My college life, err… startup life.
I still vividly remember that day. It was just another evening at the Nescafe outside my hostel when my friend and I decided to rent books to the entire campus. Yes, one minute we were sipping Maggi and the next minute we were planning to start up. In retrospect, that was not a difficult leap, but what followed, was a different story. The problem statement stemmed from our personal experience; not finding the right place to sell our used books. Cue the name — BooksOnHire. A simple idea, a solution convenient for the customer, and a reasonable target base, all fortified my faith in starting up. Like most beginners do, I turned to my parents to make my first business pitch. I explained the concept to my father in all earnest, even while expecting a bit of resistance. When I asked him for some money, he simply replied with, “How much?”. Mustering all the courage in the world, I blurted out “Fif… Fifteen thousand.”. Within 20 minutes my phone beeps with the message, ‘Rs.15000 has been credited to your SBI Account.’ Well, that was simple, I thought, and this led me to assume that my journey thereafter would be as smooth. But as you might be aware of, thanks to over glorified startup stories, that was not the case. From building our site to getting our initial customers to delivering books to unfamiliar addresses with 25 kilos of books in the delivery bag when it was raining cats and dogs, things only got harder. Especially when all you have is a glimmer of hope, and not a good umbrella, to counter the Mangalore downpour.
I had just entered my second year then. Instead of attending labs in the afternoons, I was on the road delivering books because we could not afford a courier. And instead of focusing on the lattice arrangements and stress strain curves, I was busy calling my supplier and asking him to keep the inventory ready for pickup. Instead of sitting for my vivas, I was busy negotiating for Rs. 2 per poly bag with a supplier sitting in Gujarat. Despite all the hard-work, drenching and the initial 100% profit rake in, BooksOnHire did not do great, with respect to the targets we set for ourselves. The big plan was to scale our way to the entire city of Mangalore. All the profit we made at NITK were intended for supporting those targets, which we had estimated to not be that hard. We were driven by the notion of ‘if we got this far, we can push for more’. But like before, that was not the case to be. The challenges increased 100 fold and we, still in our second year, succumbed to the pressure and gave up. It was the easy thing to do.
In an overwhelming dose of deja vu, it was typical college life all over again. Perhaps as a result of this general silence, I grew uneasier with every passing day. It simply was not enough. I remained agitated for a few weeks, until in what I have found to be its mysterious and thoroughly reliable fashion: fate, once again, intervened on my behalf. A couple of my friends approached me with an idea and me, without sparing even a second to think, jumped in. It was not the idea that brought about the enthusiasm; it was just the desire to do something more. If there was one thing I learned from my previous experience, a spur-of-the-moment decision or idea could be an off-the-cuff pleasure if the mood was right and the intent heartfelt, but ideas evolve, and take forms that significantly differ from what it started off as.
That’s when we started working on Waverr. Soon, as a part of the evolution, Waverr became Winkl. But things, as expected, had only gotten tougher. Around this time, the curtain rose on a parenthetical, academic drama : final year. Which apparently required serious attention. I got to gripping my dreams a little tighter, as it was heading towards the stage of bread and butter. When my batch-mates were traveling to Gokarna for a weekend to chill out, I was busy making sure the pitch presentation, which I had to present the next day, looked slick enough. When my friends headed out to the nearby restaurant for a drink, I was busy changing the color of the buttons on the Winkl app to make sure we have maximum conversions (yeah, colors matter!). And instead of going to the cinemas every weekend, I was at the mall all day, selling Winkl to users as a part of our pilot. And when many of my friends head out almost every day to meet their girlfriends, I take an ideation walk with my co-founder to the beach to talk about random ideas, to let the creativity flow (It works!). When everyone in college were busy with events, club meets and trips, I was out there trying to meet prospective clients to partner with us. You get the drift.
With just about 90 days left for college life to end, I can affirm that I missed out on a lot. My startup work occupied a major part of my college life, or like I mentioned, my startup life evolved into my college life. Memories of college days are supposed to compose of crazy nights, amazing trips and great fun. And I may have missed out on the conventional idea of fun, I may have lost track of a lot of academic matter, I may end up with different memories, but I truly had a hell of a ride. As I am writing this, my friends are planning a trip to Kerala. And I am wondering whether I’ll be able to make it or not. What say, one last time?
