With intense desire to solve business problems, Few years before we founded TEB Solutions . Even though TEBS managed to bag few national awards and grants in supply-chain/logistic domain TEBS failed to make an impact in the market. After all these experiments and investigations we find that there are several missing pieces standing in the way of our success.
With a team of experienced techies and no fail mindset we were not in a mood to stop. We pivoted further, and this time rather than changing product changed the execution style. Started reaching out to medium and large corporate with our existing solution where we thought supply chain problems exist. Some of our mentors and organizations helped us to reach out to corporate including.
Attended multiple Reverse pitches and finally got a chance to partner with an O&G major and customised our initial offerings to solve their business problems
That corporate partnership changed our story. After 3 years we are in the market with 4 products working in India and abroad
Pulz Yard –Optimize large terminal by managing 4000+ trucks and equipment to reduce dwell time of trucks and ship
Pulz Tranz :Double digit saving in downstream distribution with demand prediction , planning and deviation management
Pulz OnDemand :Ready to deploy infrastructure for OnDemand delivery, already working in multiple countries
Pulz MOC –Rule engines and workflow management tools which optimize management of change in a large organisation
While TEBS solved our initial hiccups with this partnership, we found that Corporate also solve many of their inherent issues especially in
This blog is about to share our learning from that partnership which probably can help few new businesses
However it is not a cakewalk to partner with a corporate and here are few tips to start and keep running it healthy
While modifying an existing product(Our old product ) to create a new product (final product) by using domain knowledge and experience from another company (Corporate), it is very common to have a dilemma on who owns the final product.
Discussion/decision on this is very strategic and sensitive. If you try to do it in the very beginning the chances of you get stuck in the initial stage is very certain. Some times in beginning you don’t even know what will be your final product. So rather than think about ownership Try to observe and understand the problems and opportunities.
Many times corporate want a product not for reselling but for their own betterment. While you learn about business problems you will also get to know the decision makers and their vision and goals. Contact them convince them about the benefits of the product. Look for corporates constraints (budget, approval time) and tell them about how you as a start-up can find a solution for them. Sometimes it may be creating product with less profit. You as a visionary should know where you can make profit
If your product is a software try for a SAAS model. Which is a perfect fit in the above scenario. Make sure custom screens and data resides in the corporate control and you can have custom algorithms. Figure out which services you can create proprietary, believe me it is going to help you while growing.
Make sure that you are aware and respect data privacy and business confidentiality. For a corporate most of the time there will be a problem in sharing data with a start-up company . you need to work on bringing that confidence
You may be working with operation/sales/logistic team however when it come to data privacy and confidentiality it will be monitored and reviewed by it/safety/hseq teams. Make sure that you have strategies to convince them.
Even though entrepreneurs think that they have solutions for every problems, one thing what we need to realize that we don’t have time for building all that solutions. Even though your are partnering with a biggie It is very important to have a vision about our company and its growth. Believe me, once you build the confidence every manger will have some thing to solve and everything will be urgent. It is all about how politely reject ideas or fail fast not worthy experiments. Make sure you provide logical ,valid reasons why you are not taking it
While you are working with a team from a different company for building a product, make sure that you know how they define their success and it need not be your success. Helping them to win and makeing them more powerful help you in longrun . As an entrepreneur you should be knowing how to share the credits and make your counterparts succesful
