Letting go
Our initial idea for a start-up was a traveller’s information portal called the Monsoon Travellers. It was inspired by a small group of Douglas Adams fans in Tromso, who (on particularly cold days) would stand by the square in the city centre and hand out towels and maps to aurora hunters, i.e. the poorer backpacking variety and not the ones who’d fly in on corporate jets. For them, everyday was towel day. We wanted to help travellers in India in the same way.
So we decided to start the Monsoon Travellers (Monty), a company that would cater to the most weather-beaten, dogged, inspired, mad kind of traveller in India, i.e. anyone willing to travel during the monsoons. Our kind of chaps. We even had a logo.
we got a draft website, put together a hitchhiker’s guide to Bangalore, and even organised a few events for out-of-towners. And while the karma felt good, reality soon hit — handing out towels (even kerala handloom ones) to weary travellers isn’t ‘sustainable’ . Soon our members went back to doing what they were born to do — some coding, others drafting contracts. And the monsoon travellers died.
Letting go of the whole idea and the illusions that went along with it was difficult. Especially the logo — apart from the fact that we paid a fair sum for it, we were convinced it was awesome (it’s a towel goddammit!). But when most folk thought we were a dry cleaning company, and one wiseguy thought we helped bookies fix matches, it was definitely time to let go.
But letting go is something any entrepreneur (and wantrepreneur) is familiar with. Looking back, we soon realised that the real demand for our city information services wasn’t coming from travellers but locals. Locals who didn’t have the time to discover their city, migrants who knew nothing in the first place and people who were desperately seeking an alternative to JustDial and its ilk. To help them find a tailor, a 3AM eatery, a gully cricket match or a romantic weekend getaway. Local search engines in India quite simply sucked, and unknowingly, our travellers-dirty towel-matchfixing start-up had ventured into that territory.
That’s what gave birth to Dekkoh. The idea has just about hit puberty and our product is still in the womb. So we’ve got a long long way to go. Except this time, there ain’t gonna be no letting go. Ladies and towellers, I give you www.dekkoh.com (for all non-choms, it’s pronounced dekho, as in see..)
Auf Wiedersehen!
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Dekkoh is a neighbourhood search engine- it lets you find anything you want in your city, leveraging the power of community knowledge. By downloading Dekkoh, you get access to awesome local information from people around you. Oh, and it’s exclusively for women! Do try out our Android app on the playstore: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dekkoh (iOS on its way).
