“If you are starting out, most probably you are going to face many difficult times in your entrepreneurial journey so never ever give up. Keep trying, keep working hard, and think smart, and you will be able to achieve your goals.” – Rahul Mohanachandran

Founder@ Interview

Interview with Rahul Mohanachandran

Credit @Jack

“If you are starting out, most probably you are going to face many difficult times in your entrepreneurial journey so never ever give up. Keep trying, keep working hard, and think smart, and you will be able to achieve your goals.” – Rahul Mohanachandran

Today we feature Rahul Mohanachandran, the founder at Kasera. We hear their story in their own words, their successes, their challenges and their insights.

Let’s start by getting to know you. Can you please tell us a little bit about you and what you do?
My name is Rahul Mohanachandran, I am one of the founders and CEO of Kasera one of the biggest furniture comparison platforms in the UK.

I started my career in India as a developer before moving to the UK many years ago, even though I had a technology background soon after I started my business I realised that my passion and strength are in marketing and I have never looked back.

A great introduction and start to this interview. Can you please tell us, how did you start, from what age, and what made you decide to change direction and start?

I started my first business straight out of university and it was an agency that business went on to do many projects including some of the major soft drinks brands.

Even though that business had some successes that business didn’t do great and eventually closed.
After working for a few businesses in the UK I started Kasera which was the result of frustration my wife and I faced while furnishing our new home.

We spent many hours and days searching for our perfect furniture with numerous bookmarks, this led us to think that there should be a much easier way to furnish a home and Kasera was born.

Even though signing up our first few brands were challenging, many other brands came onboard believing in our mission and Kasera has been growing ever since.

Thank you for that insight. So can you tell us…What does your business do and where is your company based?

Kasera brings products from many direct to consumer brands on one single platform and makes it very simple for a customer to browse the UK furniture market. Our business is based in the UK, but we are a remote first company.

What’s the story behind your success? What led to your aha moment? how did you get to where you are now?

One of the biggest factors in where I am today, is how we approached our failures, all of our founders including me never gives up on something.

Even when we have a failure we will try something new or another idea to achieve the same goal, and eventually one of those will work and will end up paying for all the other efforts.

Having the right people around me was one of the biggest factors in helping me advance my business. I have ambitious co-founders and some successful mentors who have been there and done some amazing things and all of them encourage me to aim big and take risks which is essential for the success of any business.

Thank you for sharing that. What’s been your life’s biggest lesson so far?

One of the biggest lessons so far is about how to measure markets and opportunities, in the past, I used to find ideas within a big market and assume getting 1% of that market will make a widely successful business.

Even though in theory that always sounded logical and good it rarely happens in practice and it took me few hard lessons to learn that.

Validating the marketing and customer needs is essential before investing too much into an idea is something I wish I have known before. I could get excited by ideas and jump into projects but over time I have learned to back my intuitions with data before committing to an idea.

If you were to go back in time, what piece of advice would you give to your younger self?

The one piece of advice I will give to my younger self is that I should learn to sell things as soon as possible. With a background in technology that is something I took a long time to learn. Any founder or an entrepreneur should have that skill as selling is the key to the success of many business.

We’re nearly halfway through our interview so it’s a great time to ask how does your business run. What three tools make your business run better?

I am a big advocate of using free tools using free tools or tools with free plans can save many recurring expenses and keep the business lean and profitable.

But I won’t recommend that at the expense of getting certain tasks done, choosing tools should be based on their effectiveness and if a free tool can be found that can be used to perform the same task as a paid one I would choose the free one.

Few tools we use include Google Search Console, which is a brilliant tool in getting insight into how well the organic channel from Google is performing and to find what works and what needs improvement.

Another tool I use is Later, this is a brilliant social media schedule tool that allows up to a month’s worth of schedule to be done in one go. This helps to save time and create the social media calendar and the free version itself will allow users to do a lot more than many other tools.

My third choice of tools will be the time tracking app called Clockify, this is another app that has a free version that adds a huge amount of value to the users. It is very useful when working with contractors and other freelance consultants who bill their service by hours.

What do you know now that you wished you had known before?

Validating the marketing and customer needs is essential before investing too much into an idea is something I wish I have known before. I could get excited by ideas and jump into projects but over time I have learned to back my intuitions with data before committing to an idea.

What has been your greatest or proudest achievement or moment?

My proudest achievement was the time when Kasera became cash-flow positive. Being a bootstrapped business means profitability was our north star and it was a great achievement from a small team.

What future life goals do you want to achieve and why?

My life goal is to create more software products and e-commerce brands in the coming years so that I can run those businesses from anywhere in the world.

To finish our inspire questions…”We believe that sharing inspiring words can inspire others.” If there was one positive thing you would say to someone to inspire and empower them what would it be and why?

If you are starting our most probably you are going to face many difficult times in your entrepreneurial journey and never ever give up. Keep trying, keep working hard and think smart and you will be able to achieve the goals.

“Thank you it has been great learning more about your founder story and Kasera”

To learn more about Kasera Visit https://kasera.co.uk/

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