Tales On Wood is a unique concept. We have two budding entrepreneurs creating waves in wooden handcrafts.
Meet Mr Rahul Sharma and Aashay Gupta. Today we will look into their motivation and ambition to become an entrepreneur.
Q1. With your commendable efforts in entrepreneurship, do you identify more as a creator or a businessman and why?
A. We identify ourselves as businessman cum creators. As we think, being a good creator creates a tremendous amount of exposure, which helps brand building and grow as a community.
Being a good creator first is always a priority for us.
Q2. What’s your first memory associated with gifting that still makes you smile?
A. It was the joy which got delivered with our first sale, that day, we knew that we would be spreading happiness across the world through our art.
Q3. What are the challenges you and your partner faced as an entrepreneur? Who are first-time entrepreneurs?
A. Back in 2015, we started our journey from our small town Durg (Chhattisgarh), with VEGITO, a brand where we started delivering ozonised fruits & vegetables in our area. As we know, pesticides are a significant problem in fruits and vegetables which we cannot avoid. And ozonisation is purifying and removing pesticides from fruits and vegetables. Due to lack of awareness and it being a tier 3 city, we couldn’t survive the market, and we bore heavy losses in marketing; and due to low cash flow, we couldn’t survive the need for more than three years, and it got dissolved in the year 2018.
We came to Pune in 2018 with our new product prints on Wood. And gradually started carving on Wood in 2019 and started our company with two people (myself and Rahul).
Rahul used to stand in front of corporate offices, holding our products in his hand, and I used to design them in our home.
From there, we got a tremendous boost and enough orders to survive in this big city.
And the journey of tales on Wood began. Now we have a team of 12 people, our little store, a small office, and a manufacturing unit all in Pune. We have delivered our product in more than 3000 pin codes and are willing to spread brand awareness by soon starting more offline stores across Pune and Mumbai.
Q4. What is your vision about wooden handcraft gifts, and where do you plan to take them from here?
A. With a whooping worldwide gift industry size of 180000 crores, most of its chunk goes into the Chinese market. Our products are sustainable, sturdy and eco-friendly as compared to Chinese products. We are changing the shape of our industry with our products & our 4.8-star customer rating tells all. With over 30% customer retention rate, we are planning to take the International market by the end of 2022.
Q5. How do wooden gifting materials have a place in a world of unhealthy gifting markets?
A. Every sale we make brings us one step closer to the environment. We are planting a tree in return for every sale we are making. Wooden gift materials are eco-friendly and sturdy; most gifts come with concise shelf life, and our products are designed to stay for generations. It’s reliable, eco-friendly and unique all at the same time, and it’s more like we are enacting the emotions of your beautiful day forever.
Q6. How can wooden crafts be a part of gifting? Please share some examples.
A. It’s classy and elegant; it’s designed to stay forever. What’s better than a gift that will remain for Generations?
Q07. What was the moment of inspiration when you knew that you’d want to work with wooden crafts for the rest of your life?
A. Wood is emotion; it smells heavenly, and working on something made out of Wood is pure fun. Wooden products are sustainable for the environment, and we can proudly say that we give back to our environment more than we take from it.
Q08. Any advice to our budding entrepreneurs?
A. With every business, there should be a social cause. We think we should give more to society and mother nature than we take from it. We are planting a tree for every sale we make, and we think this should be our advice to budding entrepreneurs.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CROvc_UhtZk/?igshid=NmNmNjAwNzg=