NUST Business School

Strategic Entrepreneurship
Assignment # 1
Assignment Title: Idea generation and feasibility study

Submitted to
Dr. Ayesha Abrar
Submitted by
Sahibzada Farhan Ul Haq
Nuzrat ul Ain
Muhammad Ammar
Muhammad Talal Maqsood
Muhammad Ismail
Nosherwan Khan
MBA 2K19 section A
Date:30-11-2020
Product/service feasibility Analysis

Service Desirability 

New Business Concept

Hum-Hazir’s Concept Statement

Service:

People are always looking for technicians and workers who are professional and can be
available in short notice as well. Hum-Hazir is a service provider that can facilitate the person
with easy access to approach such professional technical experts. Our employees will collect
the data of such workers and feed in our database that will be provided to the clients through
an application. To remain updated regarding their worker we are also providing call centre
facility so that we can guide them if they are having any queries. The company will provide
them the surety with utmost satisfaction of work and security of the worker regarding the
completion of task. in this service we won’t be hiring the workers as that is not feasible
rather, we will provide the details of the workers are will connect them with the clients. We
will go for alliance with employment agencies, so that they can provide with other and it will
be a total commission-based service. App will help the customers to check the workers rating
and further contact details and their requirement through our app and we will connect them
with that specific worker. The app will also show the rates of the worker depending on the
nature of work. 

Target Market 

As we are operating digitally so we are targeting the people of Islamabad and Rawalpindi and
also in small nearby areas initially and later we can expand our services to other big cities as
per the requirement. The age group can be 30-50 years considering both male and female. We
will also be targeting start-up companies and other housing societies for the contract with
them and developing the partnership. 

Why this service

In our society, we prefer the technicians who are known by some peer or are already working
in some known area. So, trust is a big element in our society even regarding the technicians
and workers. The need of technicians will not decrease rather due to current COVID situation
people are looking to work extra hours to increase their income. We will provide a platform
that was not provided to such working class and it will help them to earn extra money in their
free time. 

Special feature:

We will remain connected with the workers of different areas and the people who are in need
so that we can provide the required facility within short time with value added services. We
will develop an app and remain connected to people via call center 24/7. 

Service Demand:

We will utilize digital platform to identify the demand of this service in the market. Due to
COVID situation people are not comfortable talking face to face with strangers therefore, we
will create a survey and circulate it among our potential target market digitally. We can
advertise it through digital marketing and by developing clients’ trust. Once clients become
aware of our service simple word of mouth can increase the customer base. Google Adwords
can be helpful in spreading the content. Demand for the idea can be assessed by viewing how
many people click on the ad and complete the next steps that were needed. 

Hum-Hazir service is feasible to work with, it is demand of the current situation as well.
People are laid off from their jobs and lower-class workers are unable to earn daily wage, so
we came up with this idea to facilitate these people. Many people are excellent in their skills,
yet they are unable to reach the potential market that can get benefit from their professional
skills. Through this platform many will be connected to the required expert through our
channel. We will have data of all the workers and the client will directly contact us and then
we will contact the worker and will connect the too. We cannot directly connect the workers
as they won’t be able to afford smart phones and also are not literate enough to handle the
smart phones and this will be a big barrier for them. 

Industry and Target Market Feasibility

Given that we are introducing our service recently, an industrial and market feasibility would
put matters into perspective. Since we are laser focusing on a specific market initially, we
believe that it is best for Hum-Hazir to not appeal to the broader service and maintenance
industry. Our start up is aimed at a specific demographic and for us to serve them well.
Therefore, we are aiming our start-up whilst simultaneously developing the app for it and
providing unparalleled service at our customers' doorsteps. We have developed our plan such
that we have identified our target market and more importantly, based on the demand of the
service that we are offering, we will be observing and documenting whether our products
appeal to our potential customers.

HumHazir viewed under the characteristics of Attractive Industries

 Our start-up is younger than old, since this novel concept of maintenance and service
at customer doorsteps is something most of the public unfamiliar with or are not
aware of.
 Given that we are laying the outline for how we will carry out our activities, the start-
up is still in its early life cycle as the various elements must be practically
implemented.
 The industry we are targeting is more fragmented than concentrated, this benefits us
since the market will be more receptive to what we are offering and moreover we
have the potential of growing beyond our initial plan of initiating in Islamabad and
Rawalpindi.
 Given that the start-up is young and early in its lifecycle, it is a growing industry, an
extension of a fragmented industry, there are more opportunities for growth rather
than shrinking. Based on our research there exists a gap in this industry such that
providing service to customers at their doorstep is not fully efficient and this
something we are striving to do; streamline the process of maintenance without any of
the hassles. 
 Our ‘service at your doorstep’ model is going to be an essential service for our
potential, we see it as something that the customers must have rather than want to
have. Sometimes customers are not aware of what they must have and just make do
with what they are given, however we aim to change that but ensuring that our
services are something that the customers must have rather than to just want to have.

