Because Shit Happened

by Harsh Snehanshu

  However, the next meeting never happened. A week later, when Rishabh pursued KT, he came to know that KT was trapped in a police case where his shrewd and greedy partner and COO Jeetendra had bribed police officials to arrest him on the charges of embezzlement of company funds. A month later, Click2Closet, a company that had started doing really well recently, came tumbling down like a pack of cards. KT was going back to the US and he didn’t care enough about us to introduce us to Rajan. We were officially screwed.

  Priya had returned to my life, silently, slowly. There was so much silence in our lives that I couldn’t assess whether she had come back out of her own choice or out of pity for my condition. There were a lot of things that were left unsaid between us. We both needed time to heal, to bring back our old romance. But the thing was I had no time. Work had become tougher and tougher with each passing day.

  Ever since Mishra had left, our technical progress had been stalled. Rishabh had delegated to me the responsibility of finding a technical maven for our venture because I had been closely involved with Mishra while he developed the website.

  Finding a technical co-founder for an already running bootstrapped venture is more difficult than finding an honest politician in the Indian parliament. Technical wizards, if having an entrepreneurial bent of mind, most often start their own ventures and if they are of the employee bent of mind, they prefer working in companies that pay them well. The only option that I could find after months of search were students, three of whom I had hired on a part time basis at 5,000 rupees per month. Meanwhile, I had also started dabbling with codes, all the while cursing my fate for not having chosen Mishra as the co-founder instead of Rishabh right at the very beginning.

  Priya remained patient all the while and never asked for my time. We hardly met and seldom talked. A ghastly silence had crept in our lives like an illegitimate child of our unfaithful love affair. She had stopped hanging out with her friends, stopped picking up their calls, and slowly allowed gloom to paint her life.

  Time went on at the slow pace and our work left us no time to repair our relationship.

  Second last week of November

  Rishabh, with his sluggish work, had failed to deliver an impressive PPT on time. So I had to ultimately make one. We had figured out that we needed around 50 lakh rupees as our first round of investment to make the business climb up the ladder. Our valuation, as determined by our mentors, was around 4–5 crores. Yes! We had co-founded a million dollar company but a million dollar company doesn’t become a million dollar company until there’s as much money in the bank account. We had to find an investor ready to invest 50 lakhs at 10 percent equity to achieve that. Done with the finances, it was time to get in touch with people who were already interested in us, to get a brief feedback. Purnesh topped that list.

  Purnesh liked the presentation but he figured that our current model of crowdsourcing didn’t gel well with the Indian audience as the Indian market wasn’t ripe. To quote his words, ‘To make a crowdsourcing model work, 25,000 users were peanuts and there was no way to get big players interested until we reached a million users within six months.’

  He instead suggested we focus on the print merchandize players who could use our content to bring out their specific products and start monetizing whatever little traffic we were getting. No, we didn’t have to get involved in the operations, the hassles of manufacturers, but we just needed to outsource those to an established merchandize player. Purnesh had said that if two of Excel’s portfolio merchandizing companies get into a strategic tie-up with us, it would befit us to be funded. But, luck didn’t favour us, as none of the CEOs found any synergy in YourQuote with their firm.

  Purnesh, after a lot of brainstorming, asked us to pitch for a smaller amount in the range of 20 lakhs and get incubated instead, as he said that our revenue model still needed fixing. While that was a sound advice, that also meant that Excel Ventures had lost interest in us and Purnesh was just getting his hand out of the ditch.

  Rishabh didn’t pay significant heed to what Purnesh said as he believed that IIN was within our reach.

  ‘Amol, remember KT?’ Rishabh had called me on phone.

  ‘Obviously. Why?’

  ‘He had said that only one person can be the CEO. I was just talking to my uncle who is an entrepreneur himself. He has asked to finalize the organizational structure before pitching. It’s necessary to define CEO of the venture in the investment PPT.’

  ‘Yeah, okay. Let us discuss about it when you come back.’

