Analysing the business growth opportunities of Wildrift

Adventure

An Overview of Wildrift Adventure

In India plenty of rural areas are developing new ways and means to earn
their livelihood by having self-sustainability since the focus has shifted from
agriculture to other innovative areas for earning livelihood. The focus would
be on 1 such business model developed by an Entrepreneur, Manoj who
started his innovative and creative venture in 1993 by the name of Wildrift
adventures. He marketed the concept by his wonderful slogan “Not the kind
of holidays most people like.” He made it very clear since the stay was in
tents with no cozy beds and lights in place. Four make shift beds were added
in one tent for comfortable stay of people. As per the requirements of group
no. of tents were added. Even the toilets were arranged from outside and
were put up inside camp site since there is no provision of permanent toilets
in camp. The make shift arrangement was done with the help of lamps in
camp which gets illuminated past night. Since no hotels were there near the
camp site all arrangements related to food were being made inside the camp
with the help of local villagers. The camp sites are pretty far off from main
city so he tied up with cabs for carrying people to the camp site. People in
the village are getting employment opportunities by ferrying people to the
camp, cooking food as well as making hospitality arrangements for clients
and managing camp sites for whole year. Plenty of people got employed
with one camp site and managed to earn decent amount of money in addition
to agriculture which happens to be their major source of revenue generation.
The same people are responsible for taking care of multiple sites and are
available as per the requirements of camp site.
Moreover people got a sense of ownership while being part of Wildrift
Adventures. The organizational structure is relatively flat with major
functional heads being Marketing, Operations and Finance. There were not
many competitors in the market when Wildrift adventures started its
operations in 1993 as it was an entirely new concept at that time. The
concept which was at a nascent stage has started mushrooming in India as a
lot of competitors have come into the market.

Background of the Entrepreneur

Manoj who basically hails from a small place Nainital did his B.Com (H)
from Sri Ram College of Commerce, New Delhi. After completing his
graduation he did his LLB from Delhi University. He is a very good
communicator but he was very keen on doing adventure activities like Rock
climbing, Tracking, Paragliding. While doing his LLB he took a part time
job of Rock climbing instructor at Nainital Mountaineering Club during his
summer vacations. Trekking was part of it and he enjoyed it a lot being a
person from hills. He completed his basic and advance level of
mountaineering courses by learning the concept of adventures in mountains
from Nehru Institute of Mountaineering, Uttarkashi. He did a Diploma
course in Tourism Management from Indian Institute of Tourism and Travel
Management. He also completed basic and advanced level of paragliding
from Allied Institute of Skiing and Mountaineering, Delhi. He started with
his basic flying in Garhwal and did his advanced level in Kashmir. The idea
of becoming an entrepreneur cropped up in his mind despite having no
formal qualification in entrepreneurship as his passion was into adventure
activities.
Adventure Sports at the camp
He started with Kayaking and Camping in Saattal Lakes, Nainital as he
identified the need to start it there since no one was doing it there. He
decided to start it as a new entrepreneurial venture since he realized that
there was huge potential for this new adventure sport which was not very
popular in India at that time and it will also provide livelihood to the local
population by getting them involved into it. He initiated his first camp in
Kumaun region, Mukteshwar in 1993 with doubts regarding the success of
the new venture in the area of adventure sports since no was into this kind of
adventure sports. Also, the kind of tools required were a fixed set of
equipments for rock climbing, rappelling and paragliding which they already
have so the impact of technology on their business was very low.
He got the first mover advantage as he initially targeted outbound education
concept for schools of Agra & Jaipur with his new idea at reasonable prices.
He sent e-mails and visited schools and offices for promoting his concept.
Initially people were having lot of apprehensions about the new concept.

Expansion of Wildrift Adventure into Corporate Training

Later on he started with Corporate Training and offered modules on Team
building, Work ethics, Leadership, Creative Problem solving exercises.
Initially people were not able to understand the concept. He found it very
difficult to convince corporate clients to stay in tents but later on he was able
to convince people to have a comfortable stay even in tents as he provided
them with good quality food alongwith a comfortable stay in peaceful
environment. Since his venture started to pick up he realized the need to
have a partner to help him out in managing the activities of his camps. He
invited his college friend Amit to join hands with him after 6 months of his
operations. Amit also became Director of the company as Manoj believed in
having the concept of self-expression with co-ownership as both of them
became partners. Amit is taking care of the Finance department in their Head
Office at Nainital whereas Manoj provides corporate training. They also
outsourced trainers for specific training programmes. The camps are open
for most part of the year except a few months during winters when there is
heavy snowfall in the hills making it very difficult to operate. They targeted
corporate customers as they tend to have major problem of stress
management. They got to know about their needs after meeting their clients.
During the outbound training programme they offer different types of
training as per the requirement of corporate clients. The most popular
training module includes leadership and team building exercise making
individuals into better team players as well as honing their leadership skills.

