This Startup Helps Businesses Chart Out Their Futures Helping Them Grow At A Surprising Rate- Plan Thy Business

• BySheetal Sidhu     |    August 23, 2021

“I feel three areas where early start-ups need to focus on are having the right founding team and advisors, testing their product-market fit quickly with minimum investments (Lean Principles) and being more data driven. This will maximize their chances of raising funds.” said Asheesh Sinha, Founder, Plan Thy Business highlighting his experience and learnings during his interview with Startup Story.  

About The Founder

Asheesh Sinha sharing his educational background told Startup Story that he completed his BE (Electrical) from BIT Sindri + MBAEx (1-Year Full Time) from IIM Calcutta. He comes with an experience of 20+ years in the industry across a wide range of domains and business functions. He started his career on the shop floor of a mega steel plant (SAIL) in the late 90s and then  moved on to the IT industry around the time of Dot Com boom in 2000. Major part of his employment was in IBM India and RAMCO Systems. which also included international stints in the USA and Africa he added. In the latter part of his career, he took up Pre-Sales and Business Consulting roles. This helped him widen his horizon from being an IT specialist to a Business Consultant offering IT solutions that impacts across business functions. For the last 6 years, he has been focusing entirely on Business Consulting for start-ups.

Story Behind Plan Thy Business

Asheesh shared that he had a deep desire to get into business strategy consulting and since he thought it might be a bit too late to get into large consulting companies, he started freelancing. Taking up projects to prepare Business Plans for clients outside India. Asheesh reminiscing his past experience revealed to Startup Story that his  first project was of meagre $75 which he had merely taken up to test his acceptability in the market. But the outcome was favourable as the client was delighted. And so as one thing led to another, positive reviews led to more projects and more delighted customers.       

Buoyed by the positive customer feedback, finally he decided to take a plunge, resigned from his full-time job and started his business in 2015. Apart from the positive customer feedback, he also felt that smaller start-ups and SMEs did not have access to good quality consultants. Either there were low quality consultants or else there were unaffordable high-end consulting firms. Offering quality consulting services at start-up / SME friendly prices appeared to be a lucrative opportunity.

More About Plan Thy Business

PlanThyBusiness.com is a start-up business consulting firm helping start-ups become investor- ready and connect to sources of investment (to a limited extent).  In terms of investor readiness, they prepare Business Plan, Pitch Deck & Financial Models for startups. So far, they have delivered 750+ projects (raising >$13M) for start-ups across industries (Travel, Healthcare, Fitness, Grocery, Retail, Fashion, Consulting and Online Jewellery to name a few) and across geographies (USA, UK, Australia, Middle East, Africa & India). To a limited extent, they also connect start-ups to VC Funds, Investment Bankers & Angel Investors falling in their network depending on the match between investor requirement and start-up profile. 

Shakespeare’s Touch Behind The Name

Sharing a humorous story behind naming his company, Asheesh said “Well, I completed my 10th standard from the ICSE board. As a part of my curriculum, we had to study Shakespearean novels like Julius Caesar and Mac Beth. I used to crib about why I needed to study Shakespearean English when I will never get to use it in real life.” When he started looking for domain names on go-daddy, all the preferred domain names in simple English were already taken. That is when Shakespearean English (old english) came to rescue, and he decided to go for the name PlanThyBusiness.  Where the word “Thy”, means “your”. Stating their mission Asheesh told us that it was to help the job-creators (entrepreneurs) succeed. By doing so, they wanted to indirectly create more jobs in the country and eliminate joblessness and poverty. Further, their vision is to make PlanThyBusiness a global brand, offering all possible services to start-ups / SMEs under a single roof and creating 100,000 jobs directly.

First Launching In The Market

Telling us about the journey they were on while establishing Plan Thy Business, Asheesh told us that in the beginning most of the work came to them through freelancing platforms. They would receive up to 3-4 projects in a month. Shortly, they started building their own website, and it became the primary source of business. With an increasing number of inquiries, they enhanced the sales and delivery capability by adding more people to the team. Today, they are handling 20-25 projects per month on an average and aim to increase it to 100+ projects per month within the next 18-24 months while improving their quality levels.

