StudentKARE Startup Story: One Stop Destination To Buy School Supplies Online
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Remember the excitement of going back to school after vacations all decked up in everything new, starting from books, bags, and shoes? Gift a child his favourite superhero school bag and see the happiness on his face. Adequate and good quality school supplies are a necessary part of good education and help to keep students motivated and happy.
StudentKARE, a Mumbai-based startup is here to take care of all the supplies student needs for education and play, so that parents and guardians can provide their children with good quality school supplies effortlessly.
Company Highlights
| Startup Name | StudentKARE |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | Mumbai |
| Founder | Rustom Kerawalla |
| CEO | Kurien Pothen |
| Sector | E-commerce |
| Founded | 2018 |
| Parent Organization | Kare Enterprise Pvt. Ltd. |
| Website | studentkare.com |
School Supplies Industry Details
StudentKARE - About & How it Works?
StudentKARE - Founder & CEO
StudentKARE - How It All Started?
StudentKARE - Name & Logo
StudentKARE - Revenue Model
StudentKARE - User Acquisition
StudentKARE - Funding & Investors
StudentKARE - Startup Challenges
StudentKARE - Competitors
StudentKARE - Growth
StudentKARE - FAQs
School Supplies Industry Details
According to industry reports, India has nearly 260 million students studying in the K-12 segment who require uniforms, textbooks, notebooks, bags, shoes, and other stationery materials. The market is estimated to be INR 55,000 crores p.a. and is currently not too organized.
Education as a sector is immune to any negative impact on the economy of a country. We believe that with the advent of technology-backed ventures, the otherwise unorganized sector will witness growth towards organized retailing. We expect the market to grow in double digits every year.
StudentKARE - About & How it Works?
StudentKARE is India’s first of its kind, comprehensive e-commerce platform dedicated to fulfilling the end-to-end requirement of students – at school and play. It is a one-stop shop for every little need related to education and hobbies for a student. StudentKARE aims to make the parents' life easy by making the process of selection simpler and also offering home delivery across 20,000+ pin codes.
Studentkare.com is the e-commerce arm of Kare Enterprise Pvt. Ltd. Kare is a 14-year-old leading firm that specializes in office and school supplies. At present, it has B2B tie-ups with over 100 enterprises for supplying products ranging from uniforms to technology products to notebooks giving us first-hand experience, knowledge & understanding about the size of the market and growth patterns. Â
StudentKARE has a wide range of education and sports-related products, like uniforms, books, footwear, bags, stationery, accessories, toys, and games and many sports and technology-related products like football, basketball, cricket set, keyboards, mouse, speakers, headphones, etc. Â
Our promise to our customers/parents is simple- access to curated merchandise related to education and play activities such as sports, throughout the year, at the click of a button. Simplicity, Convenience, and Quality assurance are our three core values.
It is not necessary that parents get all the supplies for a school in one trip and hence they may make multiple trips to get the prescribed books. Similarly, for toys, there are options for buying toys/books online or offline, the key difference is StudentKARE's curation makes parents life simpler by offering selected merchandise of the best of brands.
Being a technology-led integrated platform it allows parents to shop anytime and anywhere. As it is backed by efficient back-end logistics that ensure products are delivered within 3 working days. All the products on the site are listed according to age/interest/price range, etc.
This makes it easier and faster for a parent to search for specific products or even discover relevant products on the site. For frequent customers, the platform also has wish lists & multiple payment options for faster checkout.
StudentKARE - Founder & CEO
Rustom Kerawalla is the founder of StudentKARE Parent Organization Kare Enterprise Pvt. Ltd.
Kurien Pothen is the CEO of Kare Enterprise Private Ltd. He joined in 2017, to drive the launch of the e-commerce business - studentkare.com. With over three decades of experience across FMCG, consumer durables and retail domain Kurien had earlier stints at Nerolac Paints, VIP Luggage, Reliance Communication, and Grasim Industries.
With his vast experience in building brands and bridging need gaps, Kurien was quick to recognize the business potential of using technology to help ‘organize’ the student supplies sector. Â
StudentKARE - How It All Started?
The parent company Kare Enterprises provide services to over 100+ institutions under its B2B business model and its core competencies lie in school supply chain management: procurement, stocking, direct-to-home distribution, and retail operations. Starting studentkare.com, a B2C model was a natural extension to make the best use of the 14 years of experience and expertise in the school and office supplies space. However, adapting and creating something from the parent's perspective needed different skill sets from the B2B space.
StudentKARE was launched in 2018, while the website went live in 2019.
As per market research by StudentKARE, a student in any class between KG to 12th grade requires more than 15 different products on a regular day. These products include school bags, textbooks, reference books, shoes (sports and regular), etc. Each of these products is typically sold by different merchants. A parent has to make multiple trips to different school vendors to get all the supplies needed, which is inconvenient & time-consuming. Additionally, the merchants also have a limited brand/product range.
To solve this issue, studentkare.com provides a platform where parents can buy all the school supplies needed for their children.
