Young entrepreneur Subrata Khuntia, owner of an app-based household services company, is inspired by the ideal of serving millions of users across the country. He is committed to satisfying all their demands
Pragatiprava
The entrepreneurial spirit is yet to gain momentum in Orissa but a young banker has taken an innovative initiative and is prepared to take risks to serve a large mass of people and create employment through his start-up called Wizy.
“I have always followed my dreams” and the driving force behind Subrata Kumar Khuntia’s Wizy Services, a mobile-app-based household services provider company, was his resolution to serve society.
Entrepreneurial spirit is sagging and the need of the hour is to promote innovation and generate employment for educated and skilled youngsters. Start-up success stories point to the resurrection of entrepreneurial spirit among bright young people.
Subrata, both whose parents are teachers, hails from Keonjhar district. After completing engineering and MBA, he served the banking industry for 11 years at mid- and senior-level positions. He is the youngest in the family and has strong moral values. Subrata aims at inculcating moral principles in managing his business venture.
Passionate about his start-up’s role in significantly benefitting millions of users, Subrata said about the venture: “Wizy has a presence in Bhubaneswar, Mumbai, and Guwahati since February. It is a mobile application-based platform that facilitates essential household services to make the lives of consumers easier. It envisions improving the lifestyle of millions across India by providing all vital services at the doorstep at affordable prices.”
The application which is available on Android Playstore provides around 60 different services at the doorstep.
Brimming with enthusiasm, the 35-year-old entrepreneur said: “This hyper-local platform provides several services, like it facilitates the services of plumbers, carpenters, electricians and painters and also offers services in home appliance repairs, computer repairs, vehicle maintenance, laundry and home cleaning. Wizy also provides maid and caretaker services, tutors and dance and music teachers. Services like pest control in the household are also offered. The services cover the government and legal sectors such as passport, notary, registered agreements and marriage certificates. Moreover, the firm also dwells with services in the categories of astrology, event management, photography and financial consultancy (investment advisor, insurance planner),” pointed out the entrepreneur.
“The number of services accessible to customers depends on the up-to-date tie-ups made with different service providers in a particular category. The Wizy team ensures appointment of experienced service providers through personal visits and background checks and promises to serve customers with the highest level of punctuality,” said Subrata who claims Wizy provides the broadest range of doorstep services compared to other home services players in the country.
“We are currently serving around 1,600 people through 260 service providers in three cities. Going forward, we will increase both the numbers as we add more cities to our list,” Subrata said.
The start-up is planning to expand its operations to over 10 cities targetting more than 50,000 customers by December this year. It is looking forward to having a pan-India presence within the next two years and aims to cover at least 50 cities,” the young businessman pointed out.
Fun-loving Subrata further added: “Wizy is aiming to be a part of the Skill India Mission to train and certify unskilled and semi-skilled youths.”
“We are going to train our service providers to deliver services and will enhance the skills of professionals in respective segments. The company aims to train and certify over one lakh people in Assam over a period of 10 years,” the entrepreneur said, adding the company employs people for the services they offer and targets to generate employment in different states.
To the question why he chose entrepreneurship disregarding the lure of a fat-salaried job, Subrata replied: “Since college days, I had the dream of serving people and bringing about development in society. The scope of serving a large segment of the country’s population is simply absent in conventional jobs. Moreover, innovation and implementation of approaches to serving people while improving their lifestyle is limited in most corporate assignments. So, I was looking forward to taking a courageous decision to move out of my comfort zone and try something new to achieve my goals.”
Though Subrata doesn’t have professional IT experience, he is inclined towards the sector. “Since the advent of e-commerce in India, I had been thinking of facilitating services through an IT platform in a coordinated manner to remove the difficulties faced by people because of the highly disorganised nature of the service industry and the unreliability of most service providers,” said Subrata.
The web-based home services industry is still at a nascent stage and has been evolving over the past two years. But it is growing rapidly, he pointed out.
“Even though this unskilled/semi-skilled service industry engages over five crore people in India, there is no prominent player in the industry with a strong goodwill. This fact urged me to plan and execute an IT-enabled platform to offer services according to the demands and convenience of consumers,” Subrata said, adding Wizy is a “way of delivering skilled services.”