Q.Please tell us about Aadishakti.
Aadishakti is one stop destination for Spiritual, Healing and AYUSH# Services & Products. It is vertical focused S-Commerce platform.
It is a marketplace for Astrologers, Numerologists, Vastu Experts, Tarot Card Readers, Healers, AYUSH and many other occult science experts & Sellers.
Aadishakti connects both experts and customers., On the one hand, we provide a platform to numerous “Experts and AYUSH Product manufacturers and sellers” to get them discovered and transacted.
On the other hand, we provide a platform to our customers on below aspects;
- Find & book spiritual, healing, yoga & ayurveda experts
- Buy spiritual & AYUSH products
- Be part of knowledge sharing community
#AYUSH is acronym for Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy
Q.How did you discover Aadishakti?
Like many Indian, we have seen our family and friends often visiting Astrologers for seeking remedies to their life problems or for checking auspicious muhurta or for match-making for marriages.
We have also noticed people taking the help of Reiki Master or Pranic Healers for various psychological problems or for faster recovery from illness.
We observed India’s local fortune telling and healing services market was and still is very fragmented, which means customers had no forum to check and compare about various experts and then decide. Also, many a times, they were subjected to cheating and lured into some remedies which were not necessary. Word of mouth or at best, list of experts from Just Dial Directory was the only options.
We realized that this business has immense potential since it addresses one of the most innate needs. The need to have some control over once own life by managing unknowns either it is related to Job, business, marriage, or relationships. Such uncertainties and fear of failures makes our life very stressful.
Hence in India’s fragmented and low-tech future telling & healing market, we saw both a gap and an opportunity.
We wanted to start something but that time internet was in a nascent stage and there was no way one could do this business with brick and mortar model. When internet become easily accessible around 2010-11, we realized this is the time, one can do something in this area. Finally we took a plunge in 2014 to start the venture and launched in April 2015.
Q.Introduce your Co-Founder/Founders.
Piyush Deogirikar is Founder of Aadishakti.co. Prior to launching Aadishakti, he was associated with Mother Earth Retail (Future Group) as acting CEO/COO. He is an MBA from IIM Bangalore and has work experience of 18 years (16 years in professional career and 2 years with Aadishakti).
We are blessed to have many mentors & advisors from Industry and NSRCEL, who are constantly guiding us on this journey. Besides our team, some of work has been outsourced.
Q. What makes you special and how is it different from other similar websites?
Aadishakti is empowering both experts and customers.
Indian consumers have a poor access to Spiritual & Healing services and at the same time he was cheated by experts owing to the disorganized nature of the market. The customer is constantly struggling to get reliable and affordable services at his time, and convenience. The business addresses this core pain point of the Indian customer.
We provide customers the ability to access a larger selection of service options, compare rates and review experts.
For experts, we create better visibility in our website by having detailed profile to each service providers (not many websites do) and thus helping them to reach wider audience. After background verification and approval process, we create their complete profile with details such as service description, pricing for each service, accomplishments, language known, working hours/days and many more other information.
In a nutshell, it gives experts and customers the tools they needed to maximize and take control of their own choice/experiences.
Comparison with other sites
There are various differences such as :
- We are not online yellow pages or directories but end to end vertical focused service provider
- Unlike other websites, we run a marketplace model; hence customers get much larger pool of experts to choose from.
- Also, we offer much larger variety of services (more than 150) across 3 segments Spiritual, Healing and AYUSH.
- Last, eventually we will be a Services+ Product platform
Q. What challenges did you face while setting up Aadishakti?
Besides, regular challenges which each and every startup faces; we would like to categories them into two section. One related to founders and one related business.
As far as founder related challenge is concerned, Founder continuously grapples with many issues such as fear of failure or constant comparison with other startup.
The Mantra to deal with such situation is to have “faith & patience”. Have faith in what you are doing and have patience that things will work out with time.
Other business issue is “barrier of acceptability”. Simplest way to deal with the issue is keeping a promise that you made to customer. That gives us word of mouth publicity and repeat business.
Q. What’s the current growth and future plan?
We are at initial stage of our journey. Currently, we have around 10,000+ followers on Facebook. We get around 10,000 visitors on an average on our website per month and have served 7000+ customers in a years’ time. We are targeting around 5X growth this year.
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Visit : www.aadishakti.co