Partnership with Local Villagers

They joined hands with local villagers in order to provide support for
comfortable stay of people as well to provide good quality homemade food.
The arrangement with village communities was based on profit and control
sharing. They provided training to village communities by having ownership
based management as they can decide about the standards to be delivered.
They created a regime for encouraging small and medium sized
entrepreneurs by focusing on localization. Local villagers are aware about
the surroundings of the area as they source all necessary items for the
smooth functioning of the camp and maintain acceptable standards
throughout the year. They always prefer to provide best quality service as
they maintain good relations with their corporate clients which fetched them
business. Wildrift adventures never made any deductions from amount of
money being paid to villagers as penalty although they get delayed payments
from corporate clients. As a result of it there was hardly any problem with
the villagers who also provide excellent service. They are developing
tourism for local regional development rather than focusing on profit
maximization.

Marketing Strategy of Wildrift Adventure

Sameer also joined hands with them as Director in 2005 since they have
expanded their camps to Mukteshwar, Saat Tal, Corbett, Shaama, Syat,
Ranikhet (Ranikhet started with a heritage house). As of now they are also
offering paragliding, mountain bicycling, Corporate HR Training, Himalayan
treks/Expeditions. Sameer is looking after the marketing department as
Director from Delhi office and looks for all marketing campaigns and
activities of Wildrift adventures. They have segmented their market based
upon the demographic segmentation. They focus on specific age groups as
they offer different types of training programmes for different age groups.
The traits of their target audience will be those people who are very keen on
doing adventure activities like trekking on hills, rock climbing. These people
are associated with the camp since a very long time as they can be identified
with their interest area which lies in adventures. At the same time, these
people are easy to target through e-mails, WhatsApp messages, websites
alerts and via other social media platforms.
The behavioural traits include being ready to try out new and difficult
adventurous activities. The other criteria for targeting apart from age happens
to be are their zeal and enthusiasm to do new things in an entirely different
way. The business has also boomed because of the societal changes like
accepting/trying new things and with concepts like YOLO (You Live Only
Once) adventure sports are bound to be an instant hit because of the
adrenaline rush they give. School and college students are offered with
different programmes focusing on team building exercises whereas the
professional clients from the corporate world have been offered different
types of mind games for de-stressing themselves. They pay attention to the
specific need of the client and make a customized programme as per the
requirement of the client. They send mailers to their existing clients as well
as update their new programmes during summer vacations on social
networking sites like Facebook. The details about Sunderdunga glacier trek 2
was uploaded on Facebook while the details about Wildrift Eco Adventure
Tourism were given on LinkedIn.com. They also uploaded pictures of their
camps in order to make people aware about the type of arrangements in their
camps. Their marketing team also provides presentation to the prospective
clients before proceeding for the camps and clarifies any doubts people are
having related to their camp, training module and accommodation.

New Avenues for revenue generation

As the Camp Purple in Mukteshwar gets closed for two months from
December to February due to heavy snowfall they realized that it was an
opportunity for them to make Jams, Squashes, Chutneys out of the fruits
grown in camp site. They prepared Apple jam, Mango chutney and Squash
out of a fruit known as Bruansh and put up the bottles for sale once the
training programme gets over at a very reasonable price. They served the
same chutneys, squash, jam to their clients during day so that they can get to
taste them before making a purchase. The key differentiator for Wildrift were
the prices charged by Wildrift adventures as they were very nominal as
compared to their competitors. Their competitors could be anyone offering
similar kind of adventure activities at competing prices in a close by area.
However, competitors were not easy to identify as they weren’t offering
exactly the same services. They also provide very good quality home-made
food in both veg and non-veg categories with sweet dishes.
Their current strategy includes targeting people who are interested in these
activities already. Another way for them to grow would be to try and convert
non-users into trying such activities. For the corporate training programmes,
they have added utility for the user in terms of improvement in leadership
skills and team building skills, similarly they can add a benefit of personality
development for the non-users. The company needs to evaluate this route of
growth.

