Industrial Automation Magazine India

We crossed the 1 million adoption mark in the pandemic

Published on : Friday 02-07-2021

Kartik Raichura, Founder & CEO, Websites.co.in

What is the rationale behind the Websites portal?
Founded in 2017 in Mumbai, Websites.co.in is perhaps the world’s easiest website builder. Our mobile app and website enables business owners to instantly create a website, update it and manage content on their website on the go in a hassle-free way.
 
Websites.co.in is primarily fine-tuned to ensure that business owners can easily create, update, and manage their websites on their own without needing any technical assistance, specifically targeting small and medium sized enterprises.
 
How different is it from the many other competing offerings?
The USP of our website is that it is giving all its services for free for the first 30 days without even charging the customer’s credit card.
 
Unlike other platforms, which are drag and drop, the business owner here only has to fill in content on the mobile app and the website gets built automatically. Our platform also comes with paypal payment gateway integrated by default for businesses that wish to sell their products or services internationally.
 
What is the technology used under this platform and the maintenance issues?
Our platform is based on SaaS technology. Business owners can download the app from Google Playstore or Apple App Store and create their own website without the help of any developer or a techie, in just 15 minutes. We made sure that we also give access to a free domain name; free unlimited hosting, Automated SEO, Analytics, Auto social media, Response Templates, and much more. The features are built in a way that the website will automatically create the listing on the search engine and regulate its promotion on all the social media platforms. 
 
While most enterprises understand the importance, many, especially MSMEs lack the budgets. How can these benefit from your service?
There are 200 million micro business owners across the globe and approximately 7 out of 10 of them do not have a digital identity. Our idea is empowering small businesses to go online, get discovered online and grow big.
 
The Covid-19 pandemic opened everyone’s eyes to a new internet dependent world. From education to emergency escalations, everything happened online. Our dependence on the internet is only going to increase in the coming years and you can either go online and grow or choose to stay offline, isolated and with limited visibility.

With budgets that start from as low as 12$/month, we at Websites.co.in offer a dynamic range of prices based on the purchasing power of a particular location so that even the minutest detail is brought into focus and getting a business online is no longer a hassle. 
 
What kind of budget do they need and the support they get?

The idea is to reach even the last spec in the journey of creating meaningful business domains. For an initial stance of 30 days, the user does not have to pay anything but gets access to a plethora of services. 
 
The business owner only has to push content on the website and our platform completely takes care of the technology stack with features like easy custom domain name booking and auto-mapping, SSL certificate, hosting, auto-seo, auto social media pushes to twitter and facebook, statistics.
 
What is the revenue model of Websites? What are the plans to scale up?
We at Websites.co.in run on an interesting mix of freemium and pay when you upgrade to a premium plan implying that the platform assesses the purchasing power based on geographies and offers personalised pricing based on the user’s location.
 
We raised a pre-seed round at idea stage (without a team or MVP) from industry veterans and thought leaders in 2017. Last year, we raised our seed round from a clutch of investors with participation from Mumbai Angels network. We will be planning our Pre Series A round by the end of this year.
 
How big is the market and the potential?
The potential is definitely enormous considering there are about 200 million micro businesses in the world, out of which 63 million are in India and only 32% of them have an online presence. Knowing that having a digital presence could help small businesses grow profits up to twice as fast as their offline competitors definitely reflects the scale and sizeability that our company presently is in, with potential to grow manifold in the times to come. 
 
To speak about the current scenario, we crossed the 1 million adoption mark in the pandemic. We had our highest revenue numbers during the pandemic. We also raised our seed round in the midst of the pandemic. All this has helped us get more aggressive with our growth plans.
 
We are chasing the 10 million users mark by 2023 and increasing our offerings that address industry specific needs for doctors, manufacturers, coaching classes, service industry, beauty and fashion and spa & salons.
 
Kartik Raichura has been in the business of building consumer internet portals for over 16 years. A serial entrepreneur by nature, Kartik launched Websites.co.in in 2017 and spurred a digital movement to help the world's 200 million MSMEs getting discovered, attracting customers and growing bigger through automation led digital marketing services. Kartik completed his Post Graduate Diploma in Business Management in Marketing from Welingkar Institute of Management, Mumbai. He’s known as a TedX speaker and an angel investor who finds joy in discovering and nurturing aspiring entrepreneurs in startup events and industry conferences. It was also during these events; he would come across several small business owners asking him for advice to grow their businesses online. As a result, Kartik’s entrepreneurial instincts found a massive opportunity in the moment which he later turned into Websites.co.in.
 
Kartik has received many accolades for his contribution to edutech space and the upliftment of micro businesses across the world. Some of them are ‘Star Young Entrepreneur Award’, presented by the Indira Innovation Summit 2013; Top 100 Innovative Leaders by World Innovation Congress in 2017; Top 100 Marketing Technology innovators by World Marketing Congress in 2018; and Karamveer Chakra by the UN in association with iCongo at Rex Karamveer Chakra Global Fellowship in 2019.
 
Today, Kartik is renowned for his knowledge and expertise in building online communities, technology, entrepreneurship and management. He has created influencer networks with the best educational institutes and corporates of the world. His startup, Websites.co.in, is poised at empowering millions of micro-businesses with online visibility, discovery and customers, transforming domestic as well as international small business ecosystems