  ‘What’s there to discuss? I’m sitting in the office of an angel investor. I’m editing the team slide. I’ve changed my designation to the CEO, and you suggest what you want your designation to be.’

  I was dumbstruck. It was my company, my bloody company! How could he dare to even claim the position of the CEO?

  ‘It’s a big decision. We need to discuss this first. Hell, I need to discuss this,’ I said vehemently.

  ‘Okay.’

  I was fuming with anger. Equality was the reason why I divided the equity equally in the first place, why I didn’t keep the Founder CEO tag for myself right from the very beginning, and bestowed both of us with the same designation. It turned out to be my biggest mistake.

  I messaged Rishabh, ‘If we have to define CEO-like positions for our company, let’s keep it equal—you can be the CMO (Chief Marketing Officer), while I will be the CPO (Chief Product Officer).’

  ‘CMO doesn’t suit my position,’ he messaged back immediately.

  I remained restless for three hours, until he returned.

  ‘Come on, you wanted a discussion, let’s have it now,’ Rishabh immediately shot me with his blunt question. He seemed irritable.

  ‘CEO would make one of us more visible than other.’

  ‘I had been working tirelessly all through the while, I take business decisions, I steer the growth of the company, I fulfill all the responsibility of a CEO,’ Rishabh screamed.

  ‘That’s unfair. I don’t want to be second to you.’

  ‘Oh c’mon, give me a break. You are even earning from your book, whereas I have to borrow money from my parents to sustain myself on occasions,’ Rishabh was almost in tears.

  Frustrated, I couldn’t say anything.

  ‘Imagine when I go and meet clients, the effect of having CEO written on my business card will be much greater than the designation of a CMO,’ he said and went to the other room.

  I kept scribbling random gibberish on my laptop, not knowing what to do next. My News Feed on Facebook crushed all my confusion.

  Rishabh Dev is now the CEO of yourquote.in

  Likes, likes, likes. I was so crushed, so saddened by his sudden action that I couldn’t say anything.

  This abrupt behaviour or Rishabh had brutally vandalized my independence and our equality. I could observe a change in his attitude right from the very next day. I decided against borrowing any CEO position and chose the designation of Creative Director for myself.

  Unable to take the upheaval single-handedly, I called Priya and asked her to come over. I nagged about Rishabh all throughout. She remained quiet and said at last, ‘Understanding is the key to a successful relationship. Ignore little fights like this.’

  ‘Would you not feel bad about the fact that someone other than your boyfriend has become the CEO of his own company?’

  ‘Umm, I would be rather proud if that helps his company get bigger. You will always remain a co-founder—nobody can snatch that from you,’ she said with an unrealistic serenity in her voice.

  I could not tell whether she was on my side or his.

  As the days passed, the designation of Creative Director settled in my mind. I didn’t fret about it anymore, now that everyone had accepted it. But there was something else that kept bothering me—Rishabh’s growing encroachment on my domain. Unable to find interested investors, he focussed all his energies into the management of the venture. He wanted everything organized—next week’s posts,
the number of hours of work of my interns, the designs of the contests, and so on.

  The overhead costs were also quite high due to the three interns that had recently joined us, burning 15,000 rupees per month, coupled with another 25,000 per month on rental, electricity, phones and food and around 2,000 rupees on the server. Desperate for funds, we had said a yes to the IIN presentation on November 28. Meanwhile, we created a database of around 200 investors across India from LinkedIn and Twitter.

  On the 27th, I didn’t do any significant work for I was busy practising for the presentation the next day and in the process, I had forgotten to update our daily report spreadsheet.

  At 5 in the evening, Rishabh, my start-up’s CEO, called me.

  ‘Amol, why is your work spreadsheet not updated? What are you busy with?’

  ‘Oh, I was practising for tomorrow’s presentation. I’m confident we will nail it tomorrow.’

  ‘Why do you need to compromise your work for that? Moreover, you don’t need to practice. Let one of us speak and as I’m the CEO, it’s better if I speak.’

