Ideas come cheap
In the back drop of the TIE ISB connect, i got nostalgic and went back a year to when i was working on an idea that i called - "Chitraksh". I had a few ideas on what it would be built on, what purpose it would serve and what would be the monetization model that would allow the people backing the idea to make some money doing the same.
As i revisit those ideas, i have realized that a lot of those ideas are things that are prevelent or have been thought of by other people.
The idea behing Chitraksh was to be single larget print/paint store in India. At one level, the idea started with the intention to sell cheap reprints ( Giclee prints ) in the Indian market. There is a lot of potential given the way every is buying houses. After the research done when i was in ISB, I had figured out the print gifts market is not very huge .. with the largest player in US (www.art.com ) having revenues of $ 100 million. This is a good thumb rule to follow if you are taking an idea that you are supplanting from other geographies to the Indian market .. Think hard .. is ther market big enough to support your idea and the valuations that you are working towards. You can throw in the argument that the business idea could defy conventional growth models and revenues limitations as seen in the markets from where you are borrowing this idea ( i.e say you argue that Indians will exchange more gifts than americans, or that Indians would watch more rental movies and the cost structures in India are more favourable to allow something like www.seventymm.com to be insanely successful .. These arguments have logic .. but entrepreneurs need to know how to not fall in love with their ideas .. once they have managed to have a split personality that can help them protect their ideas against the disbelievers and also dispassionately abuse the idea when they are evaluating it .. will help the entrepreneurs strike gold.
As i look back .. i figured that community content would the only way that Chitraksh would survive .. because you dont want to spend lot fo VC money creating digitized content ( an asset that may have very little market value in case you shut down ). The solution was a mash up between a community photo site ( life flickr ) and a order fulfilling system like ( www.art.com ). The users would have a chance to monetize their image content and we would stay on the right side of the law ( copyright protection ).
As i think through now .. some of the ideas that i had
1) Cheap art reprints that would resemble original art - already in place .. you go to any home furnishing/ large format retailer and you will realize that 85 % of the art that they are selling is nothing but reprints
2) Community driven sites - This has been around for some time now and the glamorous name would be mash-ups. I had thought of a monetization model where we would sell reprints .. but looks like selling ads is the most accepted monetization model for new economy mash-ups.
Bottomline - The bottomline is that Ideas come cheap .. it is very easy to take a few hours off build the greatest idea since sliced bread. Net net .. Execution is all that matters .. Ideas come cheap.
