Legal Internship : Start-up Initiative

Learning Outcomes

Arghya Chakraborty

18010126236

3rd Year

Division – C

Batch: 2018 – 2023

Vision of Let’s Bee Canvas:

Celebrating Individuality, Inspiring originality, Encouraging Interactions

and attaining happiness through art.

Missions of Let’s Bee Canvas:

Creating a mental health positive community.

Making art attainable to all.

Creating a positive and interactive space that reflects your personality.

Taking care of the employees so that they take care of the clients.

Making art a financially benefiting endeavour.

Satisfying clients and always delightfully surpassing their expectations.

Verticals pursuing the Vision & Missions:

1. Immersive Art Murals

a. USP: Interactive art for Mental Health Positivity & highly organised team of
professionals equipped for a hassle free experience to clients.
b. Target Market: Companies and Organisations that advertise heavily & Public
Organisations.
c. Market size: Very small, considered to have a less than 1% conversion rate.
d. Potential Competitors: Established Artist Organisations like Facebook Artists
in Residence Programme, Street Art India, etc.
e. 5 year plan points: Internal Team Training and Welfare initiatives, Business
Development team formation with ambitions Sales Targets, Widespread
Awareness and Public interaction events, both Offline and Online, and primary
 focus on Govt. Projects like Clean & Paint Pune or Project 100 Wings
Bengaluru.

2. Therapeutic Art Workshops

a. USP: A millennial reconnect activity, minimalist and relaxing experience,
alternative to clubbing and parties for friend groups. Profound experience with
self, friends and family at a budget.
b. Target Market: Individuals of all age and demographic, that prioritise emotional
health.
c. Market size: Very small, considered to have a less than 1% conversion rate.
d. Potential Competitors: The Drawing Room Group
e. 5 year plan points: expansion to Metro cities through local partnerships, Art-
Krida project (physical Art experience hubs), and yearly large scale open air Art
Workshops, Community Development.

3. Ambient Canvas Rentals

a. USP: Dynamic Subscription Model with variety of choices and freedom focused
relationship with client.
b. Target Market: Large Campuses, Corporate Offices, Hospitals, and any Indoor
avenues.
c. Market size: Very small, considered to have a less than 1% conversion rate.
d. Potential Competitors: small start-ups based in the same service based canvas
rental model.
e. 5 year plan points: Business Development Team with an ambitious sales
orientation, targetting 5-10 Large scale projects per annum.

4. Healthy Products & Merchandise (to be established)

a. USP: Mental Health and Environment conscious indigenous Art Products.
b. Target Market: Middle class indoor furnishing and Apparels.
c. Market size: Growing Market.
d. Potential Competitors: Souled Store, Bewakoof.com, etc.
e. 5 year plan points: Online Outlet development and Offline Retail and
Distribution partnerships, Product Development and Vendor tie-ups.
5. Augmented Reality Art Murals a.k.a team Banana.Co (to be established)
a. USP: The first Indian AR Content platform
b. Target Market: Large Corporations, Brand Activation Agencies and Public
Departments.
c. Market size: Very small, considered to have a less than 1% conversion rate.
d. Potential Competitors: Large foreign competitors.
e. 5 year plan points: Smart City Collaboration & App Development.

6. ART X NEED (to be established)

a. USP: Capitalising over our elite Art Buyer's community in social interest.
b. Target Market: NGO, Public Efforts.
c. Potential Competitors: ketto.com and other similar fundraising assistance
platforms
d. 5 year plan points: Steady and consistent growth towards Trust and Goodwill
integrated efforts.
Learning Outcomes within the period of COVID19 Pandemic:
As a start-up in it’s very nascent stage, with a recently developed revenue stream through a
rapidly growing client base, May Day plans were not an immediate priority. The Pandemic
took over by shock, and lockdowns followed. In the lockdowns painting would have had been
risky for our artists, running a high chance of catching COVID. Another issue was, even if
we arranged for and equipped our teams with PPEs and Sanitisers, whether our permission to
paint public walls from the PMC was valid or suspended during the Lockdown, was not clear
to us.
• Abrupt conclusion or halt to ongoing projects.

Most of our ongoing projects being Brand Activation elements, that are bound by time to
the respective product launches of our clients, the lockdown brought about a sudden halt
in those projects.

