by Sudhir Ahluwalia | Negosentro.com |
Bananabandy is an emarketplace for artists. It was born out of the need to support artists. The venture’s current focus is on creators from India. Artists and creators can register themselves and place their portfolios online on the site. Connoisseurs, buyers of art including those seeking creative work visit the market place seeking suitable creators. Customers can see samples of work of creators on the website, decide and offer a project. It is a win win model for both buyer and seller. Bananabandy gets a small service charge from the buyer of work. The emarketplace – www.bananabandy.com concept came into being when the two were still in college.
Bananabandy Founders
The website went live in 2015. Ever since, artists from all over India have patronized the site. According to a Press note, released by the Founders over 30000 art works have been uploaded onto the portal. Companies big and small are visiting the marketplace offering projects to artists. This includes some marquee brands.
The demand for visually expressing a product concept, presenting the concept has always been there. Now the need is growing across the entire range of industrial, infrastructural and social market segments. Bananabandy current portfolio is still largely restricted to traditional art, animation and related areas.
The opportunity in the Indian market for art work is still dispersed. The market is still not deep. It is a price sensitive market. Innovative marketing, brand building, management and low cost execution capability are required to effectively leverage the India market. This reality will be as much there for Bananabandy too.
Disruption is always round the corner. A startup in Philippines, Singapore, Silicon Valley or anywhere else in the world is waiting to disrupt a business created in India or elsewhere. We in India cannot believe that we can have a monopoly over the local market. We have plenty of examples in support of this premise.
After all if the IT majors TCS, Infosys and others could disrupt the system integration US market, why can’t the reverse be also true? Uber, Amazon, Zoom car and many others are already in and getting good response in India. They are giving a tough fight to domestic startup companies.
For Bananabandy to go the next level, the startup will have to think beyond the Founders and be ready to induct quality specialist manpower. Talent acquisition is often a very difficult exercise for most startups. Founders, in general,’ are reluctant to let go and give elbow room for talent to innovate and perform. Although, I must clarify that my interaction with Shashank was too brief for me to come to any conclusion one way or the other.
Bananabandy is a great idea, it is led by great Founders. My sense is that the venture is poised for takeoff. Whether that will happen will depend on the vision and thinking of Shashank and Kavin.
Bananabandy is sitting on the edge – it has the potential to catapult to the next level.
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About Sudhir
Sudhir Ahluwalia is a business consultant. He has been management consulting head of Asia’s largest IT outsourcing company Tata Consultancy Services, business advisor to multiple companies, columnist and author of upcoming book on herbs-Holy Herbs. He has been a member of the Indian Forest Service. His webpage is: www.sudhirahluwalia.com
[Featured image via http://yourstory.com/2015/07/bananabandy]
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