakoof.com to start
with, as the month of April was about to start and April Fool’s day was near around. Also, they
wanted to create something humorously, witty and eye-catching by the youth, so they thought
Bewakoof.com would be perfectly good to start with. Although the domain was registered in
2010, they never went ahead to do anything about it. The work on the site was already begun
around 2011, but the site was launched at the end of Jan 2012.

Both the founders have started their career separately after the graduation. Prabhkiran was
started with his Lassi venture named khadke gLASSI outside his college, which wasn’t went
well & thus had to be closed down.
On the other hand, Siddharth was working with an educational start-up. Both of them then
decided to start their own business of T-Shirt printing. They wanted to design something that
could bring some humour to college students. They researched about the latest youth trends,
lifestyle and started designing quotes for their T-Shirts accordingly. And as they were expected,
their brand name, cool yet humorously quotes printed on the t-shirts were grabbed the attention
of everyone & received a great response from the youth towards their products.

What they do:

Bewakoof.com sells apparels and mobile phone covers. It claims to be doing transactions worth
Rs 1.5 crore per month, with t-shirts being their best sellers. Their ‘Ghanta’ collection of t-
shirts for college students with messages like ‘Ghanta Engineering/Ghanta MBA’ etc have
been their best-selling products. A sizeable chunk of its customer base comprises of students
and youth in the age group of 16-34 years.
When asked why they have restricted themselves to only apparels when most e-commerce
websites have a horizontal offering, Prabhkiran says both are different business models having
its own strengths and weaknesses. “In our play, we have high margins and a very high customer
loyalty owing to our differentiated and unique products,” he says. All products that Bewakoof
sells on its site is designed and manufactured by them, they are not a marketplace like Flipkart
and Snapdeal, etc. Until sometime back, Bewakoof.com also retailed its products through
offline stores in Mumbai. However, they have discontinued their offline thrust and today sell
stuff online-only.
Metros and tier-2 cities are best markets for Bewakoof. Cities like Pune, Bangalore, and Kota,
where there is a large congregation of younger populace for study/work, also contribute well
to their sales. They are also very popular in the North-East with Assam consistently being one
of their top-performing states.
How they sell:
Bewakoof.com launches new designs based on their observation of trends in lifestyle and
fashion, as well as by listening to its social media fan base of over 1.50 million fans. “Today,
in the fashion industry, the opportunities don’t necessarily go to the big and established players,
but to the fastest one out there. We work very closely with our fans on Facebook and other
social media, as well as use other consumer engaging tools and incorporate their feedback into
what we do,” says Siddharth.
Talking about their decision of launching mobile phone covers, Siddharth says it is a huge
opportunity and the next upcoming lifestyle category. Although they had plans to launch other
accessories, mobile covers became the first choice, when they saw a rising demand for mobile
accessories.

Siddharth Munot

Movie merchandising is another important area of focus for them, and since starting up they
have worked as merchandise partners for Hindi films ‘Gunday’, ‘Bewakoofiyan’, ‘Gangs of
Wasseypur’, ‘Boss’ and ‘Sholay’. “Our popularity on social media has made us Bollywood’s
favourite brand. We are the first point of contact for merchandising for all the major production
houses. We have already partnered with Yashraj, T-series, Viacom18, Excel Entertainment,
Zee TV etc for their movies as their exclusive official merchandise partners,” says Prabhkiran.
Their site receives half-a-million visitors per month, mostly redirected from their own social
media channels. “Bewakoof is India’s top most socially engaged brand. The impact of social
media on the youth is immense and we’ve been able to take advantage of that. Our 1.5 million
following on Facebook helps us connect with our audience beautifully,” he says. Other than
this, the startup also uses normal tools available such as Google Ads and other re-marketing
tools. Offline promotions include college tie-ups and associations with popular events like
Comic Con, NH7, and Mood Indigo, etc.
A couple of months back, Bewakoof.com also started selling via WhatsApp, and now they
claim to be making 15% of their total sales through the instant messenger. Customers have to
mention the product name, their name and address and send a WhatsApp message to
7666655001, the official number for the service. The founders claim to have already handled
10,000 pings from customers, including order placements, queries, suggestions and repeat
interactions.
The initiative has also helped cut-down the reliance on traditional modes of customer service
avenues such as phones and emails which saw a combined drop of nearly 35-40% in volume.
“By being on the contact list of tens of thousands of people, we are realizing our dream of being
a friend to our customers rather than just act as brand interested in selling them things. Now
we’re literally just a ping away,” says Prabhkiran. They are targeting sales of around 25% by
the month end through WhatsApp alone.
Bewakoof has a team of 150+ people that ensures all parts of the machinery are functioning
properly. One of the major struggles for the startup was to make sure their products were being
shown to the right audience. “You end up wasting a lot of money in pursuit of this. We
experimented quite a bit, and after endless trial and error methods have been successful in
bringing our Cost per Acquisition to the lowest by industry standards,” shares Siddharth.

Another key challenge they have been able to overcome is to reduce the long product to market
cycle, viz the time period from conceptualizing a product to getting it out in the market, which
ranges from four to nine months. Bewakoof.com, says Siddharth, has innovated and been
successful in bringing the product-to-market cycle to about 25-30 days and wants to bring it
down further. Their focus for the New Year is to add more product categories and increase the
reach of their brand.

Competition:
Bewakoof started its journey of miles from the first step and became one of the leaders in the
market just in a small span of time. The competitors are left behind and the venture is gaining
its popularity among the target customers.

Asking to the co-founder Siddharth about the competitors, he said that in their portfolio, they
don’t have any competitor.