Moving on, it is understandable that introducing new products is something that may not
serve us well because it is simply not feasible economically, as pioneering a completely new
original product is an expensive task and could be more expensive if we try to introduce a
completely new form of maintenance service altogether. Instead we are aiming at improving
and in some ways innovating how an existing service can be provided, easing the process to
the customers.

In our survey on the feasibility and ease of use regarding the business, we observed that
majority of the population believed that our business is innovative. Most responded that while
ventures of similar function exist in the market, ours model is unique based on how our
overall blueprint is designed. We are aiming at providing our service such that our customers
do not experience the frustration and hassles of locating and hiring maintenance and service.
This will also impact our entry point, based on the information of the customers we know
who to target and who is our target audience when we first launch. Few of the survey
responses shown below shows us that the idea is well received by the target audience which
included students and office workers to small medium business owners.
Organizational Feasibility Analysis

Organizational feasibility analysis held as one of the most important part for any new
business idea in order to evaluate the determinants of various ends for the better launch and
execution. By taking the idea of HumHazir, it is well observed that it connects the customers
problems and demands instantly with the prior professionals through the channel of digital
app system, since mediating to ensure the wellness of work should be delivered with easy and
speedy access. Through studying this business model which intends to facilitate the
customers with the problems they might face while taking out their time to went out for a
market to hires those professionals and then get work done, that also required enough efforts
including time and supervision, and lastly with no guarantee for the satisfaction of work
being done.

Management Prowess

Most important thing with regards to management prowess include the motivation and
determination of the founders, which we are quite confident that we do possess being a part
of a reputed business school in Pakistan. The team is composed up of individuals belonging
to the diverse backgrounds having different experiences and skill sets which includes
previous experience of running personal businesses to working in start-ups and MNCs which
gives us confidence to take this risk of getting into the market.

HumHazir would be the platform connecting both entities on a single platform where
customer at home or anywhere easily access to number of professionals also ensuring them
with the utmost satisfaction and completion of work. For this, organizational competencies
should be imperative in bridging customers with all these facilitations. Networking will be
considerably going to be the most cogent element in access the demand from the customers
as well as making the successful partnerships with the professionals. Then comes the
Persuasion and Negotiations skills which are vital in order to create the awareness and need
for customers and to make the alliances with the professional partners with the legal bindings
to be made while considering them on board. By seeing the model, it has been evidently
understood that the business model requires the platform on which you connects both entities
together, and to do this there will be a need of the software programmer who will develop the
application system as friendly as usable for both entities so they cannot just easily access into
but also know to operate them as well.

Creative set of skills possessed by individuals and responsive decision-making skills,

administrative tasks, financing and human resource management skills are required by the
company initially to take on the project. Since the core team of directors composed of five
members, each of us will be having distinctive abilities to demonstrate our skills and
concerns; general administration including managing the operations, networking skills to
timely cater the needs and fix the problems , financing estimation to ensure the project is
viable in sense of making operating margins and app development by hiring the operators or
programmers.
Also, there will be a department for a customer service which would respond to the queries
instantly, where only the employees would be taking & managing the queries, connecting
both entities and resolving the conflicts effectively. Before the launch, you need also the sales
personnel who would go after to your target customers to persuade them with the fruitful end
results what ensured by the business and through which what they get the value proposition
out of it.

Factors including the management expertise for HumHazir are so dominant as everyone in
the board should know how to design such services for the customers in a best manner as
well as providing equal opportunities to manage the operations and on-going tasks

Non-financial resources

Non-financial resources include elements like office space, furniture and other office
equipment. Since we are part of a prestigious business school which facilitates new ideas and
even has its own incubation centre which promoted many student run businesses by its
alumni. This can be useful for us as we are confident that we will be able to secure an office
space In our institute which will be enough for us to start working on the idea and then we
will also focus on furnishing the office so that we will be able to start the work right away.
We would need some furniture like office chairs, workstations in order for teams to sit
together and some tables and security equipment which is required for office safety.

Our key non-financial resources include

 An office space (Which we are planning to get in National Science and Technology
park, a tech incubator by our institute)
 Service providers like internet companies e.g. Nayatel which is our no.1 choice for
getting a smooth internet connection for our company, office equipment suppliers in
order to get office equipment and necessary tools.
 Top management will include positions like HR, Marketing and Finance directors,
roles which are going to be taken by us the founders.
 Support staff which will include software engineers and customer support staff. We
will also require services for sales services in order to get more technicians in order to
get more people as our services providers.
  Most important thing is to get more and more repair service providers to be our
partners for which of course our negotiations skills will matter and we along with
sales staff might have to go and meet with service providers in order to built long term
partnerships.

