Dear Tanutejas,
Congratulations,
We would like to inform you that your application of paintlyfe has been shortlisted among the top 8% of all application received.
So the story starts from this mail, last month I was just filling up some form and was in hurry. I was in so much hurry that I didn’t even read after writing all the points. As a result, it had many mistakes. I skipped their most important point that was” Uploading video of 60 sec explaining about your company” As soon as I reached this point, I closed the tab. I was not at all in a mood to shoot my own video. I forgot about Nasscom just after closing my tabs,
BUT after 15 days, this mail arrived and I was like- Damn, they have shortlisted incomplete application. It was the moment when we felt; wow someone is there who know what we want to do. Let’s go to Mumbai.
But what’s the fun in story if you don’t get into troubles??
Hence, I got a call from home to come home. It’s been a year I have seen my family. They want me to come home and join our family business. (You all know how difficult is to convince family on this part) They want security of their kids and kids feel happy in being insecure. Monitory or materialistic things are not in scene at this stage and it seriously don’t fascinate very much. But what makes you happy is that “You have started something so take it forward inspite of all bad circumstances. When you have started, you didn’t care about all these circumstances then why now?? Not now and never.
I quickly visited home, tried to convince them and went to Mumbai with a smile on face. It was our first ever meet where we were meeting with VC’s. I seriously never thought that we are going to meet VC’s so soon but it just happened.
When we started giving our Intro to VC’s, many showed us interest, many tried to change the topic but there was one guy named Ashish Dave from Mumbai Angels. He came, sat down, soft spoken and within 45 seconds he said “Let me tell you the truth, I invest in e-com business and I am not at all interested in your business because …….
1) We invest minimum 50 lacs not the amount which you guys are demanding.
2) Before VC’s invest in startups, they want to see your skin in your business (means, you should invest some good amount of money before pitching VC’s)
3) I am not discouraging you but I call a Black a Black and Spade a Spade. And many more…
He was the best person we have interacted there in Nasscom. He looked at one of my sample product pic in which I was wearing RodinHoods T-shirt so he asked” So you are rodinhooder, influenced by Alok. Good. You are on the right track, Alok himself can guide you very nicely in your journey” (Alok is guiding us since the beginning may be unintentionally or indirectly but he is)
We loved the session, Met brilliant minded people. Was little nervous but we managed to convince our self that NO NEED TO GET NERVOUS. At the last, Nasscom asked us to give interview in Forbes and Entrepreneur Magazine about the event. We were ready but then something came in mind and I asked my co-founder” Are we guys are here to give interview in these magazines about the platform or about our company, He said” we are here for our startup” We walked out and left that place with a smile. 🙂
And then on 7th July- Times Of India featured me in Sunday times with 4 more entrepreneurs.
It was the moment of smile. Because almost 6 months back, I woke up 3 in the morning, went to hawkers, stood there for 4 hours and inserted ShopKirana Leaflets in TOI. You can understand now why I Felt awesome when I got a call from TOI .
Last but not the least “I sent my first and last Telegram to the lady saying
“OUR LOVE WILL NEVER DIE LIKE TELEGRAM”
Did you make someone feel special from Telegram, if not, you missed something which is priceless or may be has no value. You can imagine, whatever you think is right will be right.
Last month was indeed fun. Mail from Nasscom, Featuring in TOI, Seeing family after a year, Convincing them about your startup like a 5 year old kid who give all the reason in the universe for a Cadbury.
Let’s convince the universe for a Cadbury now.
Dreamer | Believer | Reader | Entrepreneur and
Chief Learning Officer at www.Shopkirana.com & www.Paintlyfe.com