Meet Shweta and Shuchi — Founders of 3 Curious Monkeys
Last week I connected with Shuchi via secret Female Founders group of YC. I was so excited to learn about her company 3 Curious Monkeys. She agreed to share her experiences as a founder and mother of twin boys. She suggested we do a two on one interview with her co-founder Shweta who is a mother of a girl and expecting another one soon. Below is an excerpt of our candid conversation.
Q: After I shared how I founded PiMothers out of my own selfish interest, to learn the secret of balancing life and career as a mother. Shweta and Shuchi started sharing their story.
Eight years ago we too used wonder — how women do it? Both of us had a long commute. We could barely stand after getting home and then cook for our husbands. We used to think that when we become a mother we would also have become older than we are now, so logically we would have less energy and would have difficulty to take on more responsibility. But you know, when you are a mother you can function very effectively. When you see this cute, innocent person who is so helpless without you, you somehow get all the energy.
Q: So tell me more about your journey — when did you start, what were some challenges?
We started in 2014. And these two years have been like a roller coaster ride. The original vision of the company was to create tech products. We used to call it digital toys. In nine months we delivered an app and a book. We had twins…
We launched Indian Dress Up Party app. It features 8 traditional weaves of sarees. It’s our way of supporting the diversity in India. If the next generation isn’t exposed to it, they wouldn’t know it.
Diwali Gift book was our first book. We had never started a company before. So everything was new. We picked a distributor who we thought was the best. As soon as our book launched, we were covered in NPR, HuffPost etc. Our book was a best-seller in one week. All the published books were sold out and we had pending orders for next 3 weeks, but our distributor wasn’t able to fulfill the demand. Because of the distributor, we had a lot of customer’s waiting! Like an entrepreneur, we learned our lessons the hard way. Our next book we are launching via KickStarter. This time the “3 Curious Monkeys” are going on an adventure involving Indian Food.
We carefully develop our books and apps. Our stories are original. After reading these stories children come and ask questions about the culture. Instead of the other way round, where parents impose the culture on them. Our goal is to intrigue the children’s imagination. We are constantly testing it with our kids. We know if they don’t like it, others wouldn’t as well. This way we are making Indian culture and festivals fun and engaging for our kids as well as for their friends. These are the same reasons that they are attracted to Halloween and Christmas, now they are equally interested in Diwali. If you read our stories, they appear to be American, with Indian authenticity to it. Our stories and characters are universally appealing. Teachers are enjoying it. And they experience it together with students in their classrooms. You know a culture is about sharing.
Q: How did you two meet? What inspired you to start a company?
We met 10–11 years ago. We were invited to a child’s birthday party. We were only ones at the party who had no children then. We instantly clicked.
We grew up outside of India and we didn’t realize until we became mothers that we had the onus to transfer Indian culture to our children. You won’t believe me, my daughter was the single Indian in her class. One day she came home and was like why I am not blonde. She never saw herself in a cartoon, in a movie. You know it would be nice for her to see someone in a movie and relate to that and feel confident that to see that she wears a lehenga like her, she is dark-haired. We faced these problems at the same time, as our children are of the same age.
Through personal experiences, survey and talking to industry experts we have discovered that unfortunately there aren’t a lot of cartoons or books in India either that appeals to 2 to 7-years-old as they no longer relate to the language and the situations described. Our mythological stories are awesome however they need to be adaptable to current age! Speaking with Industry leads we have learned current Indian media for kids are not developed for age and mentally appropriate audiences or even for urban viewers. So we realize that there is a huge void when it comes to validation for Indian kids — they have no idols in the media.
As soon as we had kids we thought “Why is there a lack of products for our kids?”. The further you are from the center of gravity (in this case, Indian culture), you feel like you are losing your roots. If you are an Indian who keeps going back to India, you may not feel it with the same intensity as someone who has been away from India for a long time. We asked a lot of moms out there and we realized there is a need for mainstream stories that our children can relate to. This gave us the confidence to continue on the path!
Q: What is a typical day like for you?
We work from our home offices from 8:30–5:30. Sometimes when we tell people that — they are like you write a book daily for those hours?! Then we have to explain that we are founders of the company but we are also the peons. We do everything — soups to nuts from conceptualizing the book to writing the book and work with the team of illustrators to design the book and accounting, marketing and business development.
Q: What is your advice for other founders?
We learned that how much ever you plan, something always comes up. Always be ready to face the challenge. How you work around it that matters. Make sure you have good partners, good distributors, good illustrators. A good team ensures that you don’t face any problems again (at least because of the team).
Excerpt from my conversation with Shweta and Shuchi in their home office via Facebook Live.
Originally published at www.pimothers.com.
