Interviews

Rajvi Sanghvi & Her Venture HobbMob Converting Hobby Into Passion For People

God help those who help themselves, Rajvi Sanghvi has beautifully explained this to us not by venturing into an innovative concept but also performing extremely well in converting hobbies to a learning platform.
Its human mentality that if we want some change to be done for our self we expect that we will get a helping hand and one day somebody will do it for us however for woman upliftment Women entrepreneurship is a big change in Indian society by managing home and work they have helped themselves for opening up the opportunities for their upliftment and development. Aspiring women entrepreneurs will be a complete revolution to our country for not only economic development but also a big boost towards the society upliftment. Earlier the thought process was very limited for women as they were only supposed to raise their family with all domestic home activities and a were only doing limited task like cooking, cleaning, taking care of kids and family but she has not come up with the thought of exploring ways to life. Raj beer has brought in a platform to learn as well as impart different hobbies and make it a beautiful stress buster by surrounding life with colors and happiness.
With such colors we are glad to introduce Mrs. Rajvi Sanghvi who has got a power to think out of the box and bring a new concept to Indian market for pursuing the hobbies which now a days got suppressed due to hectic and monotonous life. She has nurtured the passion into a flow of energy which can be passed to all those who wants to pursue the hobby by collective means.
1. What is the Name of Your Venture? Any specific reason for this name?
Ans. My website name is hobbmob.com and the concept of keeping this name is hob is the short form of hobby and mob is a group of people and my website is for group of people who wants to pursue their hobby.

2. What problems does your venture resolve? What are your products or services?
Ans. we are providing a platform to those who wants to do something different after coming back from work and meeting challenging work requirements as leisure activity and enjoy the remaining part of the hectic day to add colour to their life. It is also for the people who want to teach skills like singing, dancing etc. This way the passionate people who are learner and the teachers can come on a common platform where they utilize and invest time for exploring the different passions and hobby
3. Who is your target Audience/clients?
Ans. The current target audience is women because they have relatively more time and high inclination towards such activities in both learning and teaching. The geographical area that we are focusing upon is Delhi.
4. How old is your venture.
Ans. My venture is 3 months old.
5. What expansion plans are you looking for the next 2 years, next 5 years?
Ans. After Delhi my next target is to explore Bangalore and Indore because there we have good potential clients as there people give importance to passion and talent. I personally believe if the passion and talent is converted into work than there is no limit to growth and extraordinary results achievements.
6. What according to you is more approaching and rewarding in terms of generating business? Tier1 cities or Tier 2 cities.
Ans. Well, both have their own plus and minus if I look at it from my venture point of view.
Tier 1 cities is full of talented people where they wants to explore new things to do in order to release the work pressure and get a feel good factor for re-energizing themselves but in in tier 2 cities people have time and they are not very much engrossed with their work or big professional aspirations ,so to utilize time properly they get into these activities and pursue things of their own choice.
7. Share the idea or story behind the venture. How did it come to an existence? What motivated you to start your own venture?
Ans. When I was a kid I was quite restless kid who used to do lot of things like painting classes, activity classes but was not that serious in taking such thing. After my schooling I went to US and stayed there for 7 years and in weekend I use to do some or the other activity through different workshops and monitored ways. After coming back to India I realized that people do not have many options to do in weekend as a reenergizing activity even after having such a big population with wonderful talent. So if we explore different passion, hobbies than we can provide a huge platform to connect people in exploring ways to pursue their hobbies. Therefore I explored this opportunity to create the same.
8. How did you identify your co-founder? Tell us something about your co-founder/s.
Ans. At present I do not have any co-founder for my venture however my husband supports me to carry on this venture with his views and ideas and helps me out in exploring better ways to make this platform better.

9. How big is your team size for this venture?
Ans. Presently we have 2 full time employees and we also have couple of freelancers across India.

