Student Entrepreneurs Bootstrapping a Zero-Logistics E-Commerce Company to $19 Million: Wrist-Band.com CEO Azim Makanojiya (Part 1)

We’re seeing a real trend of zero-logistics e-commerce businesses scaling phenomenally well. Read Azim’s experience!

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with the beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born and raised? What kind of educational path did you follow?

Azim Makanojiya:I am from India. My parents shifted from a village to Mumbai city for better opportunities. That’s where I was born. My father came to the US around 1984. My mom was still back there in India. Within two years, we came to Houston and settled down here. I was about a year old then. >>>

TrueCar’s Growing Market Reach

A survey of more than 3,000 consumers conducted in February this year to understand car buyers’ behavior across the United States revealed the presence of a “trust gap” between car buyers and dealers. For instance, car buyers believe that dealers are getting significantly higher margins than what they actually get. According to the National Automobile Dealers Association, profits made by a dealer on a new-car sale have fallen from 5.5% in 2003 to 3.8% in 2013. Online negotiation and car buying and selling platformTrueCar (Nasdaq: TRUE) is hoping to minimize this gap in consumer perception by providing a more transparent solution.

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RetailMeNot Struggles to Deliver

It is not just online discount coupon site Coupons.com that is seeing their stock price fall below their list price. Market leader RetailMeNot (Nasdaq: SALE) is not faring any better—its stock is trading well below its list price from July. Recently announced disappointing results have not helped the stock either.

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JD.com Continues Investing in Infrastructure

In one of the most awaited e-commerce IPOs, Alibaba listed earlier this week to become the largest ever IPO in the world. But it is not just Alibaba that has led the recent Chinese IPO bandwagon. Earlier this year, Chinese B2C e-tailer JD.com had listed a successful IPO as well.

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Men’s Fashion e-Commerce Entrepreneurs Thriving

Excerpt from my new book, From eCommerce To Web 3.0.

Most major retailers are latching on to the e-commerce trend but there is also a growing number of online men’s fashion upstarts like Combatant Gentlemen and JackThreads that are using social media channels to understand the consumer and sell effectively under their own retail brands.

Combatant Gentlemen’s strength lies in creating a brand that produces high quality clothing at an affordable cost and then effectively selling it to their target customer of young, aspiring professionals through Facebook. CEO Vishaal Melwani says, “One of the big reasons that we still, to this day, take away clients [from competitors like Men’s Warehouse] is because their messaging is incorrect. They don’t understand the pains and the trials and tribulations that our guy goes through on a daily basis.”
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GrubHub’s Successful IPO

According to a Euromonitor report, local independent restaurants account for 61% of all US restaurants. Within these small restaurants, takeout accounts for a big share of revenues—nearly $67 billion were spent on takeout by Americans in 2013.

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Coupons.com is Going on Discount

According to an eMarketer report published earlier this year, 55% of US Internet users aged 18 and above will redeem digital coupons at least once this year. The number of digital coupon users is expected to grow 8% this year. Within digital coupons, mobile coupons are rising sharply with more than 70% of US adult digital coupon users expected to redeem a digital coupon on a mobile device. The report predicts that number to grow to 83% by the year 2016.

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Borderfree’s International Growth Not Helping Its Stock Move

Analysts estimate that today nearly 20%-30% of the traffic to US e-commerce sites comes from international IP addresses. The growing importance of international consumers is forcing US-based companies to expand their e-commerce options to global locations. Companies are exploring options of international shipping along with the ability to transact in multiple currencies. Recently-listed Borderfree is helping retailers with these decisions.

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