Rather there are some sites like Ink fruit, Tee sort, who are in the same industry and they have
early movers’ advantage. Bewakoof.com has gathered its target customers quite wisely. Now
sites like Ink fruit, Teesort.com are lagging far behind Bewakoof in terms of popularity. One
thing Bewakoof will have to do is to attract more and more customers from the local regional
market means offline customers.

Marketing Strategy and Tactics:

The company used two major platform Justdial & Facebook to market & promote their
products initially. The effect was clearly seen & in less than a few months, their Facebook
page got engagement of more than 75 thousand users.

Apart from the social media handlers, the company also created some extensive college
campaigns where students are supposed to spread Beewakoofy around the college campus and
free Tees provides them from the company.

The company also promoted their products, through tie up with many top brand e-commerce
sites to sell their products including Snapdeal, India times Shopping and Seventy mm.
Marketing to drive traffic to their official website was done using the two most famous
Facebook pages “2 Min Aaya Yaar Raste Mei Hoon” and their company
page “bewakoof.com.”

These pages kept the customers occupied with the Facebook memes and trolls to promote them
on their website.

The surprising strength of the brand is their appealing and trendy quotes printed on different t-
shirts and various products. It attracts the people in the first appearance. Other than this, the
replacement policy helps the consumers with ease of buying any item. Customers can pay using
the method of COD with an advantage to check the product before accepting it from the channel
partner.

Other than the social media platform, the company also arranges extensive college campaigns
where students are asked to spread Beewakoofy around their college campus and the company
then provides a free Tees to them.
For further promotion of their products, the company has also tied up with many top brand e-
commerce sites to sell their products including Snapdeal, India times Shopping and Seventy
mm.
 2 million monthly hits on website
 Shipping started over 90 countries
 Over 17lacs Facebook fans
 Over 3500 active followers on Twitter
 Over 6000 followers on Instagram

Application of Bewakoof:
Facebook Page of Bewakoof:

Twitter Account:

Social Media Impact?

Over the previous 3 years, Bewakoof.com has seen only growth and has never seen back till
now. It was 23 rd of April 2015, when the firm celebrated its 3rd birthday. The birthday
campaign was just to collect enough money to sponsor the education of 60 financially weak
students. The journey of the company started when both the founders sitting outside their
college were drilling their mind for any idea of business to do. There came the idea of
Bewakoof.com and the company was incepted. The work on the site was started around Dec
2011 but the site was launched at the end of Jan 2012.
Bewakoof.com quickly grasped its market and target customer using their promotional
activities through social networking platform. One can find a long list of crazy quotations
printed on the T-shirts attracting the eyes of the age group of 16-34. Bewakoof is leading in its
industry with 3000+ style trends, 1705446 Facebook fans, 3600 followers on Twitter and 12
Bollywood movies merchandise.

With turnover of Rs 10 crores, Bewakoof.com claims to be a profitable eCommerce venture

Where most Indian e-commerce companies, including the big names, can’t put a finger on their
profitability timelines, Bewakoof.com (which means a fool) launched in April 2012, claims to
have bucked the trend and says it is quadrupling its sales each year. Bewakoof.com claims to
be a profitable e-commerce site, eyeing a turnover of over Rs 10 crore in the current fiscal.
“We are self-sustainable and growing 15-20% month-on-month,” says Co-founder Prabhkiran
Singh.

WhatsApp Helps Bewakoof.com To Trigger 15% Of Online Sales:

The company wanted to launch its sales process through a mobile messenger as it is one of the
most feasibly viable mode of connecting with the targeted set of customers in a comparatively
shorter period of time. Moreover, amongst other mobile messengers, WhatsApp was chosen
because in the present-day world, it is more widely used. Also, it is more likely that the resultant
factor of using WhatsApp will put forward instant replies as compared to other social media
platforms or sending emails.
So, to extend its network and offer a variety of unusually likeable merchandise and other stuff,
especially for the youth, Bewakoof pitched its prospective set of customers via WhatsApp
mobile messenger. It allowed the users to make their online purchases even via WhatsApp.
Bewakoof.com conceptualized an interesting idea, which is to launch its ordering process on
WhatsApp. It created a simple platform to wherein to shop for a product, the person had to
mention the product name, his/her name and address and send a WhatsApp message to
7666655001, which is the official number for this service.
The ordering process was explained by the company via putting forward three instances. These
are mentioned as follows:
 The first instance was if the customer knows what he/she wants, they were simply supposed
to ping and tell Bewakoof about their requirement. This was a usual matter of making
online purchase.
 Another instance that Bewakoof substantiated was that if by any chance internet’s slow
speed acts a hindrance for browsing the entire set of collection, then to retain their
prospective buyers, it was simply asked to ping Bewakoof. In response to their desired
product, they will send the images of what they have in store.
 Last but not the least, if any customer gets lured by any of the product(s) offered by
Bewakoof on its online portal, which his/her was already using, then the aspiring customer
could send them a picture of that product. By doing this, Bewakoof will place the order on
that buyer’s behalf.
All in all, every attempt was made to acquire and retain the customer. The simple concept
worked really well for this booming brand. Within a very small time-frame of three months,
WhatsApp helped Bewakoof to bring about 15% of its online sales’ demand.
Results Achieved by Bewakoof.com
This whopping number of successful sales is the resultant of hitting the nail on its head at the
right time. Since Bewakoof.com analysed the right potential and worked upon the right way to
leverage WhatsApp as the ideal platform to spread a word about launching the new ordering
process.
This concept that worked in favour of the company helped to witness 15% of online sales, all
alone through targeting WhatsApp users. As suggested in their instances, the online orders at
Bewakoof.com comprised of both direct as well as assisted orders. The result was
overwhelming as the company witnessed as many as 10,000 pings on WhatsApp from the
curious customers. The pings comprised of questions, queries, suggestions, order placements
and other affiliate interactions thus acted as the best two-way user interface.