Personal Lifestyle Management solutions to urban middle and upper class households

I had written this as a business plan. However, never found time or energy to take it forward. Here it goes though...
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1. Introduction
We would like to leverage the mobile technology platform to provide “Personal Lifestyle Management” solutions to urban middle and upper class households. The specific product categories we would like to introduce to the market are:
1. Vehicle Security System: The product can be fitted in any vehicle and will allow the owner to remotely control actions of the vehicle. It will also enable the owner to get location information of the vehicle and trigger certain actions. The owner shall be able to perform such actions easily using mobile phone. This product is aimed at the C and D segment of cars.

2. Home Automation System: The product suite will consist of devices that will allow home devices/gadgets to be controlled from a single place, and/or remotely even through a mobile phone. Devices like a/c, lighting, locks, ovens suit themselves to be operated remotely.

2. Target Segment
Before embarking on a detailed study of the business idea and its feasibility, it is important to understand the market segment for the product offerings. Both products are aimed at the urban middle and upper class households with average monthly incomes not less than Rs. 100,000. This segment is increasingly witnessing the following changes:a. Higher degree of mobility and less time available for personal lifestyle management: The households under consideration are being increasingly characterized with a very high degree of local, inter city and inter country travel. Hence, people in this segment are feeling an acute need for being able to manage things on the go. This is clearly borne out by the spectacular increase in the usage of high-end mobile phones and PDAs in the country. However, while the current devices are able to service the information requirements of the customer, the personal lifestyle requirements like switching on washing machine/ AC or remote car security etc as per requirements remain largely unaddressed.b. Rapid increase in number of double income families: The rapid increase in number of families with both family members working has led to a much larger customer base for products in luxury segment enabling niche businesses like the one being proposed to become viable.c. Changing value system and beliefs of customers: The society is witnessing an exponential increase in consumerism in the urban markets. The worth of an individual is being increasingly being determined by his/ her material possessions. In such a scenario, a very high emphasis is being placed by individuals to showcase their wealth in order to gain respect and admiration of society. Our products have a huge potential in providing the customers with immense emotional benefits of state-of-the-art and contemporariness associations with the product.

3. Market Portfolio Gap
Based on the above analysis, we perceive a clear need gap between the current market offerings (e.g. Autocop car security systems/ Timers in electronic gadgets) and the requirements of the customer. The need gap for each of the products can be articulated as under:
1. Vehicle Security Systema. Based on sound and light alarms hence usability over a narrow range of distance.b. Useful only in prevention of theft. The current systems are ineffective in the retrieval operations.
2. House Automation. Specific devices like TiVO and Televisions have the timer options. Most other products (e.g. Ovens, Geysers, ACs) lack any remote management options.b. Remote Security alarms not possible. A point to be noted in case of House Automation is the rise in the housing sector of accommodations with very high end specifications in cities like Gurgaon and Bangalore (with estimated market price in excess of Rs. 10 Million). These houses can easily absorb an incremental cost of the order of Rs 10,000 and can provide a compelling value proposition for remote house security at a nominal expense.

4. Interesting/ Unique aspects of our plan
1. Unique product categories: The product categories we are planning to enter are essentially untapped markets and hence we do not have to contend with competitive threats associated with penetration in existing markets.
2. Potential for deploying High Entry Barriers: The buyer groups for our products are essentially large builders and manufacturers of premium segment cars. We intend to get into long-term contracts with these entities thus ensuring that threat of a competitive entry is eliminated. In addition, by partnering with these customers in the design phase itself, we intend to gain additional insights into customer requirements thus ensuring vastly superior designs with greater ability to meet customer requirements.
3. Assured cash flows and early break even: Since the plan is essentially based on capturing a large market base through contracts, the viability of the business and cash flows are assured at initial stages itself.

5. Market Size Estimates
1. Vehicle Security System: Based on market research by Murad Ali Baig, a leading auto analyst, the total number of cars in the C and D segment sold in India annually is around 75000. If we are able to capture 10% of the market share in this segment owing to the tie up with car manufacturers, we are looking at a volume of 7.5 K cars annually. At Rs. 10,000 per car, this can amount to an annual sales turnover of Rs. 75 Million. In addition, we may want to take into account sales potential in B segment cars (annual sales of 140,000 units), even a small percentage of which can greatly enhance our overall turnover.
2. House Automation System: Though no comparable products exist in the market, a research study conducted recently placed the number of households with annual income of Rs. 20 Lakhs and above in the 50,000 to 100,000 range. Taking a conservative estimate of 50,000 such households and an adoption rate of 5% in the segment, we estimate 2500 households to try our product giving us an estimated sales turnover of Rs. 25 Million for the product. Additionally, if we include even a fraction of the demand emanating from the Rs. 10 L to Rs 20 L segment, we can expect a healthy revenue stream from this line of business.