Last six months of 2020

Last six months of 2020

Surprisingly for me, last six months were far less stressful than ever in my journey of starting up, even when they were all about facing difficult choices and making tough decisions.

Hire or fire?

Mask or Saree?

Continue or shut shop?

Have I learned to live with stress or built resilience?

Without further ado, let’s pick up from where we’d left-

July:

1-Continued with mask production and everything else mentioned in the previous blog post.

2-We got selected for the Industry disruptor program by the UN, We empower Asia and The Do School. It was the best program I have been a part of so far. So many great sessions by experts. Got the opportunity to know many new startups which are doing great work in the sustainability space. One of the best things that came out of this program was getting Sonica Sarna as a mentor. Sonica has been in the industry for more than 20 years. I am in awe of her inspiring work. She will play an important role in September. Please check out her work here.

August:

Mask production again but it was not enough to cover expenses. I had started to lose hope and had almost decided to shift to a smaller place.

September:

1. On boarded a big client for Mask production.

2. Had a mentorship call with Sonica. She was brutally honest and zeroed in on the reason for the challenges that I was facing within minutes. It was an eye-opener. This one phone call at the right time could have saved me a lot of time and money but it’s never too late. That’s the value of having a mentor who has learned from experience.

One of the downsides of being the decision maker is that you can’t blame anybody else for the blunders but yourself. It was difficult to accept that I had made a mistake and move on. But I had no other choice but to convince myself to fix it, learn from it and repeat it NEVER.

3. However, there’s always a silver lining. Out of all these mistakes and lessons came something great which I am thrilled about and that’s the only reason that I have started believing in ‘everything happens for a reason’ again. May be I was meant to go through all of it for a bigger reason. I am super excited about it and will be revealing it as soon as possible.

October:

1-On-boarded Mohini as an intern but she has pretty much transformed herself into a factory manager’s role. Mohini’s passion, patience, a learner’s attitude and dedication to get the job done shows how much she loves and enjoys what she does! Grateful to have her in the team!

2-Set up an advisory board with industry experts as our advisors. Should’ve done it earlier.

Also, more mask production.

November:

1-Got selected for Investor Consortium program by UN India and NITI Aayog which is to support startups to be investible and get them access to funding.

2- Registered AseemShakti Foundation (ASF) Trust for easier administrative purposes. Got my dearest friend Sandhya as a Co-Founder for ASF.

Our initiatives, AseemKaushal ( Skill- Development) and AseemSehat ( Mental and Physical well being of our beneficiaries) will be routed through ASF. It will act as a capacity partner for AseemShakti Pvt. Ltd.

December:

We got a Facebook grant which comprised cash, ad credits for Instagram and multiple other useful offers along with access to some great master classes which look super useful. Looking forward to it. This will definitely give us a boost.

Lessons:

1- If you give people multiple chances to break your trust, they will. Fix it the first time itself.

2- Be loyal to the vision of the company not people.

3- Be fair to yourself too.

5- To err is human. Mistakes are an opportunity to pause, learn and restart. It may cost you a lot but learning is never free.

6- Compartmentalize personal and professional equation by communicating clearly and by setting expectations since the beginning. Do not be a slave to your emotions.

7- One big client and a support system that’s all you need to continue when you are losing hope. Do not surround yourself with pessimists.

8- You WILL lose everything if you lose hope. Do not lose hope. Surround yourself with people( or things or quotes whatever works for you) who will remind you what you set out to do when you start to lose hope.

9. Celebrate small wins. Very important to keep you going.

Honourable mentions:

1. Being a solo founder it gets extremely lonely sometimes. The single most reason why I missed having a co-founder was because I didn’t have anybody to brainstorm ideas with or just have long convesations about work. I am extremely grateful to Abhijeet and Radhika who not just spend time with me but are also our biggest supporters and pitch for AseeemShakti whenever they see an opportunity for us. I don’t miss having co-founders now 😊

2. The focus now would be to:

• Create a successful minimalist business.
• Define growth.
• Screw timelines
• Read and learn from material only relevant to us. ( Reading how a Fintech/Ed-tech startup which grew exponentially in 2 years can be dangerous :P)
• Be profitable
• Be Profitable
• Be Profitable and then think of exponential growth.
• I had to make a choice between focusing on building a brand or Pivot to generate immideate revenue.

I asked myself what would be the right thing to do and let’s see what it led to:

• Sunita paid her house rent from her income from AseemShakti because her husband didn’t get his salary due to the lockdown repercussions.
• Asha for the first time is being ‘allowed to’ work because her husband lost her job (courtesy-Corona)) is now the bread-winner of the family.
• Kaushalya contributed to the hospital’s fees for her husband’s treatment.
• Kiran feels ‘Atmanirbhar’

I chose to generate revenue over building the brand this year. Was it a wise thing to do? May be. Was it worth it? Hell, yeah!

Overall, It was a difficult year but when was it easy, anyway?

To paint a picture, starting AseemShakti was like building a cricket team in Lagaan. It was definitely not easy to convince people to learn a new skill from scratch for their own good, build resources and compete against the experts. (we do have similar characters in the team and I have been jokingly compared to Bhuvan sometimes :D)

I was worried about brand’s slow growth or absence of exponential growth but I think this is what I set out to do and everything else is just bonus.

Besides, who sets these timelines for growth? You do what works for you. Most importantly, do what keeps you stress free.

Some advisors, articles, books don’t agree with me but my anthem for 2021 is:

Nahi Samjhe hain woh humein, toh kya jata hai?

Haari baazi ko jeetna, humein aata hai!

Thank you for reading.

Wishing you all a blessed 2021