Name : Manish Pandey
Start-up Name : MYMOVIERACK.COM

Q1. Could you tell us a bit about your startup?
MYMOVIERACK.COM is a web platform which lets users rate, review and recommend movies and TV series. The start-up is a team of 4(all from NIT Allahabad, currently 3 are actively working on it). The team members share a common passion: to build something of our own for our love for movies and TV series and a common philosophy: to build something that we ourselves find irresistible.
The platform also lets you buzz about your favorite films and TV series as well as blog about them. What separates it from other offerings is its intuitive rating system which makes it a ‘personal’ and ‘organic’ platform where you can follow your peers and friends and can rate movies the way you ‘feel’ about it and not just via the usual rating system of good, bad , average etc. The team believes that there is a need for such a platform in world’s largest producer of movies, a platform that cherishes the essence of Indian films.


Q2. How do you see your startup grow?
The product is currently in baking phase / proof of concept stage where the team’s focus is to build a ‘great’ product which not only attracts users but gives them all good reasons to stay there and come back.  The team has taken a decision by consensus not to scale beyond its current capacity of management till there is a solid product with a sustainable business model. We just don’ want to launch, spike and then fold up. The team has taken steps to facilitate a gradual growth trajectory and hope the product does well in the near future.



Q3. What were the major obstacles you faced initially?
First it’s the resources: both time and money.   Though the team has used several innovative methods such as search engine optimizations, piggybacking, negotiations, collaboration with other startups etc. to keep the light bulbs glowing and grow, with whatever resources the team has.
Secondly it was the positioning and pitching your product as it is tough to gain traction unless you market your product the correct way to the desired target group. You need to have a convincing answer for “why should I use it?”  and “how different is it from rest?”


Q4. How will MBA and IIM B help you in taking your startup forward?
I took up MBA to gain the understanding of the ‘organizational, business & strategy’ part of building a product, working with & managing a team.
Further, I consider myself fortunate and privileged to be part of the IIMB community and having an opportunity of sharing class rooms with the best minds in the country, who bring forth new and interesting outlooks to the table which has helped me broaden my perspective and also given me insights on how people weigh and use various products in the market (thanks to all the project assignments). Though I will like to see how things shape up in coming future before I and the team members make a career/academic switch/take a leap of faith.
  

Q5. What do you think about the entrepreneurship in IIMB?
IIMB is a very conducive and fertile environment for entrepreneurship thanks to the location (Bangalore) and the network (great minds it attracts). We have great amount of resources at our disposal such as the incubation cell and also the various offerings championed by the clubs: ENI and FII.  The various speaker and discussion sessions involving ‘the game changers’ of today and the competitive events (both in Eximius and Vista 2015) were really helpful for me to get guidance and understanding of the current start-up ecology.  Though I do believe that  our thoughts are somewhat restricted by the race of securing the best possible grades and more importantly for getting placed into best firms  in the country, but overall the air here does support the zeal of building something of your own.

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