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.

Building The Largest Online Bus Ticketing Company in India: redBus.in Co-founder and CEO Phanindra Sama (Part 6)

Sramana: Did you keep your jobs the entire time? Phanindra Sama: Yes, we did keep our jobs. One member of our team did the majority of the work developing the technology. Randomly he stopped going to the office because he was so obsessed with building the software.