NeedyBee is a household name for baby accessories and well known to all mommies. So when we had a chance to learn the story behind their success and how NeedyBee came up we met the founders Alop Mehta and Nidhi Banthia Mehta. Here’s NeedyBee’s success story:
Whats the story behind NeedyBee?
Nidhi: This dates back to when I was in Business School and the internet/email phenomenon had just started. I was sitting in the computer lab creating an email address on yahoo for myself. A friend of mine came up with an email address NeedyBee (Needy for Nidhi & Bee for B from my maiden name Banthia). We loved it! It was so creative and thus the name NeedyBee was born and stuck with us over the years. And here we are – thirteen years hence with NeedyBee.com, a kids accessories online store “dressing kids head-2-toe”!
Alop: Our first born is a boy. After two exciting years of trucks, trains, planes, dirt and searching for colorful tees in the boys section, our daughter was born on 07/07/07. Overnight, we were surrounded by beautiful clips and bows and the fun of dressing up a girl…we were struck with the realization that all the moms were always looking out for something cute, beautiful and unique accessories for their tender and beautiful babies!
So, when we thought of relocating to India, after a couple of decades of making our corporate careers in Silicon Valley and then in Singapore, we both decided to take the opportunity to cater to our respective interests:
- Nidhi in designing Kids accessories with a paramount stress on quality and style.
- Myself in creating an organization from scratch and building an e-commerce business that would help us give back to our community with something unique all the while fulfilling a need!
All of the products, from the raw material, to its packaging is thought through – they are mostly handmade, organic and environment friendly, as we believe in the mantra – functionality and comfort are as relevant, as the style itself.
What is the inspiration behind your ventures?
Alop: As is the case, global boundaries have diluted! The power of internet today allows you to be anywhere in the world and continue to conduct and manage your business from anywhere! When we relocated to India, with a penchant for starting something new and creative, we decided to tap into the nascent accessory market in India and worldwide. Now after living here we have explored so much and are now launching Jaipur Se which will showcase the most unique products from Jaipur (the shopping capital of India)
MetaConsults is a consulting company focussed on e-commerce . It will enable small businesses and ventures to go online smoothly. Nidhi has worked with McKinsey & Company and consulting is something we both are good at! We will take our clients online and handhold them for 6 months till they are stable on their own. Right from helping them with the marketing strategy, registrations, UPC codings etc we will assist with everything at a very nominal fee. (contact@meta-in.com)
The guiding principle for our company is to create opportunity for people to have flexible career paths, to have the choice to work in a function they enjoy and grow! We want to be a socially responsible company!
So what all do you wish to achieve with NeedyBee/ JaipurSe/ MetaConsults?
Nidhi: We want to be a company that people enjoy working for and have it on their wish list of a dream job! We want to make our employees think out of the box, harness their true potential and create a great work environment with good work-life balance. We both love to spend quality time with our kids, cooking and travelling. We want the same for our employees too.. As a company we hope it will be on VC’s Top List of companies to invest in and hedge their bets on!
So as a mommy how does Nidhi as a woman entrepreneur manage her time between work kids and work?
Alop: Nidhi has always been an entrepreneur! She left McKinsey & Company and pursued her passion for dance by opening a Bollywood Dance Fitness studio (www.bollybeatz.com) in Silicon Valley. It was a first of its kind. Today, it’s running in partnership with her various instructors in Chicago, Bay Area, Singapore, Netherlands and India. It was a choice to allow flexibility of time with the kids and home. She is a total hands-on-mom. She drives them to school, cooks with them, drops them for activity class and we both are very hands on parents and we hope our children will get the entrepreneurial bug from us!
You both have been successful serial entrepreneurs. Share a few tips that no book in the world can share on being entrepreneur
Nidhi: Entrepreneurship requires instant action. Whenever an idea comes to our mind, I have a Book of Ideas where I pen it down. We’ve always believed in low investment businesses to start making it easier to gauge whether the idea will fly or not at an early stage. We are already on our third venture and our fourth e-commerce consulting to help people go online is already in the works….
Consulting to dancing to a kids brand to a lifestyle brand. How is it different?
Nidhi: BollyBeatz is a dance fitness studio model. I’m very passionate about dance. I left my career at McKinsey & Company to start Stepz.com and later www.BollyBeatz.com, in the USA. I’ve been travelling to conduct corporate dance team building workshops, opening franchises across the world. The model is such that its very specific to my skill set. It needs me to run it. It’s creative – I’m constantly creating new routines, choreography, dance styles.
NeedyBee.com is different in the sense that it’s a corporate. It’s not dependant just on us – Infact, we wouldn’t want that for it! Whether we are there or not the show has to run. It’s the same creative process but here it’s more of my mind power that we engage with – more business skills and marketing strategies that we’ve learnt over the years.
JaipurSe, our new venture is our attempt to bring to the world the beautiful things that are manufactured in this city. As we met new people in Jaipur and saw the work they are doing we were fascinated and wanted to use our skill set to bring their unique products online. Hence, JaipurSe was born and we are so excited about it!
Meta Consults is again something both of us have a background in but now with the expertise we have gained in e-commerce we want to enable others to go online as this is the future and it is here to stay!
You’ll have successfully established and run businesses in many global cities. How is India different?
Alop: India is relatively unstructured given the developing nature of our country. In most developed nations of the world, to set up a company is a five minutes process with a click of the mouse. Here you need to engage somebody and then ensure that all the paperwork is in order to establish a company.; besides there are lots of small/niggling issues that create what I would call unnecessary inefficiencies in our system – untimely payment, logistical hurdles, inconsistency in rules and regulations etc. etc. But, through it all we see India as having immense opportunities and thus we believe that everyone today can become an entrepreneur! It’s workable – it’s much easier today to run a business in India than it was five or ten years ago, and we are sure that with every passing year it will only get easier,… It’s a burgeoning market. Masses in India have a lot of spending power these days and they love to spend. Infact, spending by each parent, in India, is much higher than that of the USA! Kids are very fashion conscious these days and they usually select what they want – each outfit has matching accessories
India is a fairly unorganized market and a large part of moms shop offline. How do you deal with it and reach out to larger audiences
Alop: E-Commerce is a big part of our business and that’s how we started, but we have realised the potential of the off-line shoppers – parents who want the touch and feel before they buy – and therefore now the NeedyBee brand is available at all many Brick & Mortar stores around the country – Mom & Me part of the Mahindra Retail stores is one such example – across India. In addition, there are various speciality kids stores and boutiques in various cities who stock and sell our products,
In Short:
a) Being an entrepreneur is – our being
b) Fashion is – one’s personality
c) Being parents is – the best feeling in the world and a big responsibility to be good role models
d) Pursue your passion because – that’s what will make you really happy! It will be your biggest stress buster, the reason to truly feel satisfied. That’s what we want to pass to our kids
e) Be on a digital platform because – that’s where the world is headed and you can be present globally sitting in any remote corner of the world
f) Our passion : Travelling (Nidhi) Cars(Alop)
g) We Love – Adventure, Travel and Adventure sports.
h) Our Children – will hopefully find and pursue their own passions and be successful entrepreneurs in their own way!
