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Small to Scale : How Traditional Businesses Are Tinkering Models with Digital Ads

Traditional businesses and local ones are all rethinking how they will grow despite business growth challenges.

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Charvi Kathuria
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Traditional businesses and local ones are all rethinking how they will grow despite business growth challenges. Today many are faced with the big question - how to sell a traditional product differently to an online audience? Communities and digital reach is the second part of their focus area. We speak to three Indian women entrepreneurs from different sectors on what's driving their ideas, how they are overcoming physical needs of a business and tapping the digital growth story.
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Mrinalini Shastry

At Six Yards Plus, Shastry is disrupting the way women perceive, purchase and experience the quintessential saree. "We are aiming to bring innovative tech first solutions to reach out to women at any stage in their saree journey, while building a strong, authentic supply chain and has been at the core of our work."

Her business has grown 6X since the time they started, and are on a stable path to grow. "Our future plans essentially are a scaling up of the conscious model we have built, and include increased international and digital presence in addition to domestic growth."

Running a saree business is not just about creativity and curation. Shastry says she wanted to get "technology first solutions" for an improved and efficient model to bring together customers and crafts persons. "It is a super exciting time to be here, and we are very excited to see the future unfold. All Six Yards of it!"


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"One of the biggest challenges has really been to have my enterprise taken seriously at times. Because I am woman entrepreneur working in apparel and handicraft, it took time for me to prove to my immediate circle even, that this was a legit start up."

She says this is not a passion project, not something 'extra', and certainly not something that could be brushed aside. "Things have changed, now though, because our scale has increased and our impact is showing, it's easier to get a buy in into our vision."

Part of their growth journey includes growth online. "Google Ads has been the mainstay of our website business and this has made a huge impact. Focusing on SEO and Digital Marketing has been a game changer for us."

Bhargavi K, Veebha Boutique

"We are small boutique focussed on maternity wear and so word of mouth is a critical piece of their journey to new customers." Their growth journey is new and the business is currently streamlining its pricing and supplies.

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Among the challenges, Bhargavi says the "initial challenge that I encountered was that clients were not ready to believe the price that we are quoting for maternity wear." But instead of downgrading prices, they pushed their quality narrative. "It took time to gain customer's confidence and regular posts of testimonials of my initial customers really worked."

Have extensively used Google ads to showcase my products and reach higher audience - Bhargavi

Bhargavi says as she plans to experiment with her reselling strategy, Google ads will be her go to space to understand the markets that are converting into large customer bases.


Gaargi Prehar of Puplord's Barkery

"I bake healthy treats for pet dog and cats and my immediate goal is to scale the production of the products to mass scale."

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With a focussed business like this, what's is the way forward? "We need to grow locally and fulfil demands in our region," says Prehar. She is working on improving her product processes and ensuring there is no time and experience loss for her customers.

"Currently from identifying key ingredients to ensuring the logistics are taken care of I have managed all aspects of the business and my biggest challenge has been to allocate tasks accurately as per the time slots since managing orders and producing the products to supplying the products and ensuring they are delivered to the customers, time management is the key challenge."

With growth she will need new tools says Prehar. "I do want to explore the keywords analytics tool and google analytics that can help me analyse my customers a bit more." As a local business is on Google Business to ensure her discoverability.

This article is in partnership with Google India


 

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