This is a truly something I strongly believe in.

I faced one such extraordinary situation (which threatened our very business survival) during my entrepreneurship career and learnt that you need to take some remarkable decisions during these time, to not just survive but thrive going ahead. One thing is clear, our past actions, routines and our assumptions will not really take us anywhere during such times.

Circa 2015

During our first 4 years in business, we were an import house, a company registered in HK and imported electronics under own brand and OEM for promotional merchandise. We were doing reasonably well growing 50% year on year. However when the new govt. came and focus was on Make in India, there was huge pressure on imports – duties were increased on electronics, anti-dumping charged on certain products. Being a professional company and paying all duties, it was simply not sustainable. Also with so much red tapism in customs it was no fun anymore. We were unable to take huge orders which were coming our way simply because it was not sustainable. However we didn’t know anything else. We would have slowly run out of business. Our revenues were slated to go down by 50% that year.

That’s when we took the extraordinary decision to do away with imports completely.

We realized that imports can’t be the long term strategy and hence the same year we incorporated our new venture moving away from products only business to complete solutions based business focusing on rewards, customer acquisition, retention and loyalty. We had a large client base of 300+ and realized that even if we could convert 5% of our clients by providing rewards + loyalty solutions we could survive and do well. So, we launched FOXBOX Retail in 2016 to provide rewards, loyalty, online employee and business store and other marketing services related to our core offering. That year despite 50% drop in our flagship business, the revenue from new business offset the losses and our combined turnover was only 10% lower than previous year

And today we have doubled our turnover in 4 years and our new business contributes 85%. Our client base has grown to 800. For last 4 years our imports have been nil .

Morale of the story. During Extraordinary Times…

• No point in being fearful. Take Actions. Actions Cure Fear.
• There is always an opportunity in despair only if you are willing to seek it.
• Not to worry about what will happen, rather focus on what you can do now to build a better future.
• Take ambitious decisions. You don’t have much to lose.
• Remember this can be life changing. You try to make this a positive one.

And today we are living in yet another extraordinary situation. We need to remember that we can come out of this. Not just survive but thrive. It’s about taking actions. Consider this time as a hard stop to re-look at everything you are doing and what you could do differently.

All the best to us.