THE GAADLAWALA STORY by Nirav Mehta
Good Morning BNI,
My name is Nirav Mehta and I represent “Mattresses” Category in EXPONENTIAL Chapter which is under Senior Director Consultant Naresh Karmalker. I wanted to share my success story and here it is.
One of the rarest and exemplary example of how collaboration works at BNI is the Gaadlawala story.
On 5th Sept’2016, there was a 8 minute presentation by one of the Exponential member Ms. Jhelum Ratna, who is into making Ad Films. Seeing the presentation wherein one slide was of pocket videos, I thought of having a pocket comic series shot for my Product i.e. Mattresses, since I have a vast experience into selling mattresses and used to keep writing all the funny and embarrassing incidents related to SALES.
I happened to share his thought with my close buddy Mr. Nikhil Desai who is a Senior Director consultant and by profession is into Pest Control, who said yes, it should be done. His encouragement was more than enough and then there was no looking back for me.
I immediately registered the Gaadlawala brand with Adv. Roshni Lachwani who is into IPR from our Chapter, got the logo designed and registered the domain through Saurabh Gupta, also a part of our chapter, who is into Web Designing.
Later approached my buddies in the Chapter Ravin Manek (Plumbing), Nimit Shah (Chartered Accountant) & Kalpesh Thaker (Equities), who contributed with the scripts and became the actors for this comic series, also later followed Priyanka Gole (Company Secretary).
The entire Shooting is done by Jhelum Ratna whose presentation lead to such a huge brand what we are seeing today.
While doing the shoot of this comic series, the entire catering was handled by Priti Shah again an Exponential Member who is into Catering business and artist Raashi Thakar, who too is a member of our chapter, came on board for the Make Up .
Then came the Marketing part wherein we hired the services of Sheetal Ray whose category is Public Relations and Social Media is handled by a cross chapter member Ms. Ria Kudukar who is from “Odyssey” Chapter. We also proud to have MIHIR JOSHI from “Crown” Chapter to be a part of our team in enhancing our BRAND on YouTube and other channel partners.
I was lucky to get some sponsorship for my Comic series from Rohit Sharma (Carpets), Rachana Awatramani (Psychologist) & Rohit Gupta (Stall designing at Exhibitions).
Seeing the success, I managed to sponsor the ICPL (Inter Chapter Premier league) event, which was organized between Mumbai West & North West members. I got good business as a result of this sponsorship and from the ICPL event I managed to collaborate with Riddhi Khetani (Men’s Accessories) from “Evolve” Chapter for merchandising.
So well indeed, in a span of less than 6 months, there was a collaboration between not 4-5 people but more than 10 people from the same chapter and a couple of cross chapter members too, and today as the success story is written, lot of other people want to join the board of Gaadlawala in terms of sponsorships or acting or any other value add services wherein lot of business opportunities are emerging.
BNI Rocks !