  ‘But…’ I felt choked and could not utter a single word. With that one sentence, he had alienated me from my venture. I cut the call.

  I called Priya. Her phone was busy. I tried once again. It remained busy. Ten minutes later, she called me back.

  ‘Who were you talking to?’ I grunted.

  ‘Anirudh. Don’t be angry, please.’

  ‘Fuck you! You cheat,’ I yelled in helplessness.

  ‘No, nothing like that has happened. I promise.’

  ‘But why do you need to talk to him? Why?’

  ‘Four days ago, he messaged me to ask if I was doing alright.’

  ‘And you bothered to reply!’

  ‘Yes, I was not feeling good about using him the last time.’

  ‘Oh God! Come on, he’s my batchmate. If you go around with him, it would totally ruin my friend circle. Anirudh and I have so many mutual friends that it would be humiliating for me if you fall for him.’

  ‘I won’t fall for him.’

  ‘But you will continue talking to him, right? Remember when I got back to you, I did that with all my heart; I never ever talked to Shikha thereafter and the only time I did was in front of you.’

  She didn’t respond.

  ‘What happened to what you’d felt on your birthday? All those feelings were fake, a bunch of lies?’

  ‘Those were the feelings that I had on that particular day. Now, I don’t feel that way. Simple.’

  ‘Look, if you don’t want to be with me, clearly tell me. I’m so busy nowadays that I would rather be happy doing my work than concentrating on your whereabouts.’

  ‘Frankly speaking, though I have come back to you, I cannot make myself fall in love with you. This doesn’t imply that I want to be with Anirudh. I want to be left alone.’

  ‘Okay, just make one promise to me that you would not get into a relationship or be physically involved with anyone until I’m over you completely, which might take three to four months. Okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘You are a free bird lady, enjoy your life,’ I said to which she said a mild thank you.

  In a day, I had let go of two of my most precious possessions—my command over the venture and the woman I loved. The next day, we reached the IIN office in South Ex ten minutes late due to Rishabh’s complacent nature.

  We were seated in a soundproof room and were surrounded by ten investors, casually dressed, fair skinned Indians with American accents. Rishabh began the PPT introducing himself as the CEO, which automatically shifted their entire focus on him. When I tried to answer a question asked by one of the investors, Rishabh tapped on my knee beneath the table, asking me to stop. I didn’t relent, to his disappointment. The presentation seemed to have gone smoothly, and we went home anticipating the outcome. The result was to come in a fortnight.

  Two weeks later, IIN responded. Politely, diplomatically, and curtly, they said no, as none of the investors were ready to bet money on us. They wanted run-of-the-mill ideas whose market had already been tested, ideas where their low risk appetite could give them assured returns.

  Mid-December

  There is a famous saying about investors and entrepreneurs that when you need money, ask for advice and when you need advice, ask for money.

  Despite not being able to generate interest from investors whom we’d talked to earlier we were not deterred. We had tasted the acidic waters of entrepreneurship. We had won awards. We had been covered by major national dailies. We had more than 25 corporate clients, including start-ups, authors, publishing houses, and even a low-budget Bollywood movie, a revenue of more than 13 lakhs, 95 percent of which was fromT-shirts, which we had stopped retailing however. We had a stable product. Most importantly, we were two people with complementary skills from IIT Delhi, the birthplace of the biggest names in the Indian start-up space like Flipkart, Zomato etc.

  After IIN rejected us, Rishabh took the list of 200 investors that we had prepared and attacked each one of them with vengeance. Being the CEO of the venture, he took it upon himself to reach out to all the investors through mail. Rishabh proved himself worthy of his position. He skipped his lunch and dinner and didn’t get up from his seat until he had sent separate mails to all the investors on the list.

  I, despite being one grade below him in designation, sent him a congratulatory mail in appreciation of his diligence. He replied with a mild thanks and a snide comment, ‘I set an example of the kind of work I expect from us. Make sure you follow.’

