Call Akosha for help

By Pranbihanga Borpuzari

With 53,530 complaints filed, Rs. 1.6 crore of consumers’ money saved, and 899 days worth of consumers’ time saved, Akosha has had a rather successful start. Most of its success comes from its ability to address a grievance that bothers most of us at some point-consumer complaints. Ankur Singla’s brainchild, Akosha was created from the angst that he experienced in his everyday life. Singla, 29, started out as a student of law in Bengaluru in 2002, but wasn’t inclined toward the subject. However, those were good times, and there was no dearth of jobs even with his disinterest. On graduation, Singla joined Linklaters, London in 2007 where he was immediately exposed to the world of debt markets, and mergers & acquisitions.

Past tense

“I was transferred to Dubai to look after a finance project. It was there that I realized a sense of emptiness. After six months in Dubai, I returned to London. The money was good but I felt I was not doing enough. The desire to do something on my own crept back; and in June 2009, I came back to India,” says Singla.

His first office was a small room in his house in Chandigarh. Here he started toying with a couple of ideas. One idea was to come up with law practice management software, while the other was to build a site that would help people make legal documents online. Singla leaned towards the latter, starting with creating documents that dealt with wills online.

Singla coded his site for approximately six months and by February 2010, he managed to launch the website. “I sent my concept to 20-30 friends for their inputs and everyone expressed their reservations about the site. That was a moment of truth for me as after all the hard work everything came to naught,” he says. Singla admits that the user interface wasn’t great, and he had to hire another person. The venture was also eating into his savings, which were dwindling fast. To support the business, Singla worked as a consulting freelancer to ensure cash flow. However, his venture didn’t meet with expected success.

Luck by chance

A chance meeting with Sameer Guglani, Co-Founder at The Morpheus, a Chandigarh-based investing and incubating firm, changed his path. Over brainstorming sessions, it was decided to broadbase the operation, which would help hold templates for every kind of legal document used in India. Guglani suggested a generic name, Akosha, for the business, as it was not specific to one kind of work. Singla marched on, compiling a lot of legal research and content, as he wanted to be the go-to place for any kind of legal query.

Singla reveals that it was around this time that someone suggested for him and Akosha to get into the field of consumer complaints. “It was difficult as there was no standard template for a consumer complaint. We were told that we should help consumers reach out to the brands,” he says.

By then, getting quality talent was also becoming a problem. To get around to solving this dilemma, Singla moved to Delhi in June 2010. With money running out and with only ideas to survive on, it was a difficult period in Singla’s life. Around this time, Singla helped a homemaker in Mumbai recover tuition fees from a private coaching class and this marked the beginning of a new business. “This woman was very happy. I realized that every problem and the letter I write to each brand could be different. But once the problem is solved the word of mouth is very strong,” says Singla.

The usual suspects

Singla was facing minor irritants in his personal life at that time as well. His mobile bills were almost always problematic or erroneous, and he had to slug it out with the mobile company almost everyday to get his hassles sorted. His father had an issue with his insurance policy, while his mother was trying to get her microwave fixed.

“I realized that people across the country could be dealing with similar problems across multiple brands. Looking back, it would have been nice if I could have focused my energy and time on my startup, instead of calling up customer care,” says Singla. Media coverage for Akosha had begun. Those who heard of Akosha chose to navigate their consumer complaint via the site. “We were surprised that so many people had consumer complaints. Every issue was related to the existence of a consumer problem across brands. We understood that as a business, if the problem we were trying to solve did not figure in the top three pain points of the customer, it was no point trying to solve it. And so we decided to move away from legal documents,” says Singla.

The market was clear. In middle-class India, every household would have at least one serious complaint about a brand. That meant almost 30 crore addressable complaints every year, he figured then. Though the site saw good traction initially, things started going dry pretty soon. “At a conference, I heard Hitesh Oberoi of Naukri narrate their early days and how they persisted in difficult conditions by reaching out to customers. It struck me that rather than waiting for them to come to me, it is best I reach out to customers,” says Singla.

Best foot forward

Singla devised a novel idea to do this. He tapped other consumer complaint forums and if any irate customer provided his contact number, Singla and his two colleagues would call and offer to solve that problem.

“By then we had developed a process. Though we did not guarantee that the problems would be solved we assured the customer that they would save time,” he says. In all, they made about 800 calls and 30-40 people agreed to take Akosha’s paid services.

Armed with complaints, Akosha would approach the brands, explain what they were trying to do and explain why working with them made sense. Singla also perfected the art of making contacts on LinkedIn and managed to corner most of the executives managing the brands through the site.

He also realized that it was essential to not only create a platform where consumers can log a complaint, but brands too could see the complaints against them. He decided to keep the complaints private to ensure they are genuine. Today, it handles 500 complaints a day, has relationships with over 200 brands, of which 95 brands are using their dashboard.

Up and away

Nandini Hirianniah, Co-Founder at The Morpheus, says that though it was tough for the firm to gain trust initially, Akosha is on the path to fast growth now. “They have proven both to consumers, who have unresolved complaints, and consumer brands, that they can successfully intervene,” says Hirianniah. Singla says the growth rate for the year might not be big in pure numbers but it will be significant.

“There is a lot of room for me to grow,” he says, well aware that with its research efforts and the numerous complaints it has handled, Akosha is sitting on a gold mine of consumer behavior and information.

Entrepreneur India October 2012