From Jugaad to Algorithmic Jugaad: Mobisy’s untold Story!
Lalit’s entrepreneurial journey started by coding, Shree’s accidental journey as a founder started by decoding, and Mobisy got a buyer even before the company was born! Find out how the core team of Mobisy overcame countless odds and debilitating lows to script a riveting tale of dogged perseverance, unflinching optimism, and steely confidence.
“Now I was 100% owner of a 100% bankrupt company…” it was 2009, eight years of stimulating corporate life was followed by two years of gruelling bootstrapped life, and the software engineer gave his 100% to make things happen. The result, though, was 100% opposite of what Lalit Bhise expected. “Forget zero, we were zero minus 10,” says the first-time founder whose entrepreneurial journey was founded on the foundations of six months of ‘mental masturbation’ and a foxy jugaad.
Lalit takes us back to 2006. It was sometime during the middle of the year. “I am looking for a cofounder,” confessed Chhavi Gupta who had taken Lalit out for lunch. Lalit, who was already two years into his stint at Infineon technologies, too wanted to start something of his own. There was a match of minds, convergence of intent, and the game of entrepreneurship got seeded. There was one small problem, though.
The rookies wanted to be entrepreneurs but had no clarity on what to do. For the next six months, they brainstormed. Lalit has an interesting term to describe 180 days of ideation. “We called it mental masturbation,” he says. The friends explored ideas, experimented with plans, and delved into all possible permutations and combinations. Nothing worked, though. The full-time work was punctuated with part-time thoughts about entrepreneurship.
Then one fine day, the young minds decided to take an audacious short-cut. In one of the startup conferences in Bengaluru, Lalit bumped into a foreign founder who was talking about his expansive roll-up play, and how he was acquiring a string of smaller companies with the ambition of morphing them into something large. “We have a startup, and we would like to be part of your company,” Lalit proposed to the visiting entrepreneur who entertained the greenhorn and was open to the idea of buying the startup. “We will be happy to acquire you,” he said exhibiting his keenness.
Lalit, meanwhile, looked elated. And why wouldn’t he? The prospects of selling a startup which was still a figment of imagination was outrageously ballsy and adventurous. “We were about to sell a company which didn’t even exist on paper,” he says.
Abortive sell-out, four musketeers & smoky future
The brazen jugaad was never meant to work. After three weeks, the friends were caught with their pants down. The potential acquirer realised that a bunch of adventurous kids were playing a prank and trying to build something out of thin air. The acquisition plan, therefore, got nixed. But the episode had a serious fallout. Buoyed by the prospects of being acquired, Lalit and his friend had resigned from their jobs. “Now we couldn’t go back, so we decided to continue,” says Lalit, who convinced two more friends from Infineon to join the yet-to-be launched startup. “That’s how Mobisy started,” he says.
Well, the bootstrapped journey started, and four daring cofounders tried to build a product. The plan was to build a mobile web runtime or a mobile operating system, where one could write cross-platform applications. The operational structure of the fledgling startup was diligently worked out. While Chaavi used to work as a consultant with a bunch of companies and pump in money to run Mobisy, Lalit and others used to write codes and build products. In a year, the friends managed to construct a platform. With the venture still making tardy progress, Lalit wanted Chaavi to join full-time, which he did over the next few months. Now all cofounders were immersed in shaping their dreams, the team size swelled to close to a dozen, and still there was no breakthrough in sight.
What, though, was in sight was an eye-sore. Countless cigarette butts were littered all across the small room, hordes of liquor bottles unwittingly occupied the constricted space, expenses of the startup started mounting at an alarming rate, and there was a serpentine queue of debtors knocking on the door. “We used to smoke a lot and drink a lot,” says Lalit, who didn’t realise that in the absence of a regular source of income, office expenses would soon look like a mountain. “We didn’t have money to pay rent,” he says. From selling laptops, disposing off office furniture and petty haggling with lenders, Lalit and his gang did all fix finances. But with all savings getting exhausted, the situation had deteriorated beyond repair. “We failed miserably,” he says.
Back in 2009, the startup ran out of steam, the idea and the product was ahead of the time, and the friends went bankrupt. With nothing working out, the cofounders decided to part ways and hunt for jobs. Lalit, though, stayed adamant. “I’m not done yet,” he declared his intent, which sounded brash to be honest. “You have no money, two kids and a family to look after. How will you continue,” asked his friends who returned their equity to Lalit, who was now 100% owner of a 100% bankrupt venture. “I just want to give it a shot,” said Lalit, who was clueless when it came to managing finances.
Here comes Shree, and Ghar Kaisey Chalaingey!
