FirstCry: The Entrepreneurial Compass

Abstract

Analysing the word ‘entrepreneurship’ in the jargon of the business world facilitates us to understand the complete process of a business creation. And it is the entrepreneur who recognises the opportunities, generates innovative ideas, and strategies to produce latest goods and services for people. Innovation and entrepreneurship are inter-connected terms as the former acts as a driving force in creating a congenial environment for corporate advancement. The case study of ‘FirstCry’ as the unmatched productive online business venture of the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad graduate Supam Maheshwari, genuinely highlights his entrepreneurial skills in evaluating the opportunity related knowledge and harnessing them through innovative practices to un-limit the horizons of business extensions. It also demonstrates the personality factors analogous in an entrepreneurial journey and the importance of strategic corporate alliances in assisting new ventures to meet constant innovation pressure and how dynamic personalization and social connectivity forms the impetus for venture creation. Today, ‘FirstCry’ has emerged as the indubitable leader in its niche. Following its strategic approach, it is now established as the biggest online shopping destination for all kids’ products and accessories in India and Asia in just 10 years. The study further illustrates factors influencing the marketing strategies of e-trading companies and demonstrates how an e-commerce company can manage its brands while strategically diversifying itself from becoming a product to service industry. It also gives an outline of the organisation’s combination of click and brick, strategic market approach and innovative uniform pricing. The keen foresightedness of Supam is observed in perceiving the challenging volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) conditions in the business environment and transforming it into tenable and profitable business structure. The qualitative technique analysis along with inductive method has been used to study this case.