How this social networking platform enabling startups help each other

Mumbai-based social networking platform Pushstart which helps starups 'find their own tribe' has started its journey in 2018 as a small Facebook group of entrepreneurs helping each other with their startup ideas. Today, the company has evolved into India's most active and trusted community that caters to the needs of over 25,000 entrepreneurs across India. Neeraj Joshi, Founder, Pushstart, in an exclusive interview with Bizz Buzz talks about the purpose of starting Pushstart and his plans to further scale it up

How is the community driven business growing in India?

The future is community! Brands have started focusing on engaging their customer and user base by launching communities that allow member/customers to interact with one another and directly with the brand. It helps brand establish a transparent channel via which they can interact directly with their customers, listen to their problems and solve them via the support of the community. Customers also get a chance to interact and learn from fellow customers with similar interest and goals, share their feedback with the brand and support the brand that they love.

This results in a much better and deeper brand-customer relationship and loyalty leading to exponential increase in repeat purchase rate and LTV. Communities also help brand establish the much required sustained differentiation in the market as it is easy to replicate a product, but difficult to replicate the community. Brands also get deeper insights into the preferences of their target audience, which creates a strong research database for constant evolution and future innovation.

What is the vision for Pushstart?

The core vision and mission of Pushstart is to build India's largest community-based ecosystem solving core problems of entrepreneurs across 3 verticals: Learning, networking and investment.

In the next one year, Pushstart hopes to launch an offering via which it will help startups connect with investors. By 2024, it wants to launch its own investment fund and support entrepreneurs and startups in its ecosystem. The company is also going to launch courses to help entrepreneurs get started in their journeys.

Tell us the story behind PushStart. How do you think networking through PushStart has impacted the life of entrepreneurs?

Pushstart started with an inner urge to create an impactful change in the world. What started as a small Facebook group of entrepreneurs helping each other with their startup ideas today, Pushstart has evolved into India's most active and trusted community that caters to the needs of over 25,000 entrepreneurs across India.

We, at Pushstart, currently run a network of more than 40 niche communities via which entrepreneurs discuss their professional problems, exchange trusted business contacts, and help each other grow their business together. Our focus is not only to generate revenue through the community, but to create a safe environment for entrepreneurs, which allows them to grow into the best brands and add value to the world.

What is the main purpose of this community and how do you plan to scale it up?

Pushstart started with a purpose to empower every entrepreneur to follow their dream and become an expert in their field. Pushstart as a community has its own unique selling proposition (USP) where you can showcase your expertise and build your brand in front of founders, experts, and investors. More than 10,000 entrepreneurs are active in our community every day where you can ask questions, Brainstorm ideas, and seek help without any second thoughts. We have over 3500 business interactions every day.

You can launch your startup/product as we are only engagement platform in India that enables you to launch a product startup in front of a relevant audience. India has become a startup hub and is moving towards rapid transformation in the entrepreneurial mindset. Individuals are aware that to create an external shift, the change starts from within. Having a community will give the entrepreneurs guidance, motivation and a comfort space to connect and collaborate with like-minded people.

What is the strength of employees in Pushstart, can you tell us what the work culture is like?

We are a team of 30 in the Pushstart family. Our team is young with innovative ideas discussed on a regular basis. Young employees bring a fresh perspective and a different way of thinking to your business. Most young workers are eager to learn, build their experience and apply their skills in the workforce.

Our team is filled with people who have an attitude to experiment and evolve, ability to take risks and handle multiple domains. The strength of the employees is the ability to adapt to any circumstance and build strong connections with the members and peers.

Our team is focused on creating impact and doing something tangible in life and not just earning money. This enthusiasm is great for team building, productivity and workplace morale.

At Pushstart, we work as one team rather than bifurcating it based on position and profile.

What are the hurdles you faced and how did you overcome them?

Building a sustainable community: Online community building is still at a very nascent stage in India, with not many success stories. It's easy to start a group on Facebook or Whatsapp, but challenging to sustain the group interactions and generate stable revenue. For almost the first two years, we experimented with many ways to retain members and monetize our communities.

The approach was to set goals for the community, design a plan to achieve those goals, implement the plan, track the plan's performance regularly and iterate the plan if required. This approach helped us experiment with various plans to come up with the plan that worked.

We kept on experimenting, learned from our failures, and kept giving our 200 per cent till we succeeded. Building the initial team: As the idea was pretty unique and new, it was difficult to find people who would understand the concept and have expertise in the community space. I talked with many people via social media and hiring platforms, but most were looking for either money or part-time gigs.

After almost six months of wasting my time on these platforms, I decided to talk with people in my network, i.e., my friends and Pushstart community members. I was surprised to see many people interested in working with me as they trusted either me or my vision; even if they weren't interested, they would refer to someone from their network who might be - That's how I built my team.

Initially, when I had less funds, I onboarded interested people as volunteers, founding team members, or interns and focussed on generating money with their help so that I could onboard them as full-time employees.