Introduction

The term ‘sustainability’ is used when a business aspires to give back more than it takes from society or the environment. And while it’s never been easy to start any business, building one with ethical and commercial sustainability takes creativity, knowhow, passion and strong support structures. We learnt this having done it multiple times, with multiple clients. And each time, we learn something new. We’ve learnt how important it is to make a business idea tangible, to prove that it works technically, to make sure it holds up in the real world and that people will want it. We’ve learnt that it’s crucial to find a commercial model that works, ensuring sustainability for the business as well as the product, and that this is tested with real customers, generating demand and scaling to meet it. Having started many businesses, I also strive to help others do the same, in a variety of ways, culminating in the establishment of Mitra Ventures, an enterprise dedicated to helping new entrepreneurs find their feet.

Creating Prototypes and MVPs

An idea is just an idea until it gains form, function and fans. To that end, building a prototype to prove your concept works, to yourself and to potential investors, makes perfect sense. But it’s not the whole story. Prototyping can be a costly business, and as a sustainable start-up, you will need to keep those costs as low as possible.

• Be as creative as you can when you are looking to make savings

• Do as much of the work as you can yourself possibly using low-code or no-code platforms to develop your product

• Check out gig sites such as Fiverr and 99designs to find low cost designers and coders who can help you

• Consider using tech students looking for real world projects as coursework

• Call in favours, and ask for new ones

In many countries, supermarkets and restaurants delivering food has been part of the retail landscape for years, but not in South East Asian countries, including Sri Lanka, where daily grocery shopping from independent stores and markets is commonplace, as is eating in local restaurants or collecting take out. Covid-19 has had a detrimental effect on many food vendors’ livelihoods, especially those in more remote cities and rural communities, where establishing a distribution network is not cost effective. To this backdrop, Foodie was born.

Initially we approached the banks to allow for seamless funding of purchases, but their inherent bureaucracy forced us to be more creative. The magic happened when we approached YouCAB, one of the largest taxi and vehicle hire services in Sri Lanka. Their passenger services had dried up during lockdown and they were looking for new revenue streams. Mitra upgraded YouCAB’s infrastructure to bring them on board, with them charging a nominal fee for their services. Mitra decided to waive their fee in light of the pandemic.

Read more about the Foodie project here.

• Use a virtual CTO or a tech partner who is willing to share the risk and the rewards

• Do just enough at each iteration of your product to learn and improve.

• Using your own capital, or that of friends and family, as much as possible, will mean you can make your own decisions, and with friendly investors who are going to be wholly supportive of your plans, you won’t have to give away precious equity in your business.

• Always investigate what grants and awards are available in your region and sector, for a list in the UK see the Entrepreneur Handbook.

Types of Prototype and Progressive Realisation

It's all about having the right prototype for the right moment, and only taking it as far as needed to convince yourself and your audience of the validity of your idea. Don’t be seduced into spending too much precious equity on an MVP, remember it is a proof of concept, and sometimes a proof will fail, and you may discover absolutely nobody wants your product.  Better to start with a low concept demo (this can be just a few visualisations in a presentation) and get a reaction before moving on. This costs very little compared to creating a fully formed MVP.

Type 1: Concept Demonstrator

This does just enough to bring your idea to life and make it tangible for your audience.

Type 2: Technical Proof of Concept

Proves that your concept works technically and does what you set out to do.

Type 3: Trial or Alpha Prototype

This takes the Proof of Concept one stage further, with more features and allows you to trial your product with a small number of real customers.

Type 4: Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

The full, end-to-end product experience with just enough core features and functionality to satisfy customers that your product works and delivers on your product claims. Typically used in a beta trial or soft launch.

Case Study: Kraydel

Ashok’s Experience with Kraydel

“When I co-founded Kraydel in Northern Ireland, we used industry standard, cost-effective technology to build our prototype with a Raspberry PI (at the time around £22) and a Bluetooth chest band commonly used in gyms, I built a rudimentary home monitoring device that would record heart rate patterns and provide analytics. I was introduced to Paul Moorhead, an ex Intel CTO, and discovered he had built a similar device for his elderly mother. With a grant from the Belfast Government, we hired a Mitra software engineer to build the MVP. We trialled the MVP with friends and family to prove the concept and gain customer validation. As Paul says, “You’re not going to get everything right, and it’s unlikely that the thing you want to build will turn out to be the thing that you need to build – so spend as little time and money as possible in exploring this.””

Read more about the Kraydel project here, and Ashok's insights here.

