ENTREPRENEURSHIP

REPORT
2015-16

TYBBA – B

Aman Mittal B004

Aman Sancheti B005
Ankur Jain B007
Kanupriya Sethi B019
Siddhant Arora B043

Entrepreneur: Faisal Ali Khan

Venture: Motorbeam.com
INTRODUCTION
Entrepreneurship is the process of starting a business, typically a startup company offering
an innovative product, process or service. The entrepreneur perceives an opportunity and
often exhibits biases in taking the decision to exploit the opportunity. The exploitation of
entrepreneurial opportunities includes design actions to develop a business plan,
acquire the human, financial and other required resources, and to be responsible for its
success or failure. Entrepreneurship may operate within an entrepreneurship
ecosystem which includes government programs and services that support entrepreneurs, not-
for-profit entrepreneurship resources (e.g., incubators and accelerators), entrepreneurship
education and training and financing (e.g., loans, venture capital, and grants).

Successful entrepreneurs have the ability to lead a business in a positive direction by proper
planning, to adapt to changing environments and understand their own strengths and
weakness.
The term "entrepreneur" is often conflated with the term "small business." While most
entrepreneurial ventures start out as a small business, not all small businesses are
entrepreneurial in the strict sense of the term. Many small businesses are sole proprietor
operations consisting solely of the owner, or they have a small number of employees, and
many of these small businesses offer an existing product, process or service, and they do not
aim at growth. In contrast, entrepreneurial ventures offer an innovative product, process or
service, and the entrepreneur typically aims to scale up the company by adding employees,
seeking international sales, and so on, a process which is financed by venture
capital and angel investments.
MOTORBEAM: IT’S SERVICE

“Honest and accurate news and reviews of Indian automobiles. This is our primary aim at
MotorBeam, to deliver latest
automotive updates in real time.”

It is a daily updated automobile

portal which contains the latest
automobile news, car reviews
and bike reviews from the Indian
automotive industry. Obsessed with
the Indian automotive scenario,
MotorBeam was started on 25th
May, 2008.

It covers everything related to two and four-wheelers including Indian car road tests,
bike road tests, video reviews and car, motorcycle comparisons.

Over the years, it has expanded the base and has its own team spread across the geographical
boundaries of the country. It has also started community forums and a monthly magazine
recently.

LAUNCH OF MOTORBEAM

Extremely passionate about automobiles, Faisal Ali Khan founded MotorBeam while he was
in his teens and not even a graduate. It was started as a hobby website just to randomly
ramble about cars and bikes. MotorBeam did not start as Motor Beam though; it started as a
free blog on Blogger in 2007 with the username ‘busas’, named after his favorite motorcycle.
On 25th May, 2008, the domain Motor Beam was registered and rest as they say is history.
Since then, Mr. Faisal Ali Khan has dedicated his whole life to MotorBeam, even while doing
his MBA, ensuring he is actively involved in all the posts which go live, reading every
comment and interacting with automobile enthusiasts who like him- eat, drink and sleep cars
and bikes.

ABOUT THE ENTREPRENEUR

Faisal Ali Khan is the founder and editor of MotorBeam. He is an MBA in Finance from
Symbiosis, Pune. His passion for cars and bikes dates back to when he was 2-years old, the
age at which he started driving his baby cot across the house by pushing it. Faisal loves
everything that has wheels, be it a 2-wheeler or a 4-wheeler. His favorite motorcycle is the
Dodge Tomahawk and he hopes to see it in production some day. His favorite car is the Fiat
500 Abarth. He currently dreams of driving the Bugatti Veyron at full steam at Volkswagen
AG’s test track in Germany.
 A big Apple fan, Faisal loves every gadget
that the California based company
produces. He enjoys watching Formula 1
and MotoGP and really doesn’t care who
wins as long as there is some excitement
and overtaking.

He is also a foodie and an avid marathon

runner. His professional interest lies in the
Indian stock market and when he is not
behind the wheel, he is either going long or
short on equities.

MOTORBEAM PRODUCT USP

An online portal to discover the world of cars and bikes communicated in an accurate manner
through reviews, launches, comparison tests etc.
The scenario of online car and bike reviews has dense competition but motorbeam.com
stands out from its rivals in many ways!

Product USP:
 Accurate reviews with exact details of the vehicle tested for example average/km;
mileage; torque and other necessary details. No sense of malpractice.

 Not succumbing to the pressure of the auto-world giants to provide fabricated and
positive reviews of the concerned vehicles in return of monetary benefits.

 A promise to keep the viewers updated by providing reviews before/along with

competitors for newly launched vehicles.

 Provision of all the news from the world of automobiles through its website and other
communication channels to its large viewership.
MOTORBEAM: SWOT

STRENGTH WEAKNESS

 Unbiased Content  Small team size

 High number of vehicle comparos  Lack of experience

 Young and enthusiastic employees  Financial resources lacking

OPPORTUNITY THREATS

 Scope for expansion in video content  Bigger players in the market

 Special features which interest the  Credibility is continuously

readers questioned

 Overseas expansion  Biasness of automobile companies

towards smaller publications

STRENGTHS
 Unbiased Content – Since the company does not depend on any automotive
manufacturer for revenue, the content is unbiased. Also they do not do any sponsored
articles which keeps the credibility high.
 High number of vehicle comparos- One of the companies USP is that they try to
compare a new vehicle with all the competitors in the market which gives them an
upper hand over the competition
 Young and enthusiastic employees-Since they usually employ students from colleges
or fresh graduates, the employees are young. The core requirement for the job is
passion and enthusiasm for automobiles. So the employees are self-motivated.

