“We were relocating to Hyderabad when we first encountered the pangs of being unmarried in India. No one was ready to rent us an apartment because we were unmarried. We also started noticing that all products around us be it movies, gift items etc were made for the married ‘family people’ . In 2003 no one was taking unmarried Indians as a serious market segment. We wanted to do something for the unmarried guys.” says Rajat Tuli, founder of Happily Unmarried, one of the coolest brands in India today. Rajat Tuli and Rahul Anand then started exploring different avenues for creating products that speak the language of young India.
Rajat and Rahul started Happily Unmarried in 2003 with a capital of 50,000 INR. They started selling their products by taking them in boxes to their friends offices. And for a long time, their car became their office. The company started their first store in Goa because they thought Goa was ‘cool’ and that they would find some buyers for their products in Goa. The response from Goa was very good and got the founders access to a lot of people who helped them with taking their company forward.
2007 was a big year for the company. That is when the company started a store in Delhi and started selling their products at kiosks at various malls. In 2007, the company also started expanding after raising a capital of 15 lakh by selling equity to friends. The company soon put up an online portal but saw very little sales coming from the online channel back then. “We simply did not know how to sell online” says Rajat. The turning point came in 2012 when the company got funded by Info Edge (India). According to a BSE filing, Info Edge invested 5 crore (US$ 797,321) in the startup for about 25 per cent of the stake in the company. The new investors pushed for more online sales after realizing the potential reach the products could get online. Today the company gets highest sales from their ecommerce portal.” Growth in ecommerce sales has been the highest.” adds Tuli.
Happily Unmarried now relies heavily on social media for its marketing activities. The company drives its content driven marketing through its blog .”Good content always increases traffic to the site” says Rajat. Mobile is driving 40% traffic to the site. However most sales are happening through non mobile sources. According to the company a number of people are browsing their products through mobiles but are buying from their desktops/ laptops only.
When asked about how the company plans to differentiate from some serious competition that it is seeing these days Rajat says “If you look at our products closely, you will see the differentitation for yourself. We are a more masculine brand. We have products that mostly cater to the men in the country. Even when women buy our products it is usually for their husband , boyfriends or friends.” Happily Unmarried is planning to be a 100-crore company in five years. They have already expanded internationally and have stores in New York, Paris and Dubai selling their products. However, India remains the primary focus market for them and the company plans to penetrate the India market further in the coming times.
