Learning business from Yo Yo Anda King

In the past 30 odd days, we've all seen the amount of buzz and ruckus the demonetization has created. We've all been in long queues, felt that sense of pride everybody we got rid of a Rs 500/Rs 1000 note, and felt miserable everytime we got one.

But what I'm going to talk about today is a 'business case study' of one of the thellas near my place called 'Yo Yo Anda King'. Needless to say, he is a Yo Yo Honey Singh fan. But apart from the pretty obvious swag he has in his thella name, he does have some pretty awesome business sense to learn from, despite being not very educated.

The very next day after the decision of demonetization was announced, while everybody was afraid of the Rs 500/Rs 1000 notes, this thella owner had opened his own wallet where he was taking Rs 500 notes in advance from his customers for the andaas/omlettes they had in the coming days. But wait, what? Why would he do that? These were the metrics that he managed to solve!

Retention: People who had given a Rs 500 advance kept coming back to him for the next 15-20 days because:

1. They didn't want to end up forgetting their balance if the money stayed with him for too long.
2. They saw a prospect of getting rid of another Rs 500 note, just in case this advance got over quickly.

So people who would've otherwise tasted a poha, biryani or momos on different days ended up being only half boiled, bread omletted, half fry, and bhurji fans for the next few days.

Organic marketing/Referrals: People working in nearby companies ended up talking about him, and kept coming to deposit their Rs 500 advance. That's some free marketing!

He obviously explained the above to me in layman terms. :P

Though he had a pretty humble smartphone, he made sure he had Paytm on his phone, and the Paytm barcode on this thella the very next day! Don't know what Paytm is? He'll explain it, and market it to you so well that even Vijay Shekhar Sharma would go weak in his knees. The very next day, you'd see the same customer making a payment through Paytm.

Immediately after his Paytm wallet would elapse, you'd see him train people on the Justdial pay the very next day! Why Justdial pay, you ask? Because he knew the Justdial office was quite near to his thella, and the possibility of his customers using Jusdial was a lot higher. This was when the nearby thellas were finally considering having having a paytm account, but Yo Yo Anda King with all his swag and brains had already made a lot of money by then.

Learning? Speed, understanding the need of your customer, a bit of guts and adopting technology quick can take you places. "Tax customer ko bhi bharna tha, ab hum bhardenge. Fark itna, ab thoda sahi se dhanda karke bharenge", is what he says. Oh by the way, don't call out any other rapper's name in front of him, he hates it.