Financial Feasibility

Total start-up cash needed

In order to create this app, there are many technical aspects which needs to be focused upon
regarding the development of an app. In order to develop an app like the one which we
propose, there are number of features regarding the product design which will require a good
amount of money in order to be integrated. Some of the key aspects of app design will
include the following elements

 Payment integration
 Geolocation feature
 Booking feature
 Registration
 Notification
 Front and backend work (Frameworks and libraries integration)
These elements are necessary In order to create the basic app. Other features can be added but
are not necessary at the moment since we are only on the beginning stage of our business idea
and we do not require an advanced app.

When it comes to the cost in development, we conducted various interviews with different
app developers and the cost estimate for the above mentioned features include

Payment integration Rs 45,000

Geolocation feature Rs 45,000

Booking feature Rs 45,000

Registration Rs 45,000

Notification Rs 45,000

UI/UX development Rs 45,000

Front and backend work (Frameworks and

libraries integration) Rs75,000

Total Estimate Rs.345,000

For both IOS and Android Rs. 690,000

Note that this estimate of Rs.345,000 is the estimate of developing the app in one platform
Android. The same cost will be the estimate for developing the app in IOS so that means that
our total estimate for the app development will be Rs. 690,000. (Doubling the initial estimate)

One more important component includes the customer support service which is necessary to
form a bridge between the clients and our technicians. So in order to operate the department
of customer support following amounts will be required

Other Costs

Equipment cost Rs. 700,000

 Office Rent (6 months cost) Rs. 300,000
HR Costs Rs 1,500,000

Internet services cost Rs. 150,000

Total Rs. 2,650,000

Equipment will include laptops and telephones which will be used for communication and
customer support and for management of our app. Then comes the non-financial resources
which includes the office furniture which includes workstation desks, security cameras and
biometric system for office security, office supplies like stationary, and the office rent which
we have already described that we will be using the incubation centre of our institute to
secure a relatively cheap office space. The total cost estimate on business requirements other
than the app development includes the factors mentioned in the above table and that estimate
is around Rs. 2.65 million, and also we have to develop a website as well in order to run a
smooth business to promote our content, which will cost us around Rs 100,000 which means
that the total estimated amount that is required for our start-up would be around Rs. 3.35
Million.

Financial Performance of similar businesses

There are few companies in Pakistan which are engaged in similar practices like ours.
However, it has been observed that most of them are limited to just one city and in some
instances even in one area of that city. Adding to that, there is also limited financial data
available on these companies due to mostly their private ownership.

We have made some estimates by doing some research on different perceived competitors
from which we can estimate the financial performance of the companies having similar
business models and services like ours.

For instance, we took one company called Behtareen which operates and app doing a similar
kind of work but in Lahore, we then conducted an analysis on their app by looking at the
number of download and customer reviews from google play store. This data helped us to
gather insight on how much people downloaded the app and then how many provided the
reviews.

The total number of downloads were approximately 1000 in the play store. They also made a
minimum cost for a service to be Rs 500. Considering another thing that the app was
launched about 6 months ago we can say that if a only by minimum orders only, they could
have earned the revenue of Rs 500,000 in the past six months. Note that this amount is
calculated by assuming that all the orders were at least equal to the minimum charge of the
services Behtareen provide. There are however variable charges for the services they provide
and same will be the case of our start-up. Some services in the especially in the electrical
systems work are more expensive with a range of 1000 – 5000 Rs.

Similar information was available for other competitors with little variations in cost.

Hence the revenue estimate for 6 months can be

All minimum orders (based on assuming 500*1000 = 500,000 Rs

1000 downloads of the app)
All maximum orders (based on assuming 5000*1000=5,000,000 Rs.
1000 downloads of the app)

These data figures are based on the survey conducted and keeping in view the problems
which can possibly arise in home repair sector ranging from little janitorial work to complex
electrical systems installation.

Overall financial attractiveness of the proposed venture

There is evidence from the survey which suggests that the service idea we are proposing can
provide us with a recurring revenue model. For instance when we asked people about how
any times they need help with the repair work in their home/business many said that they
require services at least once a month while business owners also said that they require the
repair services multiple times a month which shows that we can generate a considerable
amount of recurring revenue once we win clients.
We are also confident that we will be able to generate around half of the funds required
internally and we will focus a lot on generating funds internally. Which means that we don’t
need to dependant a lot on investors for relatively huge amount of financial help. Other than
that, there is also a plan in which we are going to offer around 25-30% ownership stakes to
our investors so that in the future, they can look for a viable exit strategy just in case things
don’t go according to the plans.