Why I wasn't able to Raise?

Yes, I didn’t been able to raise till date at Picxele! Counting on Success is very easy, but cherishing failures is also important. It's not that I failed completely, but as a Human Being or Founder I fail in every instance of my life, which is natural.

But what is most important is to accept that, not all startups are built to raise funding or attract VCs. Few need to be there to balance things out :-)

2021 was the time raising money was just like getting an engineering degree, But the same is not applicable in 2022 and 2021 was the time itself we got prominent interest from the investors after getting badly rejected in 2019 when we launched.

Indeed for me raising was never applicable for 3 years itself because I am not a good Story Teller and super bad at selling stories, My core expertise lies in Business or you can say I am good at doing “Dhandha” or “Vyapaar” and telling facts was my core simplicity.

Now let me tell you two scenarios of raising money when I pitch Picxele to Investors!

Scenario 1: We are building an On-Demand Gig Workers Platform to meet Business Requirements via Remote Workers which is fully automated by advanced technology on a real-time basis.

If I would have pitched to people by saying the above line, we would have raised 1–2 Rounds till now, but in 5 Years of Journey (2 Years without Product and 3 Years with Product), I realized GigEconomy can never be solved or completely addressed by complete automation. Yes, Technology will ease the work on each and every endpoint but it can never replace Human Indulgence.

Now consider a scenario where an MNC is looking to verify Documents of a Merchant in a Tier 3 City of India and they don't have any employee present over there, and in order to do that MNC reached out to Companies who have Manpower in these locations.

Now how we think the process will be eased via tech, once the work is posted on the platform, and post that work gets assigned to a Gig Worker by AI/ML by filtering the Data Points of the Gig Workers and Matching the Skillsets and Work Requirements. The same is completed by the Gig Worker by reading the details and is submitted via the platform. This sounds so smooth and easy, this is an ideal scenario that the majority of us think about when we hear about and Gig Workers Platform.

Now let's come to reality when an MNC puts in work requirements:

• Company Representative first understands it briefly
• Post that they put the work requirement into their platform
• Once someone applies to the work, companies representation explains the Gig Workers' entire process
• NDA or basic Agreement gets signed between Company and Gig Worker
• On actual execution day, the Gig Worker doesn’t turn up (Might be 50–50 Percentage Scenario, and this actually happens)
• If they don't respond further, again we need to start from Step 1

Now from the above scenario, we can definitely understand be it how much Disruptive Technology you build “Trust” and “Human” Interaction is so one major point where we need to touch upon.

By the way we have touched 650K+ Users with 0 CAC in 39 Months

Scenario 2 (My Pitch): On-Demand Platform to meet the Business requirements for Companies via Gig Workers on Pay Per Task system, where we ensure the work quality and delivery of tasks with work assurance on both ends.

We had Numbers, Tractions, and Revenue and we also got Interest from Angels who trusted me. But when it comes to Micro VC they wanted to hear something else, which I realized after sweet time.

Yes, we have a Mobile Application and SOP in place but for me, it's not practically possible to tell a story that the end-to-end process will be carried out completely via Tech with no Manual or Human efforts.

As a founder, selling stories is important but down the line when you start making Revenue you need to think Practically as you cannot sell stories to make Revenue or Profits in the long run.

But we completely operate in White and Grey Collar jobs which can be done completely online in Task Based System and we have categorized the work into Skilled and Semi-Skilled Tasks.

In the case of Semi-Skilled tasks, post we understand the task and set the process it gets posted on the App, and Users/GigWorkers can start performing it by reading the steps and submitting it in the app itself. And on the backend we check the submissions and approve the same for the user, and in the end, Business pays us and we pay the Gig Workers and they can withdraw the amount in their Paytm or Bank Account.

On the other hand in the case of Skilled tasks which can be like Tele-Calling, Content, Image Processing, Data Validation/Entry, and others once we post the same in the app after Gig Workers apply for it, based on past performance we shortlist and explain them the work. And once they are up for it they get trained via us and companies and they start the work.

If you want to get in touch with me i am available on rishav@picxele.com