WEAKNESS
 Small team size- Since the amount of work an employee can do is limited, small team
size restricts the amount of content which can be put up on the site.
 Lack of experience- Since the employees are young, they are learning in the initial
phase of the job which puts the company at a disadvantage because competitors have
more experienced employees.
 Financial resources lacking- Since the company is not funded by a VC fund and is
self-financed by the owner, financial strength is lacking which restricts certain
activities which require a lot of fund.
OPPORTUNITY
 Scope for expansion in video content- Since the world is moving towards
digitalization, more and more videos can be put out which interests the viewers a lot.
 Special features which interest the readers- The company can do special articles
which the other companies do not do due to various reasons. Such articles are liked by
the readers.
 Overseas expansion- The company can have a few employees abroad and the cover
the international automotive scene as well.

THREATS
 Bigger players in the market- The industry has bigger players such as auto cars,
overdrive etc. who have huge financial resources which enables them to spend top
money for equipment and employees.
 Credibility is continuously questioned- Since the company is pretty new, readers keep
on questioning the credibility of the views expressed by the employees.
 Biasness of automobile companies towards smaller publications- Automotive
companies indirectly favour the bigger publications and usually provide them with
vehicles earlier for reviews which puts MotorBeam at a loss in terms of readership
because readers are not interested in certain reviews if they are put up late.
MOTORBEAM: TOWS
Strength-Threats
 Young and enthusiastic
employees can put a great effort,
can grow in the cut-throat
competition.
 Unbiased content helps to
compete with bigger players in
the market because bigger
players do sponsor articles.
Weakness-Threats
 Lack of experience and bigger
players in the market makes the
survival for the firm very tuff.
 Lack of financial resources
pushes the firm towards
sponsored articles
Strength-Opportunity
 The enthusiasm of employees can
be used to make creative videos
 Allow the employees to write
special features as per their own
wish with only editorial help
provided.
Weakness-Opportunity
 Expansion of the team would help
dish out more articles which would
mean more revenue through ads.
This would lead to better financial
position of the firm
 Employing more experienced
people will help strategize better for
the overseas expansion.
MOTORBEAM: LIFE CYCLE STAGE OF STARTUP
STAGE CHARACTERSTICS
Pre-Venture  Idea Generation.
 Identifying business
opportunity
 Proof of concept
 Talking to potential
customers and suppliers
 Networking
 Understanding financial
management
Raw Start-up  Developing product
 Raising money
 Registering business
 delivering value-add
Early stage start-up  Identifying target
market
 Refine product
 Achieve cash flows
 Test revenue model
 Maintaining financial
records professionally
Growth  Sales
 Simplify business
model
 Formulate business
strategy
 Managing human
capital
 Managing relations with
customers
 Developing relations
with supplies
 Rapid growth
 Brand building
CHALLENGES FACED
 Networking with
automobile manufacturers
was a difficult task.
 Revenue source
identification was tough
since the reviews were
not to be paid nor would
the customers to pay for
being able to read reviews
 Development of product –
the website development
was a onetime event but
articles and reviews every
time is a bigger task.
 Capturing customers –
Since there were various
existing websites and
magazines providing
similar or same service, it
was difficult to get
customer to shift to our
service
 Revenue model – Since
there was/is no income
from reviews, the source
was to be identified.
Google ads became the
source of revenues.
 Maintaining relations
with readers – It is
important to make sure
readers do not shift to
other review sources. For
this giving out reviews
that are true and reliable
consistently is a major
challenge.
 Attracting new customers
– A lot of websites give
similar service. Task is to
get customers to shift to
our website. This could
 be done only by giving
honest reviews and
 Brand building – With
brands like autotrade,
autocar, team-bhp, etc.
existing in the sector, it is
difficult to establish a
new brand.
 Revenue – With only
google ads as source of
revenue, it is important to
maintain a balanced
number of ads on the
website so that customers
do not feel overloaded
with ads yet display
enough ads to be able to
generate revenue.

MOTORBEAM: STARTUP-STAGES

Pre-venture Raw startup Early stage Growth stage

Motorbeam belongs to the growth stage of start-up cycle presently.
Characteristics that determine that it is in the growth stage are:
 Stable cash flow / revenue source
 Increasing hits on website
 Enhanced relations with automobile manufacturers
 Customer satisfaction has been increasing
 Brand name has been developed and customers increasing trust on the website
 Increasing customers
 Tapping increasing market possibility
CONCLUSION

The take away from Faisal’s journey are various. It has been a journey of struggle for him
and therefore the result has been rewarding.

The lessons we learnt as students of entrepreneurship are:

 One needs to be determined and focused towards the goal. It may take long for your
venture to get into operations and start generating revenue, but to hold on is what is
required.
 A supportive team is very much important to distribute work. A team on whom you
can rely helps you to focus on the most important task at the moment.
 Your business idea might not be something very much out of the box or too big, but
establishing it efficiently will help it compete against other established businesses
 Support from family and friends is an add-on. Under family pressure one might not be
able to focus on providing quality by rather be hurry to generate stream of revenue.
 Ethical way of doing business is what must be followed. It might make growth slow
but helps form a team of trustworthy employees and loyal customers. Customer do
appreciate the honesty in your work just as in case of Motorbeam. They write honest
reviews without biases or being bribed to write positively about products.
 Networking and maintaining relationship in a business is really important and
essential. Developing a network pays-off in various ways. Eventually the network
would get you more business, be the customers themselves, help move forward in
business, etc.