The plunge of quitting a corporate job in the field of Consultancy and starting a Business Lifelong Online and manufacturing mixer grinders was not an easy decision at all for Bharat Kalia in 2015. But within a span of almost five years he has managed to make his brand one of fastest-growing D2C brands.
How it all started?
In the era of 2015 the Internet and eCommerce were penetrating deep in India, Bharat Kalia, after quitting a corporate job, thought about consumer durables while sitting in his office of Brain & Company in Gurugram. He realized that he has been using the same appliances that his parents used to use 20-30 years ago and now this generation needs a revamp. He thought that TV, Mobiles, etc. have developed a lot but there has been virtually no or very little development in home appliances and consumer durables. These categories still have bulky and non-efficient production and distribution methods. He realized that home appliances and durables are not designed according to the need of people in rural areas who also wanted to live an easy and comfortable life.
Bharat started his career as an associate and slowly became team manager in five years of hard work in the corporate firm so it was not an easy decision to leave his comfort zone and leap into the world of entrepreneurship. But he had a conviction in mind which gave him the strength to take this decision and start Lifelong Online. Later couple of his colleagues from Brain & Company – Varun Grover and Atul Raheja also joined him in this entrepreneurship journey.
Idea behind
The idea behind was to start a brand that understands all the pain points of the customer, do the innovation on products and focus on the supply chain and start distribution through the Direct to Customer (D2C) model. This helped in increasing the efficiency of products and control on pricing which helped pass the benefit to the customer.
The partners started the company with small seed capital and their first product was a mixer grinder. Later in the span of five years, the trio created a wide range of products in the category of home, kitchen, grooming, lifestyle, etc., and hence their brand became a fast-growing digital-first consumer durable brand.
In the year 2019, Bharat and partners raised a fund of 40 Crores and today Lifelong has team strength of 60+ and earns revenue of 40 crore per month in a peak seasons. Lifelong manufactures the assembles, plastic injection molding parts and die casting parts. The company retails above 500 cities in India through ecommerce giants like Amazon, Flipcart, Tata Cliq, Nykaa, Paytm, Snapdeal, 1mg, etc. and other offline distribution networks.
Change in scenario
In past we used to visit the showrooms and sales man used to recommend the brands to us and we used to buy based on their recommendation. But today the whole scenario has changed and today’s generation visit online websites and apps to check the reviews and ratings of products and based on that they make purchasing. Lifelong is targeting these customers.
Lifelong has three factories who exclusively manufacture for them. One factory is in Coimbatore and other two in Haryana. That is the reason they don’t have a burden of assets due to which they can eliminate the middle man and hence it is helpful in their Direct-to-customer D2C business model. The company is directly in touch with the customer so it can easily take direct feedback and data which can further help them to improve. The feedback is shared with the engineering team who create a better design which is more functional and fits in the customer’s need. The design based on customer feedback is further optimized across the brand value chain – starting from product specification, design, supply chain and lastly packaging and delivery. There is a continuous feedback study and improvement and changes are implemented based on category and size of market. Based on all the feedback the changed product is pre-launched for quality test and later it is moved on to the final product launch once a satisfactory result is received from the customers.
Lifelong was bootstrapping for five years and badly needed funds for expansion. In spite of being in profit, the company was not able to convince Banks to give working loans. So they had to go for the equity funding.
In Covid pandemic times, it became difficult to visit the customer’s place to install the products so they developed digital content which can help their customers to install the products themselves. As a matter of fact the company is a digital brand so their demand increased and it helped in making good profits.
Future plans
Today Lifelong is giving good competition to all its competitor brands. The focus on customers and a rapid innovation cycle has helped a lot to satisfy its customers and therefore its customers are coming back to them repeatedly. These all categories where Lifelong is producing are dominated by large brands and no sooner they are going to change to Direct-to-customer D2C model. But yes they can do that in future according to Bharat.
The vision is to further improvise on their products and optimize the brand innovation cycle to launch more and more product range. The company is looking for innovative and enthusiastic designers and engineers to further take Lifelong to new heights.