Tag: startupstories

At Zoomcar I hired a Senior Finance Manager who had spent several years auditing companies at a Big Four firm. He was smart, fundamentally sound and dedicated to his work. We were excited to have him on board. One of his first assignments was to build an asset tracker to ensure the accuracy of our… Continue reading Own It

At one startup, I started an initiative where every person in the organization would spend a day a month answering customer support emails. We were a small team at the time and always constrained on resources. One of our senior engineers, one of the best I’ve ever worked with, was highly opposed to the initiative.… Continue reading “Our Customers are So Stupid!”

At two of the startups I’ve worked at, customers defrauded us of over a millions dollars. At three of them, employees defrauded the company of several hundred thousand dollars. Two times, we had a shortfall in customer support staff that caused a month-long wait time for responses. At one, the entire sales team quit within… Continue reading Disaster in Slow Motion

When I was CFO at Zoomcar, our product head (who, by the way, I didn’t get along with) proposed that we launch a ‘zero deposit’ initiative, whereby certain customer segments wouldn’t have to provide the Rs. 5,000 deposit while booking a car. The hypothesis was that this would reduce friction and lead to higher bookings.… Continue reading What if it Works?

When I joined Zoomcar in 2015, finance was a mess. We had a skeletal and unstructured team. Our financial numbers were (very) incorrect. We had very little tracking and control over our spending. We didn’t have a consolidated view of our cars. My team and I got to work. One by one, we figured out… Continue reading Why Do It?

In an interview some time back, the interviewer asked me, “Say, there’s an urgent deadline to meet and one of the key senior members of your team is not available. The work requires your remaining team to work nights and weekends. How do you ensure you deliver?” I don’t know what answer he expected, but… Continue reading Trust

I started Twish, my first startup, with three friends. Two of them were running another startup alongside Twish and the other was working a full-time job as he had some financial obligations to cover. I was the only full-time person on the team. Our initial product idea, financial courses with storylines and animation, generated no… Continue reading Committed or Bust

I graduated from the best engineering and MBA schools in India. I’m an IIT-IIM. When I started working at Lehman, I had a level of self-importance that was significantly above my skill set. This led to some bad attitude and work quality issues. I took a few months to realize that my educational credentials had… Continue reading “Nobody cares, work harder”

At Lehman, I was doing $25-50 million deals. I was paid over $100,000 per year. I wore expensive suits and travelled business class. When we started Twish, my first startup, we struggled to generate sales. No one wanted our product so we tried different things. After a few months, one of the colleges expressed interest… Continue reading The Joy of Ownership

At Twish, my first startup, we had exhausted our first set of product ideas and leads without traction. I pinged one of my co-founders on Google chat and asked him what I should be working on. I got a very frustrated reply saying there were so many things to figure out – new product ideas,… Continue reading Employee to Founder