THE ORIGIN and start of TAK goes back to my job with a telecom carrier, where I dealt with a large number of amazing developers across the world struggling to get their products (Apps) across to the end-consumers. Apps, short for application software, are basically custom software with the objective of aiding the user in performing a specific task. For me the singular focus was to bridge the last-mile between developers and content owners and consumers at the same time - creating a business model that was feasible, sustainable over the long-term and vastly scalable.

You will be curious to know why, if most mobile and service providers provide access to mobile apps for free, do we charge customers for the same? Well, free Apps are usually silly and as people in India get used to consuming more and more Apps on their phone they will realize this quickly and demand more. Like all other App stores – TAK also has free Apps – developers pay us for installing such Apps on consumer phones.  Today, our Kiosks are already clocking 60-70 walk-ins per day - with 40-50 per cent conversion rate. These stand-alone Kiosks become profitable in less than 3 months of operations, and we plan to rapidly franchise TAKs across the country over the next 6-12 months.

As to why so chose Apps for the start-up, well, the bottom line is that there will be apps for everything in the time to come. Apps are the future of Internet, and Internet as we know now will die and App-Internet will emerge. Apps are the single biggest opportunity of this decade in the world of technology and tech starts-ups have an important role to play here. But App Stores is a new and complex business and the smartest companies and people with original thinking will be creating the path forward and leading this space.

The future growth of mobile Apps is tied to the growth in the Indian mobile industry. India will have more than 100 million smart phone users by 2015 – creating massive demand for Apps and Games. Furthermore, India has more than 600 million feature phone users – a reflection of very high demand for Music and Videos. In the future there will be an inter-medium usability of Apps. App stores will cater to all the 5 screens – mobile, tab/netbook, laptop, PC and TV.

Considering all these enabling factors, there is high potential and opportunity for funding. For budding entrepreneurs who want to know about funding our initial funding came from my resources and from friends and family. Our investment has gone into global aggregation on the portal and cross-OS delivery platform, and we have successfully completed pilots in a real consumer environment, and the business model is now proven. Today, we are looking to raise funds from our Angel round or we might just head straight for funding from a Venture Capitalist.

My advice for funding in general for tech-start-ups will be to have a clear idea and then eat, drink and sleep on it. For resources get people with relevant experience, have relevant contacts, and generate some start-up capital. Overall, be clear about what kind of culture and values you want in your start-up. Any investor (Angels/ VCs) who can complement and appreciate the above three pillars of an entrepreneur and bring financial investment will help an entrepreneur to unlock a big business opportunity - bringing anything from 5 to 20 times the returns for all the stake holders. Be wary of crowd-funding.

As we approach a round of funding for TAK, we have no allusions as to the fact that “App Store” is a big boys business – Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Apple etc. – being the boys or rather the Goliaths in question. But we love the challenge and the way ahead for us will be focussing on business fundamentals and clever innovation. As a solid foundation is in place - the pilots done in various formats have been a success. TAK is aggregating more apps and content from across the world – and we will now start to scale the business.  

CJ: Mohit Kapoor is Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Gurgaon-based Apps Kiosk Private Limited. Mohit has spent more than 16 years in the Telecom and Mobile Internet Industry. He holds a Bachelors’ Degree in Science from DAV College, and an MBA from National University of Singapore.