Q1. How did your career journey start? Or Who/What inspired you to start this business/ entrepreneurship? After my mechanical engineering st...
Q1. How did your career journey start? Or Who/What inspired you to start this business/ entrepreneurship?
After my mechanical engineering studies, I joined our family managed business and after a few years of work experience, I did my B-schooling. It was during my studies at a renowned institute in Mumbai, the idea Timus had started growing and with the help of one of my Professor I could dare to make this possible. My inspiration remains to be many people I have met in my life as I have been blessed to have many mentors right from my school days until now. Each one has inspired me to be better than what I was in different stages of life. Above all dedication and hard work of my father, remains to be the driving force in what I do as an entrepreneur.
Q2. Kindly share some information about your Business, products and services here. Also mention your USP if any.
We are Timus, Timus is a luggage and backpack manufacturing company spread in about 55,000 square feet space with employee strength of 200 people making world class affordable luggage which comes with a minimum 1 year to maximum 7 years warranty which are sold across 200+ dealers and on all leading E-commerce portals.
Q3. What kind of challenges did you face while starting/doing business?
Every challenge was a stepping stone but the most challenging was to arrange lot of resources with very limited finance in hand and turning around things with limited financial resource made lot of things very difficult in this journey of my entrepreneurship along with product development,space management and above all SALES and getting the money back in the system. Yes, recovery was a big challenge too.
Q4. Do share with our readers about your discovery period when you were facing difficulties in your business?
I feel the entire journey of an entrepreneur is a discovery period. So, let us always be ready to discover, face, solve and move on. Financial limitations made me discover ways to raise funds towards working capital through different Channels. During setting up the factories, I discovered importance on quick installations of machines, parallel arrangement of man-power, sales order to minimize the cost and have a quick turnaround time. This made me operationally strong. Challenges from the market to deliver different products made me discover understanding towards complexity of different raw materials and their best usage to create outstanding products.
Q5. Share with our readers about your experiment period after the discovery period?
Testing waters periodically after each discovery is an important aspect. I call it taking calculative risk once you have discovered something and then you give some time to experiment and then evaluate and then implement at a bigger level. Like at Timus, we make a product, we pilot test it with our audience and then we go for mass production once we know people have liked it and that helps us IN SALES. We have to keep experimenting with human resources at the factory to get the right balance of the highest level of craftsmanship on the luggage products; at times it turns out to be a financial loss but then we have a backup plan in place to liquidate the stocks.
Q6. What are your future plans? Or now what is your vision for next five years?
Our future plans are to reach around 1000 dealers in India, 10 countries overseas and with a state of the art design team backed by strong infrastructure at factories to make International QUALITY products consistently.
Q7. How would you advise/suggest new entrepreneurs who want to start & sustain in business?
Understand your interest and then define your goals. It is just not about passion, passion is a mere catalyst to drive you far and beyond. Understanding of the business in depth is the most important thing which most of the young entrepreneurs fail at. Dreaming big is good, flying high is an awesome thing but your eye should always be at the ground.
Q8. LinkedIn profile URL link
Q9. Facebook profile URL link
Q10. Twitter profile URL link
Q11. Instagram profile URL link
Q12. Personal blog URL link
Q13. Company website & Company blog URL link
Q14. YouTube channel URL link
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Interviewed & Edited by : Khushboo Chotaliya - Lifestyles Influencer & Co-Founder of Sanskari Decor from Mumbai, India
Both Sumit and Khushboo are students of Digital Influencer Academy
Follow Khushboo here : instagram.com/khushboobchotaliya
True Tier1 Champion Entrepreneur Gentleman
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