One such client was CRED, a fin-tech start-up based in Bangalore. We were painting a
100 Walls with Art Murals, in association with BBMP, the city Municipality. Until March
15th our team was able to complete 65 of the walls. And lockdown was declared across
the state.

Within a week, the remainder of the project had to be dissolved on the client’s request
and a bulk of paper work had to be processed, to take stock of the exact completion
percentage, total expenditure, vendor payments made & due artist payments. All of this,
online.

Over the course of a very challenging week, the artist team was safely back home, in
Pune, and with a lot of cooperation between the team at CRED and us, we were able to
conclude all of the urgent aspects of the project. Looking back to it now, the
responsibility and role that I was able to execute in this cooperative effort, stands out as a
major lesson to me.

• Client enquiries on Instagram.

Most of our clients connect with us by enquiring directly on our Instagram portals.
We have invested strategically on Instagram Ads and Promotions, or Interactive Event
participations and collaborations on Instagram & Facebook to increase visibility of
our work, and the services we offer. A large majority of our revenue comes from
projects that come to us through Instagram.

A major concern was a huge dip in the number of enquiries we received in the first
couple of weeks of lockdown. We were dissolving currently active projects and
loosing orders scheduled for the months ahead rapidly. At this point, not receiving
any new projects took a toll on the team’s moral.
 We immediately broadened our visibility by adding a Blog to our website and with
help of a team member generate a regular flow on content on our art and services
online. We studied Search Engine Optimisation techniques from various blogs and
articles over the internet and kept making the best of our efforts.

This along with the high increase in the time spent by individuals online, we were
fortunate to recover a small, but vital number of enquiries until June, 2020 to keep the
company going without any major cut backs.

• Govt. Permission related clarifications with PMC.

In Clean & Paint Pune we have acquired a permission from the PMC to Paint a 100
Public walls with the financial assistance from various sponsors. This project was an
initiative by LBC and hence we were assured of its permanency and security.

We approached the PMC multiple times with requests for clarification on whether
painting with all safety equipment and measures was permitted. We were not able to
receive a reply during the lockdown and hence we did not commission any public
painting during the pandemic.

• Internal Team health and safety efforts

After the lockdown was lifted, our team found it to be still premature, and not safe
from COVID to let our Artist teams get back to painting without sound solutions.

We researched over the internet on what measures could be taken and we went to
extensive efforts to ensure proper implementation of the guidelines given by us to the
teams.

From regular temperature checks to mandatory sanitation every hour, guidelines on

maintaining distance during painting from both fellow artists and general public. We
are fortunate that all members of our team have not contracted any medical hazard
over this period.

• Transitioning to the Online.

Negotiating and finalising Work Order during Covid-19 was perhaps one of the
toughest elements for a start-up. Trust is something that a start-up can only establish
through it’s team and ideas, now the team could not meet with the client, and ideas
flowed digitally over conference calls and video presentations without any physical
presence whatsoever.
 It a lot more efforts and time, to run over the details with the client, with an inherent
sense of insecurity in the air for businesses during this time, we found our client to be
highly diligent in evaluating all terms and conditions of the drafts and plans, as
compared to a rather more relaxed approach in general times.

Despite all the hurdles, over the course of over a month we were able to secure the
work order, and in early August, we finally met the client for the first time, after
having already received a work order and an advance.

• Lean operations model

This was perhaps the most impactful learning across all businesses during this
pandemic. The necessity for safety, and allowing our workforce to afford the safety of
being at home forced us to attempt at tasks that had team of six members working on,
now with a single individual.

It called for very efficient communication and wide consultation, feedback and review
environment inside the our organization. The number of specialised WhatsApp groups
increased for each project with enough passionate determination, each of us was able
to pull through.

This made us realise, what it really took to get tasks done at work, and how leaner
teams can sometimes function with a lot more operational freedom and effectiveness
than previously understood. I am sure, this will be a guiding piece of understanding
for not only our company’s functioning in the future, but also across all businesses.

For further insight into our activities and performance in the short course of time please refer
to the three PDFs in the drive:
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=11WC992tazMq8AsaswRXYzJBUkMMYwZkA