Son takes father’s traditional business digital with Alibaba.com

Story:

Being the son of a businessman, it was quite obvious and evident for Nikhil Gandhi to continue with his family business. He prepared himself for this early and completed his MBA in International studies. Right after his graduation, he joined the family business in 2010. It took him an entire year to understand the nature of their business and the marketing and sales channels. One thing was very clear to him that the margins in the domestic market were very thin and that was the reason their business has been stagnant for 20+ years. He had decided not to follow these old rituals and channels and tried to use his skills as a next-generation businessman and took the help of the internet to do export.

Solution:

Nikhil did a lot of research and tried a lot of things. He realized that the only way to find the right path to success is by trying and failing multiple times. It was during that process that he got to know about Alibaba. It seemed expensive to take the gold membership of Alibaba. However, he made an informed decision and took the membership. In the early days with his membership, while he was posting his products, Nikhil started to respond to the RFQ (request for quotations) from buyers very seriously. Within 3 months, he got a big order from a big brand in the USA and that changed the course of his business. He not only recovered his membership cost but also had a huge profit. As a smart businessman, he took advantage of that and immediately appointed a team to manage King International’s Alibaba account. He had a staff to post products and another to respond to buyer’s queries immediately. 9 years down the line, he has posted more than 10,000 products on Alibaba.com and generates 30+ serious inquiries every day through alibaba.com.

Success:

In 9 years, Nikhil generated 70% of his business revenue through export and 100% of his revenue through online e-commerce. Being a new-age businessman, Nikhil firmly believes that digital is the future. His business has grown 10X in 9 years with Alibaba.com and more than 50% of his export revenue is from buyers of 15+ countries through Alibaba.com. Alibaba.com has been such a big lever for its growth that Nikhil has 5 dedicated staff to manage his Alibaba.com business.