Problems faced by Wildrift adventures

Despite starting the venture 24 years ago they are still waiting for a favorable
taxation regime in terms of tax waiver. Plenty of big resorts are coming up in
the Himalayan region as the entry barriers are not there. Lots of warehouses
are getting constructed by multinationals reducing the green area required for
adventure activities and plenty of villagers have started working in the
warehouse for a fixed salary rather than getting into the area of owning their
business since the job is going to be there throughout the year rather than
having it at the time of camps. As of now, there are no laws that can limit the
scope of their business or its expansion plans dramatically.
Another problem faced by Wildrift Adventures is the mushrooming number
of camps which are coming in different parts of India offering similar kinds
of activities at a competitive price making it very difficult for them to get
into a profitable condition. In order to curb the competition, they have started
with summer camps for children during summer vacations focusing on
mountain cycling, football, soccer coaching and various other games
activities which include cricket etc. They have also started to focus on
paragliding, trekking, star gazing, village interactions, photography, rafting
and himalayan trek. A deep thought is required to nurture the entrepreneurial
talent as they have managed to make a mark in this field, but their future is
not very certain in terms of earnings.

Q. How can they realize the business opportunity of corporate

customers better?

Wild rift Adventure can realize the business opportunity of corporate customer better by:
1. Conducting Surveys –
Understanding customer preferences is very important when they are offering a service.
This is because customers are the determiners of how successful a company becomes.
After all, where will profits come from if not your customers? Customer care is all about
sticking to the promises you make to customers. Surveys will help them understand the
structured vision of their corporate consumers better and take necessary steps to alter
them.

2. Collaborations –
Collaboration improves the way a team works together and solves problems. This leads
to more innovation, efficient processes, increased success, and improved
communication. Through listening to and learning from clients, Wild rift Adventure can
manage to retain them in a more efficient way.

3. Porters Analysis -
Porter's Five Forces Framework is a method for analyzing competition of a business. It
draws from industrial organization economics to derive five forces that determine the
competitive intensity and, therefore, the attractiveness (or lack thereof) of an industry
in terms of its profitability.
Wild rift Adventure can perform a thorough analysis redefining and analyzing the five
forces and come up with a more detailed plan to work for corporate customers.
Porters five forces cover:
 Entry barriers/Threat of New Entrants -
- Supply side economies of scale (Cost advantage for incumbents)
- Demand side economies of scale (Attractiveness advantage for incumbents)
- High customer switching costs (difficult to steal market share)
- Regulations
- Strong incumbent reaction to a new entry is expected (takeover or significant
increase in competition)
  Suppliers Bargaining Power -
- Increases when supplier side is more concentrated than the buyer side
- Increases when buyers have high switching costs
- Increases when suppliers can also sell to other industries
- Increases when suppliers’ products are differentiated and/or have no substitutes
 Customers Bargaining Power -
- Increases when customer side is more concentrated than the seller side
- Increases when customers have low switching costs
- Increases when customers are price sensitive
- Increases when customers can threaten to integrate backwards
 Substitute Services -
- How many substitutes can we think of?
- To what extent are they equivalent to the industry product in the buyer’s minds?

 Rivalry Among Competitors -

- Industry growth
- Price-based competition: Differentiation, low switching costs, perishability, high
fixed costs/ overcapacity
- Exit barriers
- Number of competitors (Concentration vs. Fragmentation)

What can be the other growth opportunities for the business

given their current business profile?
Some of the other growth opportunities for Wild rift Adventure can be:
1. Going Digital -
Going digital doesn’t mean having a website, or having a twitter account that sends
pamphlets. Going digital means, you know what percentage of your sales come from
referrals and digital marketing, or how many unique visits your company has.
Wild rift Adventure can put up a new face digitally with a transformed vision to extract
more growth opportunities.

2. Enhanced Marketing Techniques -

Wild rift Adventure can keep up the consistent work and make their marketing
strategies stronger by analyzing the data, taking relative action and be persistent. One
of the examples can be to start Email Marketing via business development in times of no
customers to retain them later.

3. Altering the Portfolio -

Wild rift Adventure has a very diversified portfolio where they are taking part in
business, collaborations, maintaining clients, providing training, activities etc.
 So a better version would be to alter their portfolio according to the amount of work
they do and showcase it systematically to attract more growth opportunities.

4. Research and Development -

R&D is a niche differentiator in this world where everyone is competing against
everyone. Wild rift Adventure can make strategies and research more fun and
interesting so that at the end it benefits the company as a whole.