Thank God I Failed
6.
NIKHIL WASON
No Wild Card, This
A poster of four beer mugs is
plastered on the wall of Nikhil Wason's Delhi office. The `pessimist' mug is
half empty, the `optimist' mug is half full, the `spiritualist' mug is
brimming, and the `realist' mug is empty, as it has been drunk.
“I am a realist. Attitude is
everything,“ says Wason, cofounder of Cardback, an app that shows people the
best way to pay using their credit, debit, prepaid cards and mobile wallets
based on the features, reward points and offers. And consumers get all such
information without sharing their card numbers.
It's the realistic streak in Wasan
that made him strike out for the third time after the first two attempts at
entrepreneurship failed. He flagged off Orangut, a startup dealing with
electronic document and workflow management systems, in May 2009 and shut it in
11 months. He then tried his hand at Happiness Mill, a startup for restaurants
to incentivise customers so they can become their evangelists. That lasted for
just four months. One big reason for both the ventures unravelling was a split
in the founding teams.
“Not all startups need cofounders;
if at all you need one, then choose wisely,“ shrugs Wasan. For Cardback, Wasan
has chosen to go it alone, with multiple funders. The venture has raised `1
crore as angel investment from Google India's Rajan Anandan, angel investor
Sunil Kalra, Rishi Srivastava, Alok Mittal and a few others. The app has got
75,000 registered users, suppor ts over 800 c ards across 10 major banks and
three wallets and is present in Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Pune, Chennai and
Hyderabad. Though not in the black yet, Wason has been piloting some products
with the banks and hopes to monetise them soon.
Wason is upbeat about prospects -and
not just because he doesn't have cofounders to deal with. He sees huge
potential in a virtually untapped market: while India had over 21 million
credit card users till April 2015, the number for debit card users stands at
564 million. “There is a big need for this product,“ he says, adding that
whilst Orangut was ahead of its time, Cardback has got its timing right.
It's not been an easy ride for the
30-year old. His family started worrying about his future, and his savings
drowned in the first two startups. “The only thing that I said to myself after
every failure was: Why not give it another shot,“ says Wason.
This one's clearly not the longest
of the three.
ETM26JUL15
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