Today we’d like to introduce you to Deepali Bhandari.
Deepali, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Travel was as if in the veins. When I was 8 months old, my mother had to travel with me to Denmark, to join my father who was doing his post-doctoral research in Biochemistry.
We travelled to Japan for yet another research opportunity that my father landed. Travel taught us to be adaptive, and gave us true appreciation for world cultures. I heard tales of my mother teaching neighborhood ladies English in exchange for learning Ikebana (Art of Japanese flower arrangement).
Naturally curious, and somewhat talented in math and science, I did opt to graduate in Mechanical Engineering. Breaking norms, was as if in the veins. It so happens that I became the first woman engineer in my family. Engineering discipline paved way to structured thinking, application of design philosophies, rigor, and learning to differentiate between theory and reality.
When I moved to the US, I switched to the field of Computer Science, only because I was clueless and intrigued about how computers worked. Wanting to find a little bit more about the ‘Unknown’ has always been a fascination.
Fast forwarding 20 years now, as a working mother, there have been days when one feels like Kristin Van Ogtrop’s book title “Just let me lie down: Necessary terms for the Half-Insane Working Mom”. I felt a need to cultivate myself in ways beyond being lightly entertained by night time television watching or social dinner gatherings. Neither was cutting it for me.
Entrepreneurship was as if in the veins. Both my mother and father have flourishing ventures in India, mother having an online flower business, and father providing premier technology to revive fermentation based industries.
Necessity is the mother of invention, I suppose in my case, the spirit of adventure, experimentation, and a zeal to connect with like-minded folks with a sense of purpose gave birth to ‘ideasAny’.
Whether it be a Murano glass blower from Italy, to a wooden block carver in Sanganer (Jaipur, India) or a local digital photographer – whose paintings are displayed at San Diego hospitals, ideasAny yearns to bring their stories to the forefront, in the attempt to create and influence for creative living. From the time of conception, and to the launch of ‘ideasAny’, it took 3 years. “Shop| Create| Share” is what ‘ideasAny’ s online forum allows folks to do. We sell and celebrate handmade objects handpicked from our travels across the globe. Reconnecting with our Indian roots and heritage, we hope to build a continuum, where original ideas get their bearings, local communities can marvel at traditional craft from oceans away, and creators can sell their work through the platform. We believe it is a perfect union of technology and ‘beautiful’ purpose.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Not insurmountable, but the singular most challenge thus far, has been finding the time to do it all. A walk through of some our uphill battles are enlisted below:
Development of an e-commerce website inclusive of design, implementation, testing and numerous revisions and iterations before launch.
With no prior knowledge about how to set up and run a business entity the realms of which encompass State compliance, Taxation, Financial bookkeeping, Inventory management – we have had to rely on online tutorials such as MIT edx courses on Entrepreneurship, Legal Zoom webinars and feedback from friends and family.
With a full time daytime job as a Software Engineer, it has been extremely hard to be on top of creating regular marketing channels, learning SEO and analytics, and spreading the word out.
Up until now, leap of faith and inventiveness to simplify and the approach of taking baby steps has worked well for us in meeting those challenges head on. We seek to continuously improve and engage with our critical feedback from user base.
IdeasAny – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
ideasAny is an online retail for unique handmade items and crafts collected primarily from artisans across the globe. Through its web interface users can share knowledge about their creations, and sell their products. We provide a fully integrated platform. We want to help artists focus on what they do best, while online tools for selling are available, ideasAny takes the burden of an artist knowing the innards of technology. Creators can upload their work and sell through the ideasAny portal, for a nominal fee per transaction. Alternatively, they can choose to use our IT consultation services to develop their own website, or app if they wish to have a dedicated web hosting.
With the shift in retail business to online, a disruption brought significantly by eBay, AWS, we find ourselves uniquely positioned. We believe our products are niche. We are also not heavily invested in brick and mortar setup. Our showings are in local farmer markets, and at pop – art shows with San Diego artists from Spanish Village Art Center – Balboa Park.
In addition to supporting local artists, we also travel to India and visit traditional artisans and their work near Delhi, and the desert state of Rajasthan. I am struck by the beauty of their work and the lack of outlets for selling directly to customers. We purchase individual pieces for showing at the website and local outlets.
During our showings, we always have the educational aspect covered where we introduce a new technique that an artist is trying to employ, and more importantly what inspires them.
Every customer that passes our booth at the Farmers Market in Scripps Ranch or Solana Beach experiences the same feeling of awe that we have, both at the uniqueness of our beautiful items, and how functional they are in everyday utilization. A pair of hand embroidered shoes made out of leather – traditionally called ‘jooti’ and worn by men and women of desert tribes of Rajasthan, India, were purchased by a lady from our booth, despite the fact the size was not right for her. She wanted to buy them as an art accessory for her living room!
What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
Looking back, our basic platform was ready at least 6-8 months prior to launch. However, we wanted to give the creators to share or upload their creations for sale.
For this, we spent a lot of time implementing the split payment functionality available from Paypal, and integrating it. We could have taken a phased approach for the above, understand the market segment better for this functionality. In our experience, most artists are content with static web pages offered by online tools which are free. We find there is a mix of clientele, the savvy users, surely understand the power of what we provide.
Despite these hiccups, our proudest moment was with our first online transaction for hand-carved wooden blocks of methi ‘fenugreek’ flower that we were selling to stamp for paper art. In Rajasthan, India, a handful of these carvers are left, these wooden blocks are used for printing textiles with organic vegetable dye. We were selling to let our customers know about these wooden carving craft.
These were purchased by a Spanish Village Artist to stamp on clay blocks that can then be individually strung to build family spirit totems. This was completely unplanned for, and a novel use for the wooden blocks.
One thing led to another. A huge friendship with the artist ensued. This year, we successfully helped her off the ground to getting a full e-commerce website for her clay products up and running.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.ideasany.com
- Email: ideasanycontact@gmail.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ideasAny/
Image Credit:
Beverly Hartgrave
Delhi Crafts Museum
Norbulingka Institue Dharamsala
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