Travails Of Returns - Part 3

2 weeks back, I started writing on building businesses in India. I covered the fundamental choice of financial model to begin with. Then, the first execution step, which is team building. 

Now, we go to what we did next at @OfBusiness and @Oxyzo. That was building out the 10 commandments, ones we built very consciously towards. Some of them have faded with scale, some not executed well enough, and many that have become our defining traits. But when we started, those seemed like golden rules that will define our journey.

(Remember we were in B2B, where the world operates on credit).

1. Take the “hard” way – We will always choose the hard way. It will build value.
   (We built 2 businesses under the same roof (commerce and financial services), started with little domain experience in both, built a business that was unglamorous/ unsexy, and in places where tech penetration was abysmally low.)
   
2. Serve the underserved, not the unserved or overserved – We don’t want to serve the overserved, there isn’t too much margin in serving retail and corporate users. The other end of the spectrum in serving the relatively less financially included is also risky.
   (We went for the fat middle, yet underserved, SMEs.)
   
3. Company First – We vow to ourselves that we will never look for individual, but company recognition, only.
   (To this day, it gives me goosebumps to the extent we go to live this commandment.)
   
4. Profitability – We will look for absolute PAT level profitability in all our decisions, businesses, products and teams. Yes, some businesses work differently, but they are not for us.
   (When we started out, we risked being called penny-wise, myopic, mercenary, etc.: more diplomatic versions of which sounded right to us).
   
5. Growing via debt – Whenever we will need capital, we will raise debt from large financial institutions (it instills discipline, protects ownership and is cheap).
   (So much so, that we coined a very catchy phrase i.e., liabilities (debt) are our assets.)
   
6. Not collected is not earned – We will build a business that creates an incentive for the customer to pay back. And what is still left, we will all (irrespective of the function) collect with all our energies.
   (Even at a sizable scale today, we still measure ourselves on cash-in, cash-out, much like when we started).
   
7. Hands-on – We will take pride in being hands-on. If we get our hands dirty, we will know more and be respected. We choose to be not-so-great strategists.
   (Bias for action was a natural corollary that got added with time.)
   
8. Avoid marketing, at least to begin with – Sales is what defines us and we will be good at. It’s cheaper, measurable, satisfying, controllable and better RoI.
   (Sales remains the star function in most of our businesses).
   
9. Bias for scale – We will always go for depth than width. We will earn less in deep markets than more in niches.
   (To this day, nobody has questioned the market size we operate in).
   
10. Look within for growth – All our newer opportunities will go to homegrown talent. We are okay if they fail or take time.
    (4 of our 6 P&L heads practically started their careers with OfBusiness/ Oxyzo)

#lifeatofbusiness
#lifeatoxyzo

Also Read:-
Travails Of Returns – Part 1
Travails of returns – Part 2