Commercial Model

Start-ups are not for the faint-hearted, especially those with an ethical focus. You may have a ground-breaking idea for doing good, an idea that makes sense to you and your supporters, but if your business model doesn’t deliver a profit, it will almost certainly fail.  Markets move quickly and founders must dedicate their passion and effort to their ideas, as well as nurturing an awareness of how market movement affects their offering. They need support to get their ideas off the ground and they need a strong commercial business model for delivering financial returns if it is to have any hope of survival.

Components of a Compelling Proposition

The questions your commercial model should answer are:

• Who are the customers?

• What are the business processes that need to be established?

• What are the resource gaps and how are they filled?

• Who are your business partners and how can they support you?

• What is your value proposition?

• What is the business plan and revenue model?

• How do you bridge the gap between a good cause and a commercial case?

• How will we deploy and market the product?

• How can we look after customers and partners?

• How should we drive different sales channels and acquire the right channel partners?

• How will we run operations and support end-customers?

• What are your critical success factors?

Once you’ve had your idea for good, established what problem your product solves, identified your target market and done your sums, bridging the gap between the good cause and the commercial case will need broader thinking around your network of stakeholders. Your path to market may not always be via obvious means and it can pay to be creative. Ask yourself ‘How is the problem currently addressed?’, ‘Who picks up the tab to solve the problem currently?’ and ‘How does your solution help others in a wider sense?’.

A Brand Strategy is also vital. Entrepreneurs must understand how a product or service becomes a brand that is authentic, is visible to targeted customers, solves a problem that has value for them and wears its ethical and sustainable credentials on its sleeve, differentiating it from the competition. This work helps founders and consumers alike understand who this brand is, what it stands for in the world, and how it fits into our lives. The Brand Strategy becomes the internal compass from which the company makes decisions, creative or infrastructural.

Case Study: Foodie

In the best of us there is often a desire to share the rewards of our ideas, research, innovation and exploration, with our communities first and then further afield. With Covid-19 seeing communities and businesses struggle through lockdowns and enforced closures, there has never been a better time for business leaders to come together to help support communities and reach out to small businesses and help them recover. As an innovator, I strive to see the gap, the place where technology can be developed to fill a need.

A Helping Hand

One of my projects was to establish Mitra Ventures to work with new sustainable entrepreneurs in a variety of ways, turning ideas into businesses. As stated above, no matter how amazing an idea may be or how it will change the world, if it isn’t sustainable as a business, it will fail. We help new and would-be entrepreneurs prove their concept and engender belief to raise capital and build a commercial model, bringing their vision to market in a form that’s sustainable and scalable. We do this in a variety of ways, with a highly diverse clientele.

ESG Joint Venture

Mitra Ventures worked in collaboration with Sarvodaya Development Finance (SDF) to deploy experienz, a digital platform with mobile and web-based accessibility for all employees. In the aftermath of Covid-19 and repeated lock-downs, SDF wanted a way to stay in touch with their workforce and assess their wellbeing, flagging any issues related to stress, anxiety, loneliness and long working hours. With the information gathered they can also quickly identify employees who need support, reaching out to them directly.

Launch and Scale

Growing the Business

It’s important to think big when starting your business but visualising what big looks like from day one, envisaging your dream and developing a strategy to get there, is key to achieving the growth required to turn your start-up into a successful, sustainable and growing business. In my experience businesses that grow from small businesses into global concerns excel in four main areas: Culture, Innovation, People and Ambition.

Culture

Building a strong, creative and open culture that puts the customer first is extremely important for any fledgling business. Once your financial metrics are sound, you will thrive by encouraging creativity amongst staff, to increase the variety and breadth of the services you offer. By engendering the values of a true meritocracy, where endeavour and ideas are recognised and rewarded, strong relationships between leaders and staff will flourish, and your company will grow.

Innovation

Or the ‘Innovative Mindset’, the ability to apply cutting edge technology to everyday business and environmental problems. Surround yourself with people who can take your innovative ideas and translate them into products and services, bringing new technological capability to your enterprise which is critical for the growth of the business. Encourage ideas and partner with those who can take your ideas and make them happen in the real world.

People

Investing in great people, training them, recognising their worth and making the success of the business their success, will make the biggest contribution to your growth. Build a culture of training and support so it becomes endemic throughout every part of the business from sales to people management, to finance. If your focus is on scaling your business, hiring talented individuals who bring new skills and ideas is crucial, as is ensuring employee engagement to keep your best people within your organisation.

Ambition

Sustaining the ambition to grow your business can be a challenge after early successes. But if you had that dream from day 1 and developed your strategy accordingly, ambition will keep you going. With Culture, Innovation and People providing the basis of your success, keep a close eye on your financial indicators, using every metric available to you, mapping these onto your 3–5 year scale up plan to gauge progress. Look at different business models, financial models and partnerships that would allow all parties to succeed. Achieving regional expansion takes ambition, confidence, timing and market analysis.

