Chennai-based Barberaa was founded by two childhood friends, Chirag v., founder & CEO and Ajay Kothari, Co-Founder & COO. Barberaa's story begins when Chirag deals with a disappointing experience and decides to convert his frustration into business. This is a truly inspiring story of how both best friends turned a gap into business.
From Friends to Founders: The Barberaa Journey
It all began when CEO Chirag came up with the idea for his business. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he faced a frustrating delay of almost 1 month without any updates when he was trying to book grooming services on Urbanclap.
This experience sparked an idea in his mind. The idea was to create an online booking platform for providing salon services at home. At the time, Chirag had recently graduated and was seeking employment, but this idea inspired him to transfer to the beauty and Wellness industry with his salon and spa startup.
Soon, Chirag shared his business idea with his childhood best friend Ajay Kothari. At the time, Ajay was planning to go to the UK to pursue a master's degree at a prestigious University.
But Chirag's idea impressed him so much that he cancelled all his plans and decided to work on the idea. This is how Ajay dropped the idea of studying abroad and decided to lead their friendship to entrepreneurship. He even requested a refund from the university to invest his time and money into building the business with Chirag. All the efforts of Ajay show that he supports his friend's idea and is ready to take a big risk for it.
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Concept to Creation:
Headquarters in Chennai, Tamil Nadu; finally, in 2020, Barberaa was born, and Chirag and Ajay started their entrepreneurial journey.
What began as a small side project which gradually grew into something much bigger. Over time, they realized the potential of their idea and turned it into a private limited company. A year after starting the company, both best friends-now co-founders- decided to seek advice from an industry expert.
Furthermore, they met with C.K. Kumaravel, the founder of Naturals, which is Asia's largest chain of salons, to talk about the home services market possibilities. The meeting they had with Mr. Kumaravel changed everything. They were truly impressed by his ideas and points of view, which gave them new business ideas and inspiration. For them, this meeting was a big step forward in their business journey.
Barberaa's New Chapter: What It Does :
Chirag and Ajay worked hard to transform their idea into a unique and valuable platform for the salon and spa industry.
The platform Barberaa allows salons to list their services, showcase their prices, highlight amenities, and present a digital catalogue for customers to see on the site. Clients can easily search for salons based on their location, popularity, discounts, and offers, making the platform convenient and user-friendly. Their entrepreneurial efforts marked a significant step forward in their entrepreneurial journey.
When a person visits a salon, they already have a clear idea of what they want, which makes it challenging for salons to upsell additional services. Barberaa, on the other hand, allows salons to present their digital catalogue to customers in advance, giving them a wider selection of options from which to ultimately select.
Furthermore, for the next thirty days, a customer will be able to make reservations according to their preferred date and time.
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Barberaa: More Than a Booking App:
Barberaa is not only an online booking salon service platform but also this is a complete management system focused on helping salons modernize and run more efficiently using simple and user-friendly technology.
Along with offering booking salon services, this company also provides other services, including a discount of forty per cent on services at the spas and salons that are listed on their network. Additionally, Barberaa has formed partnerships with well-known salon brands such as Toni & Guy, Page 3, Naturals, Tip & Toe, Spa Influence, Nails n Beyond, and Studie'o 7, all of which are a part of their expanding network of over 15 franchisees.
In their research, Chirag and Ajay realized that the majority of salons in India (86%) still rely on traditional methods like using pen and paper for keeping their finances. This gave them the idea to create a simple, all-in-one software solution that would help salon owners in effectively managing their businesses. Their 360Ā° Management Software is designed to make accounting and other operations easier for salons, especially medium-sized ones, by moving everything to a digital platform. Today, they have more than 10000 users.
Both innovative minds are shaping the future of the beauty and Wellness industry with his salon and spa startup, enabling businesses to reach their full potential. What makes his story truly inspiring is that, instead of overlooking the problem, he pursued a solution and turned it into a business.
This friendship to entrepreneurship journey with Barberaa serves as an inspiring example of how vision, resilience, and strategic thinking can lead to remarkable success.
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