ENTREPRENEUR/ STARTUP SPECIAL ............Thank God I Failed 1.RAGHAV VERMA

STARTUP SPECIAL Thank God I Failed

1.RAGHAV VERMA

Prepped by Failure

After working for two years for a US-head quartered management consultant firm out of Noida, it dawned on Raghav Verma that being employed was not his cup of tea. So the IIT-Delhi alumnus quit his job in early 2012 and started PrepSquare with a former colleague in July, 2012.

A video-based online test preparation startup, PrepSquare provided a library of test and associated video lectures from some of India's best teachers for competitive exams like IIT-JEE and CAT. It worked on a revenue-sharing model with teachers, had packages starting from `2,000 and managed to enroll over 15,000 students.That wasn't enough.

“What went wrong was timing and funding,“ says the 28-year-old, stressing that there was nothing wrong with the business model.

PrepSquare was started with an assumption that students, who were paying lakhs for coaching, wouldn't mind paying a fraction of that amount to buy much better and advanced packages, says Verma. “But a pureplay online solution was something people were sceptical about.“

The startup needed funds to make an offline debut, which weren't coming. After four months, PrepSquare was shut down.“We are not programmed to think about failure. So we underestimate the chances of fail ure,“ says Verma, who wasted little time in looking for new opportunities.The same month, he teamed up with IIT-Bombay alumnus Nitin Saluja to start Chaayos.

A startup selling tea through nine outlets in Delhi-NCR, Chaayos found the perfect ingredient to get going -capital. `2 crore as angel funding came from Powai Lake Ventures; and, more recently, in its first round of institutional funding in May, the Gurgaon-based company got $5 million from Tiger Global, its first investment in a non-technology consumer startup in India. Ola Cabs founder Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati too invested an undisclosed amount in the company.

Chaayos, which sells 1 lakh cups of tea in a month, is targeting close to 30 lakh cups within 18 months, and plans to take its store count to 60 by next May from nine currently. In April, it launched its mobile app, which allows customers to get snacks and tea delivered. Chaayos gets 45% of its revenue from food sold in the cafés and is generating profits at a store level.

Verma attributes part of the success of Chaayos to his failed venture. “Failures are fingerposts on the road to achievement,“ he ponders. Hopefully, PrepSquare was the first and last one.

ETM26JUL15