  I cursed myself for appreciating him in the first place.

  Three days later, while we had received five rejections and twelve out-of-office replies, I was pleasantly surprised to see Purnesh’s name on my cellphone screen. We had not sent him our PPT because in his last talk to us, he had asked us to try our luck elsewhere as his Excel Ventures were not interested enough in us.

  I picked up his call in great anticipation.

  ‘Hi Purnesh. How have you been?’ I said loudly. Rishabh came near me and made me switch the speaker on.

  ‘I’m great Amol. I called you for a reason. When you guys had been in touch with me, why did you have to send mails to other investors without consulting me?’ he quizzed. I looked at Rishabh, confused. He looked delighted and hinted incoming money to me.

  ‘I’m really sorry Purnesh. We didn’t realize that Excel was interested in us,’ I said with a satisfied smile.

  ‘No, Excel is still not interested,’ Purnesh said, adding to our confusion. ‘It’s just that I was your senior, from the same alma mater, and I felt it to be my responsibility to guide you with pros and cons about pitching for investment this season.’

  It was the first time we realized the vast storehouse of help that our alma mater was in terms of our prominent and generous alumni. But with the intonation of Purnesh’s voice, it seemed that not taking help from our college’s resources turned out to be costly for us.

  ‘Season?’

  ‘Yes, December is a bad season. Very few new investments are carried out in this season. Most of the angels right now are on vacation, out of office. When they will come back to work, your mail will be lost in the heap of countless other mails.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ I uttered. Rishabh grabbed the phone from me.

  ‘Purnesh, Rishabh this side. What if we send another mail the next month as well?’

  ‘No use. You guys spammed the entire investor belt. You failed to prove your loyalty or interest to any particular investor and thus lost credibility. That’s how I got to know about the fact that you spammed, because some of the investors who I know had been discussing about YourQuote with contempt, even on their social networks.’

  ‘Damn!’

  What seemed to be Rishabh’s diligence turned out to be our biggest mistake. Purnesh continued and said that we had even failed to check with the profile of the investor before mailing; because some retail and real-estate investors, having no
synergy with our idea, had received our mails. We were damned. After putting our feet in the entrepreneurial water, we had mistakenly washed them with sulfuric acid.

  ‘What should we do now?’ I asked Purnesh.

  ‘Find an incubator. Work hard and be pitch-ready. Make sure your progress in the next three months makes them forget about the spam story.’

  This time, when I had the opportunity to charge Rishabh for his casual errors in execution, he decided to flee.

  ‘I urgently need to go to IIT. I have to meet an incubator guy there as well. Meanwhile make sure that the creative posts for the next one week are maintained,’ he said and rushed out.

  Kanpur Times

  January 2012

  The eventful year seemed like it had passed by in a blur. I contrasted my current life with my life a year ago. There were too many changes to count and instead of regretting some things that had gone wrong in the past, I chose to concentrate on the present.

  In the course of tireless work, needless discussions, and several battles related to the venture, I had given Priya ample space to do whatever she wanted to do with her life. She used to hang out with Shendu and company, go on out for coffee with Anirudh, go shopping at Zara, the only brand she wore, with Kamna, and spend half of her meagre salary buying dresses in the latest fashion. I didn’t accompany her for one more reason—I was financially wretched and it hurt my self respect if she offered to share money for we were not a couple anymore.

  Of late the clients we were getting for the contest section of our website were all from barter deals, thus bringing no revenue and making it increasingly different for us to continue with the interns. I had to fire them all, except one. Rishabh was in talks with a start-up incubator which offered 10 lakh rupees for 10 percent equity i.e. a valuation of 1 crore. Our grand valuation of 4–5 crores a few months ago was suddenly pulled down to a mere 1 crore, but even that seemed lucrative at this point. The incubator SproutLabs was run by a noted media group and other than money, it offered office space in Noida for three months, access to renowned mentors, and a demo day, where we could pitch our idea to a panel of prominent investors.