How to Design a Brand, Start a Global Company and Decide When to go for Investments

AAII Technical Lecture Series (ATLS-16)

Title: How to Design a Brand, Start a Global Company and Decide When to go for Investments.

Abstract:

The talk explores global entrepreneurship through the lens of the eco-brand, Dzukou that was started during the pandemic. The speaker discusses how the co-founders designed their brand after conducting market ethnographic studies and user studies to find the market gap where they wanted to fit in. How they planned their products and strategized their product mix to bootstrap efficiently. That is exactly when the global Covid-19 pandemic hit. The founders then operated from different countries and hedged their risks by opening up operations globally. The speaker discusses how to go global without investing in millions. How much of functions to retain in-house and how much to outsource as a young company. And finally, the speaker discusses when is the exact point when any startup should start looking for investments, what are the possible avenues and how to start preparing for external financing.

Speaker’s bio:

Prarthana Majumdar is a founder of the Dutch sustainable-lifestyle brand, Dzukou (www.dzukou.com). She is also a part-time PhD candidate in Design from IIT Guwahati. She was born and brought up in Guwahati. She did her schooling from St. Mary’s Guwahati and Cotton College before joining Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati in the Mechanical Engineering program. After graduating from IIT Guwahati, she went to Stanford to do a Masters in Aerospace and Aeronautics. Thereafter, she worked at Apple, Inc. for two and a half years. She fell in love with design during her time at Apple and decided to pursue a PhD in Design from Technische Universiteit Delft in the Netherlands. She met her co-founder, Lars Hoogewerf while living in Delft. However, Prarthana did not finish her Phd from Delft. She moved her doctoral studies to India and started her own company two years ago. Dzukou now sells sustainable-lifestyle products globally and has a handmade section for products from North East India.

Contact:

• Linkedin profile
• Google Scholar
• Twitter
• Dzukou

Speaker's name: Parthana Majumder, Founder at [Dzukou](http://www.dzukou.com/) (Netherland), BTech (IITG), MS (Stanford University), ex-Apple, PhD pursuing (IITG).
Date: 2 April 2022
Time: 5 PM (IST)