Mega Project Blog 1
PROJECT: CHEAP AND EASILY AVAILABLE POWER BANKS
Problem Statement:
With every passing day technology is taking over the traditional means either they are related to transportation, communication or any other field of life. Smart phones have become an integral part of our daily lives and we cannot begin to think how our life would be without one. A large amount of daily life tasks can be performed efficiently using smart phones but sometimes we don’t have a source of electricity available for its charging like when we are travelling or due to load shedding in different areas and hostels.
Proposed Solution:
To solve this problem power banks are currently being used. Now the issue here being addressed is that the good quality power banks are really expensive (at least for a student) and the cheaper ones don’t have a good build quality and there are a lot of delivery related issues in this process. Moreover, there are a lot of students in our respective universities who belong to other cities and either they don’t know about markets or don’t have access those markets from which they can get power banks at a lower price. This problem can be seen more in hostels and specially girls who don’t have access to cheaper markets. So, if we provide them with power banks with a lower price range with good quality assurance and other different perks like product and test warranty, which is not present in most cases, then we make it easy for the students, especially for hostilities get a good quality power bank at a reasonable price.
Business Model Canvas:
We would mainly be focusing on students from our respective universities. For this process, the key partners are manufacturers, our team and courier services in rare cases. The key activities involve getting the raw material, Assembly of power bank and promotion of our product using social media as the basic channel. As it is an entrepreneurial project, the capital investment would be divided into all the circle members.
The qualities or values which distinguish us from rest of the manufacturers are high quality products but at a cheaper rate and with easy warranty claim procedure. Moreover, we will be continuously working on the betterment of our product by continuous feedback from our customers. The cost of the product totally depends on the capacity of power bank ordered by the customers and this project is sustainable as we can get a profit of up to 20% on each product as we will be selling at a higher price than our manufacturing cost, but still lesser than what other competitors have to offer and with a better quality.
In the coming parts we will be discussing:
· Task division among the circle members.
· Timeline of our project
· The activities performed by the team before this week.
· Product prototype
· Promotion of our product using social media accounts and pages.
Task Division
There were so many tasks to be done within these weeks and collaboration of our members and their specialization in their field resulted in synergy and perfection. Like marketing related fellow Shafaq was handling the social media pages and the marketing of the product, electrical engineering fellow Muhammad Umer not only guided about the composition of the product but also handled the logistics and acquired the raw materials, finance related fellow Marium was working on the cost and price of the product considering delivery cost, assembling cost and the cost of raw materials. Wajiha being a good writer composed about what challenges everyone is facing, Aun always being participative in the group, not only completes his assigned tasks but also gives constructive feedbacks, Tahir comes up with new, realistic and achievable ideas which can be easily implemented in the project Hence everyone was able to work on our mega project smoothly. Not only this, every week we would come up with some creative ideas or maybe you can say jugaad like one of our fellows told us to use logo stickers instead of customized casing for the power banks until our business starts making profits.
Timeline of the Project
We have been working on this project since the last three weeks and we set weekly targets to carry out our business.
First Week:
1. We identified the use of power banks that today everyone have phone and power bank is a dire need today that u can carry the small power bank with you and can charge your mobile anywhere and we analyze not everyone can afford good quality power bank because of its high rates.
2. First we have taken raw material (cells) from a shop and made a power bank and checked it ourselves.
3. We created an online platform, designed logos for our page.
4. We planned strategies for online advertisement while using social apps Instagram and Facebook.
Second Week:
1. Now we are going to take a step forward towards marketing and we will approach our friends, family and strangers too.
2. Along with the marketing we will keep a check and balance between our inflow and outflow.
Third Week:
1. Now it’s time to get orders and run our business with personal investment, after marketing our product we will take orders online and according to the orders we will design power banks according to the customer requirement.
2. We will deliver the product according to customer requirements.
Fourth Week:
1. After this we will measure the average profit on the product.
2. After these measurements we will show our output of our orders and the profit we will earn along with this our supply and demand system will run at the back end.
Activities Performed:
Muhammad Umer personally visited hall road and find all the shops related to Old Laptop battery. He also went to shops related to Power Bank Casing. Then he purchased old laptop battery and power bank casing for making testing unit. He broke the laptop Battery.
Unfortunately, most of the cells were dead.
Then he again went to market and finding some shops from where he find 18650 battery cells with less cost. Finally, he found 1–2 shops from where he got 18650 battery Cell in very cheap price as compared to market.
Then he made test unit using Casing and Brand new 18650 battery cell.
Product Prototype:
And, the testing unit performed well above our expectations. And Finally, Now we all are excited to launch this amazing cost-effective product in Market.
Cost Structure
NOTE: As Laptop Batteries is not sustainable at ALL. So, I found cheap cell seller with quality product.
