Growing your Social Capital

1. Ranjeet Suthar

He works for a car rental company in India. He fills up the slot of domain expert since he has experience about how a company similar to my business idea runs. Before I came to USA, me and my friends had rented a car from their company a couple of times for trips and that’s where I met him. He helped me get a rental car for a cheaper price during my second visit and just asked me to contact him whenever I or any of my friends or relatives need a rental car. Rental car companies aren’t quite as popular in most parts of India as they are in the USA. Thus, his experience can be precious since he knows how to manage such a company with minimum resources to maximum profit.

2. Travis

He is a graduate student who has done research on companies trying to sell products/services targeted for college students. He fills up the slot of market expert. He also coincidently happens to be a out-of-state student which is a major part of my potential customers. I met him through one of my other graduate friend at the cricket club at UF. He can help me analyze a good strategy to sell a service to college students.

3. Venkatesh

He owns a car dealership and fills up the role of the supplier. He is a relative of one of my good friends and I got in contact with him through that friend and contacted him saying that I need his help for a college assignment. He said he would be happy to help in any way possible and that if I ever go on to actually implement my business idea on a large scale, in exchange of putting advertisement about his business on the rental cars, he would be happy to sell the cars for a cheaper price along with paying a reasonable amount for advertising.



This activity has helped me develop better confidence at communicating. Most of my networking experience in the past had been majorly with people of my own age. So this was a new and really good experience for me.

Idea Napkin No. 2

You: My name is Tarang Kirit Donga. I am a freshman at University of Florida majoring in Computer Science. I like to challenge myself and learn new things. I wish to start a business of my own. If I were to start a business on my business concept, I see it as forming a foundation to the pathway towards achieving more ambitious goals.

What are you offering to customers?: A car rental service that allows anyone over the age of 18 and with a valid drivers license to use rental cars. It also provides the customers an option to drop the car at a different location rather than returning it at the same location, enabling the customers to use rental cars for one-way trips.

Who are you offering it to?: The service is meant for anyone who wants to use a rental car. But the special features offered are targeted to expand the market to especially include customers between age of 18 and 21 as well as people who want to use rental cars for one-way trips.

Why do they care?: College students make a huge part of the segment that either doesn’t own a car or doesn’t have access to it due to certain reasons such as being an international or out-of-state student. There aren’t enough options in the market for rental cars for college students. Due to this college students are forced to go for other expensive or inconvenient options. Also, most other companies don’t allow customers to return the car at a different location restricting them only to round trips. Thus, by including these features in my service, this particular segment would be easily attracted to the business idea.

What are your core competencies?: I think that my never give up attitude can help me a long way in my business plan. Also, my service offers two important features that a lot of people want to have to be able to take better advantage of car rental services.

I believe that these 5 elements fit together for my business idea. I also think that improving on these elements could lead to a better solution.

Most of the feedback I received was positive. In this post I tried to try and learn why more people would actually care about my business idea and also self-evaluated myself to find out some core competencies.

Create a Customer Avatar

The prototypical customers for the business idea consist of anyone who wants to use a rental car. But what makes the business idea special is the inclusion of people between age of 18-21 and people looking to use rental cars for one-way trip alongside others in the group of the potential customers. Most of the prototypical customers either do not own a car or do not have access to their due to certain reasons. This business idea would especially attract undergraduate out of state and international students as customers for this service. Each college student has their own variety of taste in the choices they make especially because they do not all belong from the same region. Also, people who would like to use rental cars for one-way trips include people who fly frequently as taking a cab to airport every time can be quite expensive.

I myself can be considered as a part of this prototypical customer set because I am an international undergraduate student. So most of the things mentioned above apply to me as well.

Elevator Pitch 2

1) Elevator Pitch 2:

https://youtu.be/ZpDbSxiAejc

2) A reflection on the feedback you received from your last pitch:

Most of the feedback that I received on my previous elevator pitch post was positive and praised the potential of the business idea proposed through the elevator pitch. Some of my friends suggested to make some different versions of the pitch outside my comfort zone and to try and test those out to see if they work. I tried doing a bit of that in this pitch.

3) What did you change, based on the feedback?

I changed up the introductory part a bit to make it more catchy in order to be able to try and attract more customers. I focused on just one segment of the market rather than the entire market. I still think that this is not the best I can do and hope to improve a lot with practice and do even better for the third elevator pitch.

What's Your Secret Sauce?

1. Own Assessment:

a) Hardworking: I am of a belief that there are no shortcuts in life and that in order to achieve anything one needs to work hard.

b) Determination: I am a kind of person who once decides to achieve something, then I won’t ever give up till I am successful in achieve it.

c) I enjoy challenges: I don’t know why but I have always loved putting myself in challenging situations. It gives me a kind of “kick” in being able to face those successfully or at least learn something new from it.

d) Leadership skills: I am big believer of team-work and have a good experience in leading groups of people. I am able to develop a sort of connection between me and other members of the group which helps in building trust.

e) Eager to learn new things: I love to learn new things or develop new skills. My good grasping power helps me in being able to do so easily.



2. Five Interviews:

a) https://soundcloud.com/tarang-donga/mudra-limbasia/s-pZv7A

The audio clip is by my cousin Mudra. She talks about my determination and desire to learn new things about technology.

b) https://soundcloud.com/tarang-donga/tanay-shetty/s-u3BGn

The audio clip is by my friend Tanay. He talks about my determination, my ability to improve myself even through hardships and that I like challenging myself.

c) https://soundcloud.com/tarang-donga/new-recording-11/s-ywGs2

The audio clip is by my friend Aadesh. He talks about my commitment and how I always give my best whenever I commit to something.

d) https://soundcloud.com/tarang-donga/toshi-nandan-reddy-chinatala/s-64ciu

The audio clip is by my friend Toshi. He talks about my hardworking and punctual nature.

e) https://soundcloud.com/tarang-donga/prajwal-patil/s-WJDY7

The audio clip is by my friend Prajwal. He talks about how I am good at learning new things.

3. I completely agree with the observations made by other people about me. Most of the observations made by me and other people are similar.

Figuring Out Buyer Behavior No. 2

Begin with alternative evaluation:

The people I had interviewed were all undergraduate international students at University of Florida. Due to this, there is currently just one company located in the vicinity of the campus that offers car rentals to students under the age of 21. So, all 3 of them were forced to lean towards it for getting rental cars. But they said that if there were more options, they would like to compare the price and features that the companies offer.

How/where do they buy?:

They used the free app provided by the company to use the service.

Post-purchase evaluation:

The price that they paid, the quality of the car that was allotted for them to use and ease of being able to contact the company for any inquiries were some of the major factors the students considered when thinking about the purchase.

Report the findings:

All three of the people I interviewed were below 21 years of age and thus were restricted to use the services offered by just one company. Due to this, they don’t really have anything to compare it with apart from the way that they themselves would like it to be. And all of them mentioned that they would like to have the option to drop the car at a different location as this would help in enhancing their experience vastly.

Draw conclusions:

I think that this particular segment gives a lot of importance to price and the features offered by the company while evaluating their purchase.