Outsourcing: Million-Dollar Freelancer: A1 Future CEO Srish Agrawal, Kolkata, India (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Help me tie these two together. The media buying that brought you the right traffic to your website, how does that translate into trust and reliability?

Srish Agrawal: In order to build trust and reliability, you need a client base. Once you have that initial trust, using that initial trust that you’re able to provide the right kind of service to the right people using the right methods. But if you do not get that initial trust, who will trust you? You have to some people who start using your services?

SM: Essentially, your strategy was to use the media buying to get enough reference clients and testimonials based on which you built the reliability.

SA: Absolutely.

SM: Now, I see your website, A1 Future, and I’m looking for the testimonials.

SA: A1 Future is our corporate website, but our main business is generated through the website LogoDesignTeam.com. We have a portfolio there.

SM: That’s your main store front?

SA: Correct.

SM: You seem to have a very productized pricing model. It doesn’t operate like a service company. It’s almost a product company. You pay different levels of logo design services. You place an order, you buy with a credit card, and then the service starts, right?

SA: Correct.

SM: That makes it quite scalable, more scalable than if it were a pure services business.

SA: Right. We productized our service because that makes it easy for the clients to understand what they’re able to get, what price they have to pay, and they can buy immediately. We also find it confusing when somebody quotes us in a number of hours. You never know how many hours it’s going to take to complete a particular job.

SM: Do you any outbound marketing? Of course, you’re getting a lot of traffic based on people coming to your website, based on keywords and banner advertisements and so on. Are you doing any other kind of advertising or email marketing, any of that stuff?

SA: No. We have not done a lot of outbound marketing. We very recently started working on it. Intentionally, we are putting it first, to get it started.

SM: So, you’re growth from $1.5 million to $5 million is going to take a more aggressive marketing strategy. That’s probably where I would put in the work going forward, do a more strategic marketing effort.

SA: Beyond that, we are also starting additional services. We hope that additional service verticals will also help us reach our target pay zone.

SM: What are those services?

SA: One is infographic design service. That is a website called InfographicDesignTeam.com. We started the website about four months back, and we’ve already had an opportunity to work for two major corporations.

SM: And they just found you through the site?

SA: Yes.

SM: You mentioned caricatures earlier. Is that a big business for you?

SA: No. We do get a part of our business through that, but that is not a major portion of the work we are doing. We are selling caricatures and cartoons and illustrations through our LogoDesignTeam.com website.

SM: Anything else that you’d like to share?

SA: Yes. We’re starting an additional service, animated video. We’ll be launching our website AnimatedVideo.com very soon.

SM: In your workforce, what is the level of knowledge and expertise in animation? Or is that something that you’re going to have to build up over time?

SA: We have already started building it over the last three or four months. It’s picking up fast. Again, even in the animation department, we hired about six or seven freshers, and we’re working with them.

SM: What I like about your situation is that you have built a business that aligns with the sweet spot of Calcutta. Calcutta has a lot of design and art people. Being able to harness that, it’s not just Calcutta but even the surrounding areas, you can find a lot of people with that kind of mindset, skill, and talent. So, building a business that aligns that kind of talent is wonderful.

SA: Yes. I’m blessed to be able to build this kind of business.

SM: Yes, it’s perfect for Calcutta. As you know, I’m from Calcutta, so it’s always wonderful for me to see companies from there doing [well]. Thank you, Srish, for talking with me.

SA: Thank you so much, Sramana. It’s been very nice talking to you.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Outsourcing: Million-Dollar Freelancer: A1 Future CEO Srish Agrawal, Kolkata, India
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