StudentKARE - Name & Logo
The brand name StudentKARE is an amalgamation of its target customers (student) and parent brand, Kare.
StudentKARE - Revenue Model
StudentKARE has a very simple revenue model. It has different categories of products having different price range with a strong focus on being price competitive. StudentKARE provides a wide range of brands choices for the customer. It has direct tie-ups with brands which ensure that it has better quality products at fair prices. The company rolls out seasonal schemes which offer value for larger purchases. It also offers free delivery for orders above INR 500.
As an online retailer, we strongly believe in avoiding the deep-discounting/hidden pricing approach and focus on fair pricing for sustainable business growth.
Purbalee Dutta
StudentKARE - User Acquisition
Online marketing worked well for StudentKARE and it was able to reach the 100th transaction mark much faster than initially projected.
StudentKARE’s marketing budgets are currently focused on building a strong brand presence with the parents' community, helping them discover value with the platform & develop a long-term seller-buyer relationship. It is also focusing on improving its own systems & processes. The company is currently focusing on leveraging its existing customer base employing digital marketing & BTL channels for targeted campaigns. The company has plans to invest more in marketing with further growth.
An interesting insight that StudentKARE had was traffic & transactions from Tier-II and Tier-III cities across India. While the company expected transactions from the metro cities only, Â but they realized that Tier-II and Tier-III cities are under-served in terms of brand choices at local stores. This encouraged StudentKare to change its communication focus to these cities and soon enough started seeing transactions pouring in from the Tier-II and Tier-III markets.
We have parents from Guwahati who buy Amar Chitra Katha comics and pay more for delivery charges than the cost of the book! We have customers from Sonepat/Tuticorin buying robotics kits. While we thought that metro cities would be the main markets, we realized that smaller cities are also a substantial market - StudentKARE.
Shubham Kumar
StudentKARE - Funding & Investors
StudentKARE is currently a bootstrapped company.
StudentKARE - Startup Challenges
As a new portal, gaining the trust of the customers is a major challenge that StudentKare faces.
In the first few months, we reached out to our captive customer base with focused products offerings, though we were able to receive a few orders and service them, we had some curious customers reaching out to our contact center to ask who owns/runs the portal. Trust is an important criterion if a parent is buying school books, etc. online.
The company overcame this challenge by creating more awareness about its credentials among its target customers. StudentKARE now boasts of a set of loyal customers who have transacted several times with it and have provided positive feedback.
StudentKARE - Competitors
E-commerce giants like Amazon, Flipkart, and Snapdeal, etc. also have the education and sports-related products enlisted on their websites and hence pose competition for StudentKARE. Besides websites like Schoolkart and School Super Mart, which are dedicated platforms for education and sports-related goods are also some competitors of StudentKare.
StudentKARE stands out from the competitors as it has the advantage of being a part of a larger setup. It leveraged the existing relationships of Kare with large brands to provide high-quality products at reasonable rates.
According to Kurien, the parent-child-centric focus has been the USP of studentkare.com. Other aspects of the platform are process-focused order processing, regular customer communication & standard marketing incentives like discounts and cashback.
One of the shopping platforms that we believe has revolutionized its market segment is Nykaa. It was a common perception that there is no online market for cosmetics and other beauty products in India. It was believed people will need to ‘touch and feel’ these products. Convenience, Education, and quality assurance have worked in favour of changing the mindset of people. We are working to achieve the same with the online education/toy supplies market which is largely unorganized and grossly underserved.
Chayanika Goswami
StudentKARE - Growth
StudentKARE has started operating just 3 years back and has been able to make a mark in this very short span. The company attracts 50,000 hits on its website every month. StudentKARE delivers to over 20,000+ pin codes across India. Besides, the company has been able to grab the attention of buyers both from metro cities and Tier-II, Tier-III cities which is a good achievement. Â
The plan is to make studentkare.com the default platform in the coming future for product discovery and purchase for the education and hobby/shopping needs of a child. StudentKARE is also planning to build a community of parents who share their experiences with each other and make the site the best place for both buying and community bonding.
StudentKARE - FAQs
What is StudentKARE?
StudentKare.com is India’s first of its kind, comprehensive e-commerce platform dedicated to fulfilling the end-to-end requirement of students – at school and play.
What does StudentKARE provide?
It is a one-stop shop for every little need related to education and hobbies for a student.
Who is the founder of StudentKARE?
Rustom Kerawalla is the founder of StudentKARE Parent Organization Kare Enterprise Pvt. Ltd.
Who is the CEO of StudentKARE?
Kurien Pothen is the CEO of Kare. He joined in 2017, to drive the launch of the e-commerce business - studentkare.com.
Who are the targeted customers?
The targeted customers are the parents and their children. Basically, a student in any class between KG to 12th grade requires more than 15 different products on a regular day.
What is the total revenue generated from School Supplies Industry?
India has nearly 260 million students studying in the K-12 segment who require uniforms, textbooks, notebooks, bags, shoes, and other stationery material. The market is estimated to be INR 55,000 crores p.a. and is currently not too organized.
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