20 INSPIRATION
another company of his own called – Excellere in 2007. Excellere was all about developing web-based educational products. Although, for unknown reasons this venture of his didn’ t function for more than a year, but during that phase what he saw back in India, changed his life forever. He founded – Quikr. com!
THE IDEA OF QUIKR
The story dates back to 2007! Pranay was living in New York and had turned into an experimental film-maker. He required a team for a film called‘ Latent Lava’— a video game made in the style of a feature film; basically, it used technology that allowed the viewer to play a game on live action footage, creating multiple film scenarios. Anyway, he was able to recruit almost 60 actors, one producer and 30 crew members through Craigslist and that is when he realised that, Craigslist was a fullproof business model and didn’ t have an existence in his home country.
As he got deep into ideation, Pranay saw that there were barely any solutions for the individuals to get a just price for anything they wanted, whether it was a used phone, furniture or a flat. He wanted to solve this problem for the masses. Additionally, this was a business model that had proved its success across the world; be it, the U. S. or any other European country, or for that matter South
America or China too. And even though print classifieds still had a stronger hold in the Indian market, online classifieds had the potential to out beat it, over the period of time. This boosted his confidence even more! And while connecting the dots, he found the last piece of the puzzle. India is a country that still loves to touch and feel the product before buying it and a platform that he had in mind, would get the buyer and seller in touch, and would let them continue their transaction offline. This would not online make his idea different from e-commerce sites like Amazon or Flipkart, but would also put it on the lines of classifieds. Hence, in July 2008; Pranay officially launched Quikr. com, but as Kijiji. in! In the initial phase Quikr was a subsidiary of eBay and Kijiji( which meant community). Soon after the launch of the brand he realized that, the name was very difficult to pronounce and wasn’ t adding to the brand too. Then he renamed it as Quikr.
Moving on! Quikr was born out of a simple yet unique idea – to craft a place where people in India can trade things from each other. But according to him Quikr was very different; the portal is designed very strategically, depending on the target audience. They had a very simple yet innovative technique to track their P2P( People-2-People) sales as well. All they used to and still do is that; when people used to come to delete their ads, that time they used to ask them if they were able to sell their product. With such a unique model( in respect to India), along with such innovative strategies, in all aspects, the growth and rise of the company was eminent! Today, Quikr receives over 30 million users every month. In fact, almost every Indian has used Quikr at least once to buy something, or even post an ad.
WINSPIRE: Empowering youth | February, 2017
Advice to Young Generation
What you are looking in next generation?
There should be clarity of thought, ability to inspire.