1- Battery cell prices:
100 pieces = 130 Rs. Each
20 pieces = 140 Rs. Each
10 pieces = 150 Rs. Each
1 piece = 160 Rs. Each
1 Cell = 2800mAh
2- Casing Prices:
Different casing prices and price breakdown.
2 Cell casing:
Casing Price:
Discounted Price on Website Now a days = 199 Rs.
Normal Price Mentioned =300 Rs.
èCost of Power Bank on discounted price:
Cell Price = 140 * 2 = 280 Rs.
Total Cost = 480 Rs.
Total Capacity of Power Bank = 2800mAh * 2 = 5,600mAh (Can easily be sold within 600–800 Rs.)
Profit Margin = 120–320 Rs.
è Cost of Power Bank on Normal Price:
Cell Price = 140 * 2 = 280 Rs.
Total Cost = 580 Rs.
Total Capacity of Power Bank = 2800mAh * 6 = 16,800mAh (Can easily be sold within 650–850 Rs.)
Profit Margin = 70–270 Rs.
5 Cell casing:
Casing Price:
Discounted Price on Website Now a days = 550 Rs.
Normal Price Mentioned =1000 Rs.
èCost of Power Bank on discounted price:
Cell Price = 140 * 5 = 840 Rs.
Total Cost = 1,390 Rs.
Total Capacity of Power Bank = 2800mAh * 6 = 16,800mAh (Can easily be sold within 1600–2000 Rs.)
Profit Margin = 210–610 Rs.
èCost of Power Bank on Normal Price:
Cell Price = 140 * 5 = 840 Rs.
Total Cost = 1,840 Rs.
Total Capacity of Power Bank = 2800mAh * 6 = 16,800mAh (Can easily be sold within 2000–2200 Rs.)
Profit Margin = 160–360 Rs.
6 Cell casing:
Casing Price = 650 Rs. (Price is high because casing has 4 USB ports and 2 Micro USB ports)
Cell Price = 140 * 6 = 840 Rs.
Total Cost = 1,490 Rs.
Total Capacity of Power Bank = 2800mAh * 6 = 16,800mAh (Can easily be sold within 1600–2000 Rs.)
Profit Margin = 110–510 Rs.
8 Cell casing:
Casing Price = 580 Rs.
Cell Price = 140 * 8 = 1,120
Total Cost = 1,700
Total Capacity of Power Bank = 2800mAh * 8 = 22,400mAh (Can easily be sold within 1800–2500 Rs.)
Profit Margin = 100–800 Rs.
10 Cell casing:
Casing Price = 900 Rs.
Cell Price = 140 * 10 = 1,400 Rs.
Total Cost = 2,300 Rs
Total Capacity of Power Bank = 2800mAh * 10 = 28,000mAh (Can easily be sold within 2500–3000 Rs.)
Profit Margin = 500–700 Rs.
Challenges Faced
Although every member is performing their tasks yet we faced some of the challenges. One of the biggest challenges was the availability of old batteries. Our main focus was to make power banks through old batteries as we wanted our project to be environmentally friendly also. We wanted to recycle these waste batteries but we could not arrange sufficient numbers of old batteries. Also the supply of old batteries was not fixed which challenged the sustainability of our project. To overcome this, we decided to use new battery cells to complete our product. So, we visited many markets i.e Hall road and Shah Alam Market to acquire cells. Here we found good quality cells in economical range. Our main focus was to make a cost-effective and good-quality power bank. that can be afforded by most of the university students. So, we tried our best to arrange good quality cells and casing for power banks by visiting different markets daily. It was a very time-consuming activity. Managing time to complete this project was another challenge we faced. Another big challenge was the initial stage of the product where making a sale is the most difficult one. In the initial stage we could only make people aware of our product. So the business really takes a lot of time to reach the break-even. Our potential customers are usually confused at this stage about why they should buy from us.
Our group members planned to overcome challenges by making a schedule to manage time for megaprojects. We have decided to at least invest one hour on mega projects daily. We arrange meetings almost thrice in a week.
To introduce our product we have made our social media pages and for the next upcoming weeks we are planning to start digital marketing using facebook customized ads and start advertisements on different social media sites. Also, we will be promoting our product by word of mouth to our friends and family members.
Product Marketing
Product Marketing is the very important. So, have also started the marketing of our product. Initially we have selected two social media platforms for this purpose. So, Shafaq created an Instagram account for Product Promotion. She also created a Facebook page.
Maria Azrar created the amazing logo for our brand and an amazing “Coming Soon” graphics.
Circle 6:
Muhammad Aun
Marium Ikram
Muhammad Umer (Circle Leader)
Hafiz Muhammad Tahir Nisar
Maria Azrar
Shafaq Saddiqi
Wajeeha Rafi
