Outsource Your Worries
Akhilesh Pandya Founder & CEO, GenieOnCall, a native of Agra, he moved out of the city after graduating in economics. More than a decade later, he quit his job with a knowledge process outsourcing company where he managed and successfully ran business of some celebrated names. After 16 years of working Akhilesh started GenieOnCall concept in India to see it pick up with gusto. GenieOnCall is a lifestyle manager, committed to resolving snags for your work and life, and help save time.
Q. GenieOnCall is a unique concept in today’s busy world. What made you come up with this concept?
GenieOnCall was created because modern day living creates more demands on people than ever before. We corporate are victims of this vicious circle, which is hard to break out of. Often, we find ourselves struggling to hit the peak of Maslow’s hierarchy. Just as we lay out our cards we delve into significant necessities. This robs us of the time that we could have used to advance further or simply enjoy that “me and my family” time.
Performing in an environment stiff with competition seems like a daunting task. But then the question still remains, is there any way we can root upwards? Can we bridge the gap between our personal and professional aspiration?
I also had same questions and these questions really did the trick. Like me, probably this is what most of us keep thinking ‘If only we had the genie to shelve all our agendas in place leaving us enough time to control the important aspects of our lives.’ So came up with the idea of launching GenieOnCall concept which will help people organising their life with better efficiency and people will experience “A Life With Ease”.
Q. How does GenieOnCall work?
GenieOnCall is into two domains.
- Lifestyle Assistance – This provides the assistance to all human being in form of A Concierge or A Virtual Secretary.
- Branding and Advertising – We haven’t gone public with this domain. Though over the period of time we have gained enough experience and expertise. This will be launched for public in first week of July under the brand name of Idea2Execution.com
Let’s talk about what people know us as, A Lifestyle Manager.
Under Lifestyle Manager we provide the following services: –
- Virtual Secretary
Virtual Secretary is a perfect and most desired solution for all the busy professionals, whether an employee of an organisation, an entrepreneur, a professional or anyone who feels that their important yet non-mission critical yet important tasks are eating lot of their time. This service is for the people who value time and like to work on the bigger tasks rather than juggling with documents, spreadsheet, presentation, research, etc. which could be done by someone else.
The process is very simple; it’s like having your own secretary, who does all the work for you that makes you efficient. Whether to filter out your important mails, making a beautiful yet corporate looking presentation, research on the internet, making your travel arrangements, or anything that requires attention. Basically Genie is your lifestyle assistant, all you have to do is command your Genie to Assist, Co-ordinate, Follow-up and Get things done.
This is a blessing for wanna be entrepreneurs, or entrepreneurs who are busy setting up their venture. When you decide to wear the hat of entrepreneur, you generally worry about where will I pay the salary from, how will I manage the rent and all the other expenses. At GenieOnCall, your investment is zero. You simply tell us what you want to get done and we will do that for you. This way you won’t have to create infrastructure, hire resources, train them, start working towards launching your venture and then wait for the revenue to come. It is like having ready employee who needs to be trained on your product/ services and the work starts immediately. This way you won’t have to worry about setting up and testing the waters. Just download the knowledge to us about your process and we will ensure we deliver what you expect from your employees to deliver. It is a perfect solution for all the entrepreneurs or professionals who do not wish to waste time in doing administrative tasks.
- Concierge
This is the service that each and every household requires. In this service we give you extra pair of hands and legs who would do all the running around for you. Whether paying utility bills, school/ college fee submission, bank work, postal work, RTO work, corporation office work, submitting the challan in RTO, getting grocery, etc. In a nut-shell, we do anything or everything that requires a visit to a shop, office, agency, market, or any other location to process your task where your presence is not mandatory.
So far, the service is limited to only Corporate and Housing societies. Soon we plan to get into the retail sector and provide this service to each and every household.
Apart from this we have also partnered with other firms/ agencies to provide services like making a plumber, electrician, carpenter, electronics/ home appliance repair available for our customers. Presently the services are being offered only in Delhi & NCR’s; soon we will be in every metropolitan city.
Q. What inspired you to start your own business?
After working for about 15+ years with some celebrated names, I created GenieOnCall. During my tenure with the corporate, I realised everyone needs help, don’t we? But most of the times we don’t ask for it, reasons can be, we feel shy asking for help, we feel afraid of asking help, we feel insecure asking for help, we are not sure whom to go to, etc. By not asking for/ taking help, we get into a situation where we miss out on the most important things, like family, ME time, confuse priorities, etc.
Our ultimate objective is, fixing glitches in a common man’s life and making it free of agitation.
Q. Who are your company’s target audience?
Looking at different domains,
For Virtual Assistant service, our target audience is: –
- Busy Professionals
- Wanna be entrepreneurs
- Entrepreneurs in making
- Professionals
- Mid to senior level in corporate
For Concierge: –
- The entire human race
- As the services are being provided to only corporate, we call it Employee Benefit Program which each and every corporate should consider for their employees and in return the corporate relishes Better Productivity > Higher Profit > Greater Loyalty.
For Branding and Advertising Service: –
We are also an idea agency. We execute your ideas. Under this we provide services such as:
- Logo Design
- Identity Design
- Print Material
- Website
- Digital Marketing
- Communication
- PR
- TV Commercials
- etc.
The service is targeted towards: –
- Entrepreneurs – Looking for a partner to execute their idea and turning into a reality.
- Corporate – Looking to revamp their digital presence on Internet and other promotions
Q. Could you please share with us the victories and failures you faced in your journey till know?
There is no such thing called failure for me. It is only learning. Initially things did not work out the way I had envisaged. I thought the concept was widely and hugely accepted by people. It happened like I had envisaged initially, like the mails were pouring from every nook and corner with their appreciation about the great concept but when we started reviewing how many appreciations/ mails are getting converted into the real business, the numbers were disappointing. We realised that we had to do a lot of work in making people aware about the benefits and also to make them aware about how it can help save loads of time.
We worked hard to reach out to the people who first reached out to me while appreciating the concept. Spoke with many, understood their concerns. We then reached out to the right audience and when we did, we made them aware about how helpful these services are. They decided to use our services and once they used it, there was no looking back for them. So far we haven’t spent a penny on our marketing/ business development efforts. All the customers we have, they came on their own or they were referred by our customers. We are very happy the way things are going. We plan to now build our marketing team/ strategy and start promoting GenieOnCall. Also we are planning to see how we get into the retail sector, for that we are going to start speaking with investors who have shown their deep desires to pump their funds in GenieOnCall.
