All in, Just a year!

 My father used to recite me some very powerful quotes and stories when I was a Kid. One of them was the Edison’s famous story where he brushed aside his failure by saying that he knows over 1000 ways in which the Light Bulb cannot be made. In retrospect now I can understand the impact these stories had as they kept on playing in my still developing brain again and again.

Over the years, I have failed many times but have never kept a tab on the failures or successes. Somehow we are also wired to remember our successful life changing moments and forget the role failures have played.

I am not sure how the next 10 years of my life are going to play out but I found the last one year one of the most challenging ones in my adult life. For I have failed multiple times in just a year. So I thought let me just recount what really happened?

1. My venture into building a O2O e-ccommerce company, Pumpkart failed and I had to leave the project. And this was happening while we were entering into a lockdown due to Coorona (which no one in the country was aware of).
2. Planned out to work as a seller to the government organizations for certain set of products and took licence to a software providing tender details. Could not work this out because of the requirement of the tenders were too high and money was to be paid upfront as safety deposit which we were already running short. On top of it Corona happened and everything started shutting down.
3. With the advent of Corona, I tried to do some trading in medical wear like surgical masks. Got stuck with over 2500 masks as we could not sell them out even to the local suppliers as the prices fell very sharply.
4. Tried to work towards monetizing my knowledge through online speeches and lectures but was not able to build audience due to lack of proper social media strategy.
5. Tried my hand at Digital Advertising but could not move beyond a single customer as was running short of funds and was afraid to borrow more in times of Corona.
6. Started ed-tech venture along with Vikram but failed badly after a minor beginner’s luck in a few programs.
7. Tried buying leads from Indiamart to sell them or tade a few products but all the 7-8 leads failed. Could not invest any further.
8. Tried doing some consultancy with a local person Parminder Singh and help a few small MSME players get government loans. But the process was too slow and had to leave it mid way.
9. Tried some consultancy for RCED by helping one of their service providers to start selling their products online on Amazon. But again the process was too slow and had to again abandon midway.
10. Even tried to do online tutions and built a facebook profile of a company by the name MERITO. But could not generate enquiries as did not have sufficient money to invest in digital adds.

In a different time, probably my approach would have been different but in the time of Corona, I wanted instant results. I got them through Digital Advertising which helped me put some food on the table. But these flurry of failures have finally taught me that building anything would take time and is not an instant thing.

Also as I write this, we have already laid out the plan to close down our Pre-Schools to whom we gave ample time. But the idea had an execution flaw which couldn’t be overcome even with time.

So an idea needs time as well as constant improvement in the execution to remain relevant and grow. With this learning of 5 and a half year, I patiently accept my failures to now focus on building something better.