Great Companies: How did you get your idea or concept for the business?
Shubham Sharma: From the very young age, I was a very curious and hardworking person and always have had this knack of learning, to learn about new things, products, applications, etc. So, after completing my school I started working with one of the premier chemical company of Jaipur that manufactures various chemical products.
During my working period, I realized that the company is facing challenges with the turnaround time in processing its chemical products for the end user industry which resulted in a loss of numerous clients, even few of my HVDs, so I and other business developers with the help of management onboarded a professional R&D team from Bangalore who not only improved the quality of our product but reduce the T.A.T time by almost 10 hours and this resulted in getting an edge over our competition as our products are just the best in quality but can be faster to be used by end user industries.
Now, at this point I realized when a small R&D team can do wonders for a manufacturing company then there will be 1000s of other companies who are looking for market researches. So in view of the same I started with my own venture “The Research Industry” to provide end-to-end market research services to various industries across the globe so as to enable them to explore the growth opportunities available in the market, understand competition landscape, analyse how current technologies and applications are getting disrupted with the growing adoption of new and effective advanced technologies to enable them to achieve economies of scale.
Great Companies: What are the various services provided by The Research Industry?
Shubham Sharma: “The Research Industry” offers four different types of services:
1) Syndicate Market Research Report: This is the flagship service of our company. Our off-the-shelf market report covers in-depth qualitative & quantitative analysis of the high growing niche markets providing market data & forecast, Competitive Landscape, trends & Growth dynamics helping CXOs identify the future potential market opportunities, market disruptions, also helping in implementing strategies to achieve them.
2) Custom Research: We have always strived hard to deliver maximum value proposition to our clients & to ensure that we have a dedicated team of our professional research analysts who cater the clients with their specific needs.
3) Consulting Services: Due to constant advancements in technologies & applications the markets have become more volatile than ever before and thus companies strive hard in implementing changes. Thus, here our specialized consulting team works side by side with the companies helping them in identifying the potential future opportunities & challenges, also helps them in formulating & implementing the strategies to achieve their goals
Cross Segment Analysis
Market Lucrativeness & Entry Services
Exploring Potential Partners, Merger & Acquisition Services
Consumer Strategy & Distribution Network
4) Analysts Support: We provide each of our client with the Analyst support, this service helps them in understanding in depth knowledge of Market behaviour, Penetration rates, Answers to Competition based questions, Product & Application assessment, Regional & Country level-based analysis, etc.
Great Companies: What makes The Research Industry different from hundreds of other similar service providers?
Shubham Sharma: I started “The Research Industry” with a vision to offer our clients maximum value proposition on their investments. Thus, I am highlighting few of major differences which I feel none other companies do and even if they do, they certainly do not go such an extent and this makes our company “Standout” from our competition.
1) Made-to-Order: In this model we offer our clients a completely new market research report. The data and numbers provided are fresh and updated this support our clients in their analyses, research decisions, proposals, presentations and business plans.
2) Maximum Value Proposition: Like you must have heard this specific “word” several times in my interview. The reality is this helps us in retaining our client’s trust. Our business with clients does not end with only delivering the market research report but “we continue our engagement with the client to affirm that what we provided is what our client has expected from us”, we make sure that we gratify each of client’s queries and doubts thus leaving them fully satisfied with our services.
3) 6-Month Support: Our post sale services end with this model, wherein if we track that there is a major disruption within the 6 months of delivery our market research report then we offer our clients an updated market research report (inclusive of the trend that might hamper the current revenue sources of our clients)
Great Companies: What are the struggles and challenges you face?
Shubham Sharma: “The Research Industry (TRI)” is a bootstrap start-up, I did not took any money from my parents or relatives, it was all of my savings that I poured in to start this venture, Thus, I believe not having enough resources to support a venture that would be engaging with the global clients is major setback. I lost so many clients certainly because I do not have enough proper sample resources, could not run my marketing initiatives due to lower budgets and could not even onboard experienced personnel due to their higher wages requirements which led me to opt for cheap/low experienced substitutes and ultimately I could not scale my business.
2) Secondly, I feel I got into the business at a very early stage, I was pretty naïve when I entered though I have the basic knowledge but I certainly failed to connect the two ends in the beginning and this led to loss of several HVDs. Though, with the time I got the expertise and we are a pretty good track now but still till today I feel even I had a good amount of experience I could have taken my start-up to a whole different level by today.
Great Companies: How do you plan to grow in the future? What do 5 years down the line look like for The Research Industry?
Shubham Sharma: We are working on our flagship product i.e. a platform which will be a library for all the market research reports of all industries. Not only this, the AI-powered platform will show how new technologies and applications like AI, IOT, Blockchain, Big Data, Metaverse, etc will be impacting the current working model of industries, making their work processes more effective and efficient in the coming time period. Though, this platform is still in the planning phase and will be launched for our customers by end of first quarter of 2023. Moreover, we are currently more focused on increasing our customer base and strengthen our core services so that we can tie-up with certain government organizations and help them in their research needs.
We have a great start in this financial year and we have signed as permanent vendors to several premier Global and Domestic firms operating in different Industries thus if we can maintain the same growth, I believe in coming 5 years we can expect to be among the top 20 market research companies of India.
Great Companies: If you had one piece of advice to someone just starting out, what would it be?
Shubham Sharma: There will be hardships, shortfalls, I mean you will feel like you had enough, the corporate job is worth more than running your own company but to my dear friends the company that is offering that job was once a start-up only and they began from somewhere they had the same difficulties then that you are facing now and to be honest they did not even had the resources that are available to us today. Thus, keep on working till you get that first sale because once you have it, you will get the motivation to thrive and earn more.
I mentioned this sentence to several young people “Anyone can score 99/100 but the world will stand and clap for only those who will score 100/100”.