Hey Fellow Readers,
For those who don’t know, I am one of the Co-Founders of KitabiTukda and I am writing this blog to tell you about how miserably we fucked up, we tried to mitigate though!
I started working on the idea of KitabiTukda back in August 2015 when I used to Intern at Super (One hell of a startup with just right workplace environment). I was fascinated by the idea of selling books chapter-wise and helping students save on some bucks. I immediately started figuring out how this could be done. I created an amateurish prototype for the app in mere 16 hours(ain’t braggin, so don’t judge), where I could sell these books.
Here are the screenshots, just to give you an idea.
After creating this prototype, I immediately showed it to my roommates. One of my roommates, Shubham, loved the idea and we collaborated eventually. He became the co-founder of the company and we started KitabiTukda officially. We started strategising immediately:
- How will we make this idea possible?
- How can we get more and more books on our platform?
- How to market the idea?
- How is the delivery method of books gonna be like?
- How to convince publishers to give their books to us?
And the most important WHO WILL MAKE THE MOBILE APPLICATION? (Android/iOS)
Shubham and I are not some professionals with a technical gut, though fortunately I learnt a bit of PHP coding by working on my website but beyond PHP, I knew nothing. We knew that, if we were to wait for a “Techie” Co-Founder to join in, it would have been really late as many potential competitors had conceived the same idea at some point in time, before or maybe after us, and thus here we wanted to have the First Mover’s advantage of selling books chapter-wise in India.
So eventually the best option which was available to us was to outsource the Technical Division for our startup. We hired a company in Mumbai who would make the complete technological framework for our business. We signed the contract for a FEW LAKHS OF RUPEES in November 2015.
Meanwhile, when someone was taking care of our technological framework which is like 60% of our burden, we made a few business trips to Delhi.I must say, it was one of my best experiences ever, where you get to learn a lot, you get the essence of an Entrepreneur who wears a suit and goes to meet the Operations Head of various multinational publication houses. I will never forget the charm of those meetings.
Shubham and I decided that when we started meeting these publishers, even if we get 30% acceptance rate for this idea, we would go forward with it. Luckily, the acceptance rate was 80% which was pretty well. We were both quite happy about the hope and idea of making a difference.
Slowly our “just 2 individuals” collab, became a team of 5-6 people which is not a big deal if you compare with other startups but we used an internal communication tool known as Slack because not everyone was working from one place. Oh, Slack is such a beauty, it’s the most elegant tool to use when you are running a startup!
Screenshot: #Marketing Channel Snapshot of KitabiTukda team slack.
It was December and KitabiTukda had completed 5 months already. This was the time when we launched our Beta Registrations along with the website.
We started marketing the Registration of Beta Testing aggressively on our Social Media Pages. We even sent you mails to do that with the #WaitForWorth Hashtag.
By February Mid we were supposed to give you Beta Version of the App for the feedback/bug testing/genuine suggestions. But unfortunately that never happened. Here’s Why!
Because we Screwed Up! It was our fault to not get the mobile application developed on time. This was the result of a bad decision which we took initially, to save some extra bucks. We chose a bad Tech-Dev team which was incapable of developing such a product and being naive or let’s say novice corporate thinkers, we signed a legal MoU which did not work in our favour in the end and we ended up losing quite a few lakhs of rupees. WHY? Just because of a SINGLE BAD DECISION.
We worked our hearts out for 8 months and in the end when we hoped to Level Up, we were back to ZERO. We thought of everything possible to make it work. But it did not work. I guess, this was the time we decided to wind up the main product or the main USP because of which we decided to start the company or even keep the name “KITABITUKDA” i.e. Selling Books chapterwise, because we did not have a product ready with us and we had lost everything.
Now here I am to confess it all, to say that I am REALLY SORRY, especially to my family and friends who did everything to make KitabiTukda BIG. I am sorry for not being able to deliver what we promised. Although, the KitabiTukda Blogs will be up and running with more informative and entertaining stuff, we will not be able to give you the Beta Version of the app.
After all the hassle which went on in my mind for 3 days, I could finally sit down to gather my words, to convey about how we were unable to stand by our promises and deliver, in the best possible way to you guys. This is harder than I imagined. It has taken more courage than I was ready for. KitabiTukda again became like one of those 99 ideas that don’t make it to the finish line. Does that mean we stop and give up? No. That’s one thing I’ve never been taught. I don’t believe in losing hope, and maybe that’s what keeps me going and that’s what has given me the strength to write this.
To our customers:
Our entire team sincerely thanks you and for taking a chance on us as we reimagined what KitabiTukda could be. Thanks for believing in our Idea and Supporting us in this tough time.
This post was first published here.
Twitter: yash_roongta
asha chaudhry
wow yash,
that’s a lot of learnings for 5-6 months!
my biggest learning from here is to always have an advisor/mentor – someone who can guide you where legal matters are concerned. or areas where one has no experience (i’ve heard and experienced tech projects going off track or falling into a deep crack so many times!)
good luck for your next venture!
ps: question – if you have a genuine market out there, wouldn’t you want to look for a tech co-founder at this stage, who’d be able to fix what’s broken – perhaps it won’t take forever??
Yash Roongta
Hi Asha,
Definitely, A mentor is very very important.
Answering your question: One of the major flaws in the model which we prepared was to assume that we will get investment from the leading VCs within the first year because we have a unique product and the education segment is huge.
Soon, I realized that’s now how it works. We were trying to get VC money without creating a good profitable business and would be like the other startups.
In my next venture, I had like to focus on creating a positive cash flow business instead of focusing on getting the VC money. This will make more sense.
asha chaudhry
yash – bang on. you will read hundreds of posts on trh that will tell you to build a product that solves your users’ problems and then think about VC money later!
you also MUST read everything pardeep and priyadeep have written on ed-tech and startups in the education space.
also pls read this post by mubaid. it’s an eye-opener!
https://www.therodinhoods.com/forum/topics/8-lessons-learnt-when-i-almost-raised-my-first-round-of-funding
Yash Roongta
Oh definitely,
I had the opportunity to hear Mubaid in the Open TRH at the Bombay Stock Exchange. I will read this post again. Thanks
Alok Rodinhood Kejriwal
Shucks – This is a really sad outcome.
Is there anything I can do to help?
Yash Roongta
Hello Alok Sir,
Thank you for offering your help and reading this post. You are like a father figure to me, being just 19 years old, I would love if you could mentor us in our journey forward when we decide to start up something new which is more feasible and demanding by the market.
Thank You!