Scrappy Entrepreneurship At Its Best: Fresh Diet CEO Zalmi Duchman (Part 3)

Sramana: How did you get your first clients? Zalmi Duchman: Mostly through Google AdWords. I also put a $150 advertisement in the Miami Herald which ran only for a particular neighborhood. At that point I was focusing only on Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, and Boca.

Scrappy Entrepreneurship At Its Best: Fresh Diet CEO Zalmi Duchman (Part 2)

Sramana: What year was it when you finally decided to leave real estate and start Fresh Diet? Zalmi Duchman: It was November 2005. I was 25 years old with a 4-year-old daughter and a pregnant wife.

Scrappy Entrepreneurship At Its Best: Fresh Diet CEO Zalmi Duchman (Part 1)

Sramana: Zalmi, let’s start with your personal story. Where are you from? Zalmi Duchman: I was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1980. My parents moved to Miami Beach before I turned a year old, so I pretty much grew up there. I went to an Orthodox Jewish high school in L.A. at 14. I

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Building The Largest Online Bus Ticketing Company in India: redBus.in Co-founder and CEO Phanindra Sama (Part 12)

Sramana: What you describe about the call center and the home delivery service is OK for India. In countries that have low-cost labor, there are more opportunities for mixing high tech efficiencies with high-touch customer service. That becomes harder in countries where labor is more expensive. It is an interesting model. Phanindra Sama: It can

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Building The Largest Online Bus Ticketing Company in India: redBus.in Co-founder and CEO Phanindra Sama (Part 11)

Sramana: What percentage of the bus operators ticket business do you have now? Phanindra Sama: We are at 1% of total business. We have 70% of the automated bus ticket business.

Building The Largest Online Bus Ticketing Company in India: redBus.in Co-founder and CEO Phanindra Sama (Part 10)

Sramana: How did you achieve an industry-leading conversion rate? Phanindra Sama: We have taken our analysis down to fine details. We have a specific orientation for the bus on the entry page.

Building The Largest Online Bus Ticketing Company in India: redBus.in Co-founder and CEO Phanindra Sama (Part 9)

Sramana: How many customers does redBus have today? Phanindra Sama: We sell about 200,000 seats per month at this point. Sramana: How many seats were you selling when you met the journalist? Phanindra Sama: At that time we were selling 10 to 15 seats per month. It was enough to keep our allocations from the

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Building The Largest Online Bus Ticketing Company in India: redBus.in Co-founder and CEO Phanindra Sama (Part 7)

Sramana: How far were you able to bootstrap your company while maintaining your job? Phanindra Sama: The product was completed and ready. To solve this problem, the logical process was to give the software to bus operators.