Apsolutio goes live!
Victory belongs to the dreamers who hustle — Aritro Banerjee
When asked to think about a quote I would like to share with the audience, at my first Entrepreneurship Summit talk, I shared the above. Hi! My name is Aritro and I am the Director of Apsolutio. I created this company with my dear friend Aditya, to change the world for the better, and today I will take you through the awesome journey of how Apsolutio went live!
The beginning
I got my first job in 2016. It was with a reputed Fortune 500 MNC and I was lucky to land a spot in the BFSI active development division. I scored a perfect 100/100 in my niche technology training and bagged a project early on! Little did I know what luck had in store for me that year.
I was elated to get my first pay check, and more so, when I got my first credit card. It felt so cool. I felt as if I had arrived in life 😂. That’s when the trouble started. My first credit card bill was 0.5 times my salary, and things went downhill from there. The third bill was 1.1x my salary and I started realising that I had a problem. By the time I put a stop to it, I had crushed my job savings and it was time to start afresh. It was then that I decided that I would create a solution for this problem.
I always had the entrepreneurial bug in me, and it occurred to me, that I could help others like me who were making bad financial decisions. It would take a year more of introspection and courage to get myself on my own two feet again.
I started stock market investing, and I pooled together my life’s savings and stepped into the stock market in November 2016, at a time when people were fleeing the stock market, because of the demonetisation blood-bath. In 5 months, I pegged 35% growth in my portfolio!
Cut to 2018, I quit my job, and created a working prototype Finakya (then Accountable) Mark 1. That was all it took to convince Aditya and his family to let him jump on board! After some struggle with the startup registration, Apsolutio was born on 15th March 2018.
The Struggle
I decided early on to stay bootstrapped, and true to our purpose until we had users. We were starry eyed entrepreneurs and wanted our journey to be just perfect.
I was a certified iOS Developer and by 2018, I was a proficient Android Dev as well. Aditya was a web developer and server side geek. He knew design and liked UI and I loved UX. Things were going well until we started hiring.
Hiring brought with it its own set of challenges. Manpower in our niche tech stacks was scarce in Kolkata, and for a bootstrapped startup, managing cash burn was an issue. I teamed up Apsolutio with some reputed Engineering Colleges, and traded our tech expertise in the form of Tech Bootcamps, for some much needed capital. (This became such a big hit, that we had to spin off a separate division for this!)
Pretty soon I realised that my dream of creating the World’s first Finance and Lifestyle Mentor App Finakya was a big dream! It involved tons of calculations, coding and number crunching and it took up most of my time. Managing the team and the being active devs ourselves, Aditya and me struggled to cope with the pressure till early 2019.
By then the team had matured, and appointing team leads was possible.
The once in a century hurdle.
In late 2019 we decided that Finakya would have to be far more social then our initial estimates, and that required a system overhaul. That pushed the timeline to early 2020. Just as we were about the launch in January 2020, The COVID-19 pandemic hit the earth. 😭 We were left for a loss of words.
Apsolutio being Fintech focussed, had strict security protocols to keep all employees in office till now, but with the pandemic in play, that was out of the picture.
The Climax!
Losing was not an option. 😡 Not after more than 2 years worth of research and development into a revolutionary product platform. So Apsolutio changed. We used cloud PCs and virtual workspaces and moved all our work to the cloud. A 0% WFH organisation became a 100% WFH organisation.
But then came the Cyclone Amphan. After achieving peak momentum, we were rendered useless for two weeks with little electricity and no internet. 😭
We picked ourselves up again. 😥
The Reward!
Our efforts paid off. As of today the 22nd of June, we have Finakya launching tomorrow the 23rd of June, and we have 7 more products in the pipeline! Did I mention that it took our 56 member Apsolutio family to come together for this? 😎
TL;DR
As I look back, this journey has been nothing short of exhilarating. I am sure that the Apsolutio family will continue to earn laurels in the time to come.
Checkout Finakya at www.finakya.com!
Apsolutio is at www.apsolutio.com
My contact coordinates are as follows -
Twitter , Linkedin and aritro@apsolutio.com
Cheers!