10. Have you ever faced any problems during establishing your team and hiring first full time employees if yes than what were those?
Ans.I have faced lot of difficulties in hiring new employees because for startups at initial stage we need to get open minded people in exploring the ways to take the business at next level. I never believe in yes mam answers from my employees and I look for suggestions and new ideas to make my place a best platform for all the people associated with us even if it is an employee. In India I think still the perceived difference and expectation in an employee and boss is so high that employees do not come forward to have open discussions and present their views which according to me are a big obstacle for the business to grow.
As an entrepreneur I had to do lot of things on my own and one person cannot be good at everything so we look for people to fill such gaps and help out in adding those skills and quantities in performing and growing the venture. To be very honest I still see people limited to just follow the instructions with a closed call of exploring ways out.
11. Have you raised any funding or have any plans for the funding?
Ans. No we have not raised any funding yet for our venture but in coming future within 6 months when we will launch our app with more IT enabled functions than we may look for funding.
12. Are you married, single or in a relationship?
Ans. I am married and my husband is a consultant for a Italian machinery company.
13. How has being an entrepreneur affected your family & Social life?
Ans. Honestly speaking if I look at my personal life I haven’t found any difference with my husband rather we have come more closer due to this as he has supported me by working with me for long hours to make this platform more vivacious. We spend good amount of time which has made more charm to our relationship. I am more busy with this venture because it’s at very initial stage so I am not able to give much time to my family member who are staying away from us like my in- laws , parents and my friends . I am not much approachable as I use to be earlier may be because we are very new in this venture .Even on weekends I am working for my venture so the time investment is quite high but my relations with people have not been affected as they know that I am busy for some genuine cause. Once I would generate some stability in operation I would be able to give more time to my family and friends.
14. What expansion plans are you looking for the next 2 years or 3 years?
Ans. In next 2 to 3 years I have plans to make this platform international so that people from different parts of the world can be connected to each other though video call enabled services. This will definitely make people aware of different hobbies with different parts of the world and can be learned as well as imparted to other people.
We got a hobbmob studio where we conduct workshops but in near future I want to have more number of such studios across India where people are not completely adaptable in connecting online. So these studios will be an option for them for instant connects.
15. Who are your biggest competitors and how do you differentiate yourself from them?
Ans. I think the best competitor that I have is urban clap and the worst competitor in terms of services which seems to be same but totally different is just dial.
People have this notion that my services are same as just dial where I am providing the data of the people doing some activity classes for group of people but actually we not doing any such thing, rather we connect people to each other for learning as well as imparting outcomes of talented hobbies.
16. What was the most challenging part of your journey till now? How did you overcome those challenges?
Ans. The most challenging part has been onboarding teachers. It was very difficult for me to make them understand the whole concept of our website and motivating them to create and conduct classes on that. Still it is challenges for us to make people understand and believe in our concept .To overcome such challenge I personally meet them and word of mouth is helping me to overcome the same.
17. What are your hobbies? What do you do in your non-work time?
Ans. I love singing, although I am very bad at singing but I still love to do as it automatically brings happiness to my life and also pottery it really relaxes me when I see a ready pots.
18. Whom do you consider your idol or a biggest motivator behind this venture?
Ans. My sister has been a biggest motivator for me .Although she is 2 years younger to me but if we look at her thought process its very positive and motivating for life. She has always been protective and makes me believe that tomorrow is going to be better than today so I give all credits to her.
19. What do you think is the biggest threat to the success of small businesses & Start-ups today?
Ans. I think the big corporates across world has realized that they have competition not only from big players but also from startups as they may create revolutionary changes in markets. If I look at good startups they are also coming up with a focused strategy to provide satisfactory goods or services to client’s .This may further curtail the market share of big corporates.
So the way big companies consider the startups as threat to their market the same way the startups consider big corporates to their threat because corporates are easy and giant to copy the concept with add-on services.
20. What do you think about funds accessibility for startups in Indian Market?
Ans. I think startups have funding accessibility because now a day’s angel investors, venture capitalist are coming forward to help the entrepreneurs in meeting initial fund requirements, provided the concept is rewarding.
21. What are the good and the bad thing that you like about the startup culture?
Ans. The good thing about the startup in India is that it is very easy to start a venture as the legal system is not very restricted for us. The difficult part is that our elder generation does not accept that their children are doing work on any startup venture because they think that the risk factor is high with lots of social taboo. Moreover If a female is getting into such venture than what will happen to her , who will marry her and how she will raise her family. So such difficulties in terms of closed mindset can lead to big obstacles for women entrepreneurship in taking up new ventures.
22.Tell us something about your education & family background.
Ans. I come from quite a big family based out of Indore. My father has four brothers and one sister and their families are into business. I did my schooling from Indore and after that I moved to Boston and stayed there for 7 years. I completed my masters their did my 2 internships. After completing that I moved back to India and worked for some company for a short span. I got married in India and got a wonderful loving husband so in Desi language as per perception I got settled which according to me half part of my life is.
23. What is your USP which makes it unique & different from other start-ups in similar domains?
Ans. We provide both online and offline services to peruse hobby which I think has not yet seen in India and makes our platform very different and innovative for better connectivity.
One more thing is that for HobbMob we will have a community so that people who all are coming to our website should have a more interactive platform and can connect with each other.
24. Do you consider yourself successful and by what means do you measure success?
Ans. Quite early to answer this as my venture is just 3 months old so I am not very successful at this point of time but HobbMob is successfully working in terms of the operations as well as the connectivity with people.
25. What do you think about big growing numbers of startups in Indian market?
Ans. I think Indian youth is becoming more ambitious and now they have got a new though process that they can also be one of the leading player in market which is great change because we are generating employment instead of depending upon big companies for searching job and developing means for life.
26. What do you like to say to our viewers about aspiring entrepreneurship?
Ans. I would personally say to go for entrepreneurship. These days everyone does not have all luxury to start things on their own not only because of funds but also because of the family as well as social constraints. So if someone as an individual is able to make a right balance and pursue the venture by choice than one should start it with full fledge positive energy.
We all think that we want our venture to look perfect and do not launches or get into it until we make it perfect from our side but my experience has made me learn that your good enough product or service will also do in market and same can be improvised with time later on . Just because of some perfection do not restrict yourself due to lack of resources, confidence or time .Just go for it as markets also gives opportunity and time to add value to your product and make your product perfect.

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