Customer Experience

Sharing the customer review and feedback the founder said that they have worked with more than 700 different start-ups so far, a large majority of them being from India. A number of them have been able to successfully raise funding. They are present on all digital and social platforms where their target customers hang around although some channels have proved to be highly effective in acquiring customers. They aim to get more professional help and improvise market presence in the future. With well established delivery capability, they also want to expand into the International Market. One common pain point for their customers is the need to connect to sources of funding. Since they have limited capability for the time being. This is another area where they are actively working and focusing in order to offer a wholesome experience to the customers – from idea to funding.

What Separates Them From The Crowd

Providing pointers on the same Asheesh elaborated the features of Plan Thy business which makes them unique as a venture:

• Quality service at start-up friendly prices – The optimum mix of quality and pricing that they have created by optimizing  processes, technology, people management and knowledge management.
• Extensive experience – Having worked in 750+ projects across industries is a huge advantage. No matter what the new project is about, there is a high chance of them having done something similar in the past. 
• Owning the project – When they take up a project, they put their heart and soul into it and work on it as if it were their own business and they were seeking funds from investors. “It was not what I am saying but it is something that has come as a feedback from many of our clients,” he added.
• Customer centricity – They love to build long-lasting relationships with customers and go out of the way to keep them satisfied. They have worked late in the night, early in the morning, and even on weekends if it is critical for the customer. As a result, many of them have become their strategic partners, good friends, and even brand ambassadors.

Challenges Faced

When asked about the challenges faced by Asheesh on a professional and personal level by Startup Story, to this Asheesh replied, at every stage, there were different sets of challenges. In the initial phase, they did not have adequate customer references which went against them at the time of proposal evaluation by the clients.  Given that, they were mostly dealing with bootstrapped start-ups who themselves were struggling financially, payment collection was another challenge. Eventually, his capacity to deliver became a bottleneck and he started growing his team. Once they plugged in the above holes, they begin facing problems of project scope creep. Limited potential for repeat purchase was another challenge as every month they had to start from zero. By the time they addressed everything, COVID took the world. “Challenges will always be there but how strongly we fight against them is what makes a difference”. Asheesh stated concluding

On a more personal level when Asheesh had just started off it was planned to be a calculated risk as his wife would be working and running the household while he completely focused on growing the business, but “life has its own ways of surprising you. Coincidentally, my wife got an unmissable admission offer of doing MS from a top university in the US at the same time. So, within a few months we both were jobless, and had to survive in a more expensive place (US) while raising two young kids.” he shared. Initially one and half years were extremely challenging for them, so the business grew slowly with ability to cover the monthly expenses being the topmost priority for Asheesh and his family. Nevertheless, strong entrepreneurial spirit and desire to create a wider impact in the longer term kept him motivated. After his wife got a job in the US, things were more comfortable, and he could entirely focus on growing the business.

The Team

“We are a team of 12 people right now. The team comprises people with a mix of qualifications like MBA, CA/CFAs, BBA, and Sales Professionals. More than half of the team joined the company as freshers. The average age would not be more than 25. We also have external consultants as our partners”. They help them with subject matter / technical expertise on a need basis. Apart from one person, everyone who has joined the company has stayed with the company till date. What has helped them retain a healthy work environment has been superior work-life balance, better quality of work, diverse projects across industries, instant reward for performance and an opportunity to take up larger responsibilities at a relatively earlier stage in your career.

The Founder’s Advice

“Based on my experience with hundreds of start-ups, I feel three areas where early start-ups need to focus on are having the right founding team and advisors, testing their product-market fit quickly with minimum investments (Lean Principles) and being more data driven. This will maximize their chances of raising funds.”  Asheesh Sinha, Founder, Plan Thy Business

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