It was 2:30 AM in the morning on January 31 2015, we were having tea at some hotel at Pune station. The reason to be together was Aditya’s birthday and reason to be awake was a brainstorming on an idea which we thought could potentially change the world.
It is so amazing that every entrepreneur in reality is a dreamer and more importantly believer in his or her dreams. I believe everything happens twice, once in our dreams and then in reality. The synergy of brain and hard work transforms our dreams into reality.
After 4 hours of brainstorming, our much needed sleep drove us home. The next day I called up Aditya and told him that I would like to be part of this and make this happen. Idea was to set up a marketplace for civil materials. It was gonna be an eCommerce game and we needed string tech support, by strong tech we meant a WEBSITE 😀
When our coder bouy, Quinston came on board we realized that eCommerce is more than just a website and order fulfillment.
I and Quinston were in 6th semester of engineering and Aditya in his final semester, we decided we will formulate a plan to take this ahead and 4 months down the line actually start this. 4 months later all we had is a skeleton for the website, we had not done any ground work. Right after our exams I and Aditya started going to meet different material suppliers and we realized this was not so easy!
After juggling through problems like money, time (as I and Quinston had to resume college) and mentoring, after 3 months we had to shut it down, we called it houzart. We failed to bring art of building houses to people but we surely learnt the art of starting up a venture.
The next push came from Quinston’s mind. He had this idea of creating a hyper local social platform to connect you to your neighborhoods in better way. The idea was to sting what you wish to share and that’s how Stingbox took shape. I, at the age of 21 made my first investment in buying a domain and hosting for Stingbox, more importantly I had invested in my best friend. I can’t tell you how incredulous that experience is, today Stingbox has more than 300 registered users and is on play store for android.
After all these try outs we needed our presence in something more firm and product oriented stuff. With Aditya’s avid reading and brainstorming efforts we ventured into virtual reality. The goal is to create a virtual experience which is as lively as the real one. Currently we are striving to get the prototype to the market and we don’t have an inch of doubt that this will work.
In all these endeavors I realized that though one person has a great influence to drive teams and make successful companies, needs a team to start off. That team might not have a significant skillset towards what you wish to achieve but that team is surely responsible to bolster you, adopt to your thinking and strive hard to make it happen. In all these endeavors, there were times when we had to face a lot of difference of opinions on how to proceed. When I think of it now, I feel great satisfaction and happiness to have both of these guys to make this experience a truly valuable and unforgettable.
When we were in the process of forming houzart, we had a group on whatsapp named project mortar 😀
Today, endeavors are making a rapid move with broad and practical thinking but we haven’t stopped with project mortar chats. And story continues 🙂
surajsaste 