Supam Maheshwari is the CEO and co-founder of FirstCry. FirstCry is a baby products company established in Pune, Maharashtra. Supam is a first-generation business owner with a keen business sense. His leadership abilities are highly acknowledged, and he is a terrific executor.
In the beginning, he founded Brainvisa Technologies alongside Amitava Saha as a partner. But once the company was sold, he started FirstCry through BrainBees. FirstCry receives the Most Popular Online Site honor at the 2013 Delhi Child Awards. Additionally, he is a co-founder of the logistics service provider Xpressbees.
Early Life
Supam Maheshwari immediately got on the bandwagon of business, in contrast to the majority of entrepreneurs who initially choose jobs. He started working on a business soon after earning his postgraduate degree from IIM and launched it in 2000. His first company was Brainvisa Technologies.
The company’s teaching methods and end-to-end learning solutions were its key competitive advantages. Brainvisa was an e-learning company that helped organizations all over the world boost the effectiveness of learning and training by creating specialized learning solutions that were centered on established and defined corporate objectives. In less than 8 years, Supam expanded Brainvisa to become one of the world’s largest e-learning solutions companies.
Even though the growth was astounding, in 2007 he made the decision to sell the company to a US-based organization called Indecomm Global Services.
Success Story
Supam Maheshwari had become a father during his time with Brainvisa, and his job forced him to travel frequently to the United States and Europe. Because he could trust the quality of merchandise accessible abroad and since many of them weren’t readily available locally, he used to bring a lot of items for his newborn daughter.
At that point, he saw there was a significant supply-demand disparity in the domestic economy for brands geared toward children, including several international brands. As he carried out more research, he estimated that the baby and children’s market in India generated approximately Rs. 50,000 Cr. in revenue, with 95% of the sales occurring offline.
He could now clearly see the idea. He intended to develop a platform that would give parents simple access to high-quality baby and children’s products. He sought to offer a wide choice of top-notch products. With his model, he hoped to close the gap for Indian parents. After everything was resolved, Supam founded BrainBees Solutions with his buddy Amitava Saha and a seed investment of Rs. 2.5 Cr. from friends and personal funds.
In 2010, they subsequently created Firstcry.com under the aegis of BrainBees. Today, Firstcry has grown to become Asia’s largest online marketplace of products for kids, expectant moms, newborns, and kids.
Business Strategy
By 2014, the company had signed up 600 domestic and foreign brands. It had also introduced its own private label, BabyHug (a clothing brand) and CuteWalk (a footwear brand), which contributed to around 20% of its sales. Even more striking was the fact that none of this was accomplished through any elaborate marketing or advertising plans.
Although the organization ran some TV and print advertisements in its early years, it stopped as it realized it was a high-risk and low-return strategy. And at this point, the majority of advertising was done online and by word-of-mouth. Other than that, Firstcry had created a fresh way of connecting prospective parents directly.
Firstcry used to conduct a special program through which they would communicate with over 70,000 different parents each month. Their plan was pretty straightforward; Firstcry had agreements with 6000 hospitals nationwide and used to send moms a “Firstcry Box” as a gesture of congratulations on the birth of their child when they left the hospital.
I am a law graduate from NLU Lucknow. I have a flair for creative writing and hence in my free time work as a freelance content writer.