The Consulting Industry isn’t just made up of strategy consulting.It covers a wide variety of expertise across multiple industries.Business consultants helps you improve the performance and derive concrete results at every stage of a project. Rohan and Yash Bhatt,Directors of the Square Consulting are not only handling single business but are also into Retail ,Hospitality and Franchise business.In an interview they shared how intresting and difficult it is to manage multiple things and how does that helps you in the long run.
Start by giving us an overview of your Company and what inspired you to start it?
SQuare Consulting was initiated as a Business Consulting company where our sole emphasis was to build strategies and ideas to help businesses fare better. The whole transition and evolution of SQuare Consulting as a company began when the first rejections started coming in and we failed as a startup. The whole idea of being able to help businesses failed as people didn’t want to accept that they needed help and moreover accepting that they want to take professional advice (let alone pay for it) was preposterous for them to even contemplate. In a nutshell, the origin of the idea behind SQuare Consulting was that Problems meet Solutions, just like a square where analysis from all directions, the four corners sum total is 360 Degrees.
What is so unique about your business which distinguishes you from others?
Our methodology and our approach, At SQuare Consulting we do not care about the text book references and/or approaches made by different people in different types of scenarios. What we actually care about is getting the job done with minimum expenses, minimum efforts and on time. Our varied experience across projects ranging from the bottom to the top of the pyramid of business models make our ideas fresh and useful at any given point of time.
You are currently into 3 different sectors Hospitality, Retail and Franchise, what are the pros and cons for the same?
Hospitality, Retail and Franchise industries are all interlinked with each other like any Marvel movie tied in to the MCU. What we have tried and done is that we have looked for patterns, methods and ways to link these services provided by SQuare Consulting and make them relevant from the point of view of the needs of our clients.
Pros:
- The work is simpler to analyze via the Step by Step approach;
- Results at one stage directly lead to beginning of the next stage;
- Not a lot of consulting companies are able to scratch the surface when it comes to the actual needs of the clientele, we accomplish that.
- The work stays interesting as each project is a different sort of challenge. Cons:
- The market adoption level is quite disturbing; a lot of people still don’t manage to understand why we do what we do.
- The distinguishing of one service from another is barely possible (from a contractual perspective);
Do you think Social Media is helpful in business expansion? How actively do you use social media are you for the same?
Social Media is where the people are right now, previously that was on the internet web banner advertisements, before that there were magazines. Marketing is going to be prevalent where there are a lot of people, digital market is a not just science fiction now, it is a reality. It certainly does help in business expansion but for a service provider company like SQuare Consulting, it is more of a PR Tool.
We use social media extensively to interact with our end customers and patrons at our plethora of projects to initiate conversations and get quality feedback regarding our projects, their products and the details like what and how can be improved. This connect helps us formulate strategies and develop business models that have higher percentage of customer acceptance. We also get feedback and suggestions from Food Bloggers, influencers etc to be able to develop and sustain our network of restaurants and businesses.
What are your expansion plans and where do you see yourself in five years?
Our expansion in strict sense is the expansion of our brands and we forecast that in the next 5 years we are looking towards operating and sustaining at least 50 new projects / brands with a minimum of 50% of them leading up to Franchising and expanding Pan India.
Is your business Franchisable?
Yes, anyone and everyone who wants to help businesses and make money out of it can be a consultant. Hospitality Consulting is a vast industry and those who want to pursue a career in Consulting can become a Franchisee of SQuare Consulting.
If you had one piece of advice to someone who just started out, what would it be?
Just remember that it is always better to make mistakes, but never to repeat them. People who start up usually make the maximum number of mistakes in the fear of not making mistakes. Being Nervous does not work well for an Entrepreneur. Do what you do, start strong and stay strong.