Learnings from Google
Naiyya
Saggi, founder of BabyChakra, on being part of Google’s accelerator programme
and how it has helped a baby care venture think big
Artificial intelligence and machine learning are probably
the technologies (and hashtags) that will define our generation. In all the
buzz that surrounds them though, the major breakthroughs come quietly from a
gargantuan source: Google. Its six-month Launchpad Accelerator Program gives
access to cutting-edge AI solutions within Google and beyond, early emerging
technologies and unparalleled opportunity to interact with top ventures.
BabyChakra was created with the aim of supporting parents
through pregnancy and parenting. Today, we are India’s fastest growing app and
website for parents and seamlessly integrate content, connections to the right
community and recommendations on products for a new mother or father. The
ability to match millions of users to each other or to experts, products is
driven by machine learning. (Machine learning is the use of AI to let systems
learn and improve from experience without being programmed) As we scaled, we
found ourselves tackling more complex issues. The application to Google’s
Accelerator was driven by this need to rapidly scale our own knowledge base and
integrations.
Our experience blew us away. First the diversity:
startups from Brazil, Hungary, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Nigeria, South Africa etc
were present in our cohort. These startups cut across fintech, edutech,
healthtech, gaming and ecommerce. Some ventures were large, mature ventures
(one of them had raised a Series E), others were smaller with seed funding.
However, all were selected based on their market and domain leadership and
their path-breaking use of AI.
Second the diversity of mentors matched the diversity of
ventures. Each venture had specific mentors: ours were Adam Berk (a champion of
the Lean Startup movement), Jonathan Lewy (a prolific investor from Mexico) and
Gideon Marks (a Silicon Valley veteran originally from Israel). Apart from our
primary mentors, we had sector/ problem statement-specific mentors too. All the
problem statements we shared had been solved by them multiple times (such as
tips for reducing app size, optimising for low network areas, data scarce
settings optimisation) and as a result, we were able to leapfrog multiple
levels in the two weeks we spent there.
Perhaps the biggest highlights were the daily talks by
industry veterans. We heard, for instance, Vint Cerf, the co-creator of the
internet, on the future technologies he was excited about (and yes,
localisation, multi-language and building for women is key, not to mention,
building internet connections for inter-planetary connections (ie Mars).Chet
Kapoor (founder of Apogee, sold to Google) told his candid story of scaling
Apogee to selling to Google. Dan Arielly spoke about in applying behavioural
economics to product and design thinking. The highlight for our team was the
frank conversation Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO, had with all our teams on
building companies to scale. The one message that stood out: approach growth as
a company-wide mission and as a goal by itself.
Here are our three takeaways from Google Accelerator:
Look under
the Hood:
We live
in a world where technology makes life easy. We work hard every day to ensure
that our users have an easy experience using our platform. One of the most
counter-intuitive pieces of advice was: while we continue working hard on
making a user’s experience easy, communicate to the user that we are indeed
working too hard. To truly build a relationship with a user, encourage them to
“look under the hood” and see the effort and the process by which we were
helping users.
Ecosystems
for the Win:
One of
our mentors, Chris Hueur, advised us to constantly think about ecosystems we
were building in and could leverage as we grew. For instance, the internet
really expanded at the time when mobile phone was commercially launched. While
the two inventions were happening in parallel, they were not built to
intersect. Serendipity was stronger than intent though, and the two
technologies bumped into each other and exploded.
Product is
More Emotion than Technology:
The core of BabyChakra is personalisation: we help
parents get the right content, access to community of parents and experts and
products. However, personalisation is a holy grail, one that many massive
companies are trying hard to solve. Coming as most startup founders do from an
engineering or business background, we would talk about how to build on our
tech stack and improve functionality and accuracy in relevance. The response to
these questions surprised us. A mentor flatly told us: “Product is less about
technology and more about emotion.”
The biggest takeaway was the incredible excitement
everyone had about our solution. Every individual we met asked us our plan for
global expansion and pitched back to us how simple yet essential our solution
is. For a young venture based in India, tackling a new problem, especially one
with no parallels in the Unites States, this feedback was incredibly exciting.
ETM 25FEB18
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