It has been well over a month since the start of Needz at IMT. Today with around 70 people visiting Needz per night, we can easily say that Needz is well ingrained into the life of IMTians.
Below are excerpts from a casual chit chat over a cup of tea, with two MADF members who were instrumental in the setting up of Needz – the duo of Chetan and Anand. Read on to know the Needz story.
Let’s start off with a simple question. Whose brainchild was Needz?
Chetan: The idea of Needz was put forth by our own seniors, to be more specific, Abhishek Joshi if I remember rightly. It was raised at one of the weekly MADF meetings and a committee of MADF members was formed to work on implementing Needz and that was the very start of things.
Considering that MADF is a club for social empowerment, what was the need to venture into something like Needz?
Anand: MADF talks about empowerment of the poor and the needy. But fact remains that you cannot do that unless you yourself are empowered. We might have hundreds of ideas for the poor, but we need funds to work them out and it is not easy to get it. Needz is about empowerment of MADF by acting as a source of fund for our projects as well as for the convenience shopping of the IMTians who can now buy everyday items without leaving the campus. Where else can you get a topup at 12 in the night? We are happy that we can do this for fellow IMTians.
Chetan: Just to add to it, the tagline of Needz says, “For every IMTian who wants to make a difference with every purchase.” It simply means the profits from Needz will be used for making a difference to the society through our projects. So it’s a win-win for all of us in one go – IMT, MADF and the society.
Tell me about the biggest hurdle you faced while setting up Needz.
Anand: The biggest was indeed funding to start off Needz. The responsibility of raising the funds was largely on people in charge of the Needz project, ie, Chetan and me. It wasn’t an easy time for us by any means because most corporates seemed to prefer to contribute to inter B-school events rather than projects like Needz because there is more visibility in the former. So, week after week, at MADF meetings, we never had any good news to break. There was pressure from all corners. We wondered if we should tell the college authorities that this project is beyond us. Many believed Needz would never start off and I am happy that our efforts finally paid off and Sail happened.
So how did Sail happen?
Chetan: Professor B.D. Singh was the person who put us across to Sail and introduced us to the concerned people. We would like to use this opportunity to express our gratitude to him again. Though at first Sail seemed to prefer contributing for a mundane act of charity as it happens every year, once they understood the spirit of our entrepreneurship venture, it hardly took any time for the funding to be offered.
There are many who feel that a profit-making venture does not gel well with MADF’s image of being a club which does social service. What is your take on that?
Anand: MADF is not just some club which does short term and meaningless acts of social service or shelters little kittens from the storm. We want to make a difference to the society and that is through empowerment alone since we believe that only that is sustainable. Needz is a venture which will help us achieve it and we can proudly say today that MADF has become a self-sufficient club. So I believe it goes hand in hand with the MADF image of standing up for empowerment.
How has the feedback been about Needz?
Chetan: The response has been over-whelming and we did receive a lot of appreciation as well as suggestions. Some of the suggestions about increasing the product portfolio have been implemented already. We even sell snacks like Bhujia now! Bringing so many things under one roof has been exciting and challenging. We want Needz to become a one-stop shop for most of the regular needs. Negative feedback has been mainly about higher than market prices on some of the items. As Needz had just started operations, we had trouble locating dealers who were offering lower prices and hence the higher than market prices couldn’t be helped initially. It has been looked into and some of the prices have already been cut down through locating better dealers. Anyhow, we are still finding our feet, this being early days.
Ok. Coming to a different perspective, how big a learning experience was Needz?
Anand: Needz is perhaps, the first entrepreneurship venture inside IMT by the students. As you know, everything from getting the inventory to sitting there and doing the actual sales in managed entirely by Team MADF and that calls for enormous efforts and personal sacrifices from the entire team. Material procurement, inventory management and sales have all been enormous learning; in fact one can say that each and every day at Needz is a learning experience.
Last but not the least, what changes can we expect in Needz in the coming days?
Anand: A change of location for starters! As for the rest, I would say wait and watch! As for what will not change, Needz will continue to be polythene free like it is now!
A simple smile from Anand as he said this and a wide grin from Chetan conveyed to me that a lot more is in store for the coming days. The tea was done and we bid adieu after promptly disposing off the used plastic cups in the DLP dustbin.