Future Proofing your Technology

Creating your technology platform with one eye to the future can save time, money and angst as your business grows. But how do you know which IT systems or platforms to adopt? How do you architect your product or service? What supporting technology do you need for your staff and your customers? And how do you manage your budget and cash flow as you invest in tech and the business grows? The simple answer is to surround yourself with experts who have done this before.

We’ve mentioned using a virtual CTO or a tech partner and this can help mitigate the risk of investing in technology that doesn’t scale with your business. There are some key aspects to consider.

MVP to Production

While it may be expedient and desirable to create your MVP on a shoestring, always anticipate success. Anticipate numbers of customers growing, sales increasing and transactions, storage and speed all pushing upwards. This will help you make the right early decisions with your technology. What works for an MVP, without these considerations, will almost certainly not scale. For example, if you choose to build your IT systems yourself using low-code or no-code, the advantages are speed and cost effectiveness, but without considering scalability, you might find your ability to meet more complex requirements is impeded.

Techno-Economics

Working out the actual cost of scaling your business is crucial before you commit to a platform. It’s important to think through your options from the long-term perspective as well as the short. It can be cheaper and easier to use one of the big cloud service providers in the early stages of your business rather than having an on-premises IT services centre and team to run it. But be careful with your sums.Cloud Shock, just one of the issues that can arise when getting the cost of scale wrong, describes what can happen if your business grows quickly, with costs rising exponentially, ending up much more expensive than using an on-prem model.

Integration and APIs

Systems integration is one of the most important aspects of scalability in any business. If the systems you use don’t talk to each other, and those you want to connect with, then your data isn’t optimised or shared, you miss out on new features and enhancements, as well as collaborations with potential partners and clients and your customer experience is compromised. As a new entrepreneur, architecting a new application, product or service, you will need to integrate with other applications and systems. Choose a platform that promotes easy integration and allows others to connect seamlessly to your systems and services through APIs.

Cyber Security is not an afterthought

A core consideration from day 1 is ensuring you design, architect and build your solution to be super secure. For example, data should always beencrypted whetherin transit orat rest.  As your business expands so do the opportunities for things to go wrong. Whether you choose a cloud or on premises solution, ensure you don’t skimp on security. Remember, it’s not just your business that’s at risk from potential cyber-attacks, data breaches or virus infections, it’s also the security of your employees, your customers data and privacy and the reputational damage that can be inflicted by any of the above scenarios.

Investment

Decipher Innovation was born when Mitra invested in a digital marketing boutique consultancy, delivering software products that not only help solve a business issue, but also provide genuine business intelligence. Mitra worked with Jacob Bailey to develop DestinationCore a Complete Destination Marketing website platform that delivers analytics on the effectiveness of all digital marketing activity.

 Read more about Decipher Innovation’s DestinationCore here.

Incubation

Ortom8 is a cloud based, adaptive and dynamic Workload Automation(WLA) platform delivering enterprise-grade, on-demand and fully flexible workload management. Mitra helped Ortom8 scale their product down to offer it to Start-ups and SMEs at a price point they could afford. 

Read more about Ortom8 here.

Discounted IT Services

Leap in! asked Mitra to build a one-stop shop app, allowing users to prepare, plan and manage their National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) budget. With a diverse target audience, the biggest challenge was designing a user-friendly app that would encourage engagement. Mitra provided discounted IT services to develop a highly intuitive, user-friendly app that enables members to access funding and maximise their allocated budget.

Read more about the Leap In! project here.

Mentoring and Coaching

After running a successful cookery school for over 10 years, my dear friends, Sahil and Nidhi Verma decided to launch The Cookaway, a recipe-in-a-box business with a twist. They created a chef-based, global cuisine recipe box offering with YouTube instruction videos and live cookalongs. In the early days, I acted as a virtual CTO, advising them on choosing the right technology platform, ensuring their systems provided the functionality they required, at a price they could afford, and could be easily scaled as the business grew.

Read more about The Cookaway project here.

Final Thoughts

I believe it falls to the entrepreneurs of today to change the world. We do this with ideas, with vision, with hard work and persistence. We also do it by creating an environment in which the next generation of entrepreneurs can begin their journey, and by understanding that their path to success will be harder than ours. Sustainable, ethical, environmental and responsible enterprises should not be a subset of the business world, our challenge is to help EVERY business strive for and achieve these credentials, across all sectors. I believe the only way to drive this seismic cultural shift is to share knowledge and experience, build prototypes and MVPs, test radical commercial models, create brand strategies, build resilience and scalability and leave a legacy of good for the next generation.

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