Enter Shree, Lalit’s wife. So far, she was a mute spectator to the shambolic state of affairs. Shree, who was Lalit’s college mate and fell for the ‘tall, dark, handsome, and immensely intelligent guy,’ took up a job when Lalit decided to pursue his entrepreneurial dream. For two years, she worked full-time as well as used to help the greenhorns with admin stuff, accounting, and writing policy documents. Now it was time for a loving wife to decode what was going wrong in Lalit’s life. “I can’t let you continue with this startup,” she declared once Lalit revealed his intent to continue with his startup gig. “Stop all this, and look for a job,” she pronounced her verdict.
Lalit was emotionally devastated. The failed founder was obsessively consumed with his entrepreneurial dream. All that he knew was coding. All that he could do was coding. And all that he could visualise was coding. “Apart from startup there is nothing else I can do in life,” he pleaded. Shree, though, remained unshakeable. Her anger was justified. Her unrelenting stand made complete sense. The ‘intelligent guy’ had financially messed up, the startup had not made any headway in two years, and a fuming Shree was in no mood to let Lalit’s life drift recklessly.
The founder, meanwhile, started mulling the option of taking up a job. “I’m going to stop doing whatever I have been doing,” he informed his mother. “I have run out of money,” he said. His mother was visibly upset. “How much money do you need? I have Rs 10 lakh in my PF. Take all, but pursue your dream,” she said to her son. Lalit hugged her, and assured that he would never take money from her.
Emboldened by the support and love of her mother, Lalit made one last desperate attempt to get approval from his better half. “Please let me continue,” he pleaded. Shree could sense the helplessness of her husband, and realised that a divorce with the startup world would have been catastrophic for Lalit. She relented, but smartly added a clause. “I would let you continue on one condition,” she proposed. “From now on, I will manage the finances,” she asserted. Lalit nodded in nano seconds. He got his new cofounder. ‘Durga’ was now ready to play the role of ‘Lakshmi.’ But there was a small problem for both of them: ‘Ghar kaisey chalaenhey’ (how will we manage the household expenses). An excel sheet with the header — Ghar kaisey chalainngey’ — was made; it was unanimously decided that Lalit would put his ‘product’ dream idea on hold, and pursue the low-hanging fruit — services; and the entrepreneur was all ready to make a new start in 2009.
Two years later, in 2011, Mobisy had made heady progress. The team size had again swelled to 20, services business was paying rich dividends, and Lalit’s financial woes were a thing of the past. Everybody was happy, and the entrepreneur too should have been. But he was not. “We were making money, there was a decent margin but services was not something that I ever wanted to do,” says Lalit, who continued to trek with a heavy heart.
Accident, accidental thought & reboot
The turning point came in May, 2011. On a cycling ride with his family and ion-laws, Lalit met with an accident. It was pitch dark at night, the founder was cycling down to the base of a mountain camp, and a truck hit him from behind. He was hospitalised, operated upon, and three months later came a shocking discovery: the operation was not successful. This meant another surgery. “For one-and-a-half years, my right arm was in cast,” says Lalit. The long recovery period triggered a profound self-realisation. “What am I doing with my life,” he wondered. Lalit survived an almost-fatal accident, got a new life but nothing changed in his entrepreneurial world. “A new life can’t be wasted by doing old things,” he said to himself. “Enough of services. I had to do a product,” he made up his mind.
This time, though, Lalit was not reckless. He discussed the idea with a bunch of FMCG entrepreneurs, took advance money from five potential customers and rolled out Bizom in 2013. “I sat at home, wrote the code with my left hand, built the first version of Bizom,” he says. Shree, meanwhile, gave her full support. “I hate his guts, but I love his ambition,” she smiles. There was an element of massive risk in switching to a product business, but Shree was ready for all consequences. “It was his dream, he had been nursing it for years, and being with him was the least I could do to make his dream come true,” she says.
The dream turned out to be a nightmare for others. Lalit went back to his team — around 18 of them — and broke the news that the company is making a pivotal shift. “What this means is that for the next six months, there are going to be no salaries,” he announced. “Whoever wants to leave can leave. I won’t be able to pay unless there is a recurring stream of revenue,” he made his point clear. “Many people left us We were again back to six people,” he says. In 2013, Mobisy had its first institutional round of funding. Two years later, in 2015, Lalit rolled out another product Distiman. Over the next few quarters, things kept moving at a brisk pace. But there was something bothering Lalit. And it was not revenue. It had nothing to do with scale. And it was not about Bizom at all. Bizom, in fact, was firing on all cylinders.
Then what was it? In 2017, there was a spate of resignations. Much like a ‘Snakes and ladders’ game from 2011 to 2014, every time the headcount would touch 20, it would fall. It happened again, this time the headcount was 120, and the engineer was quick to join the dots to spot a pattern. He tried decoding the recurring fault line. “Am I the wrong guy to be the CEO? Am I the wrong one to head engineering,” he wondered. All kinds of self-doubts engulfed him. With no clear answer, he reached out to Sridhar Turaga, who urged Lalit to continue with his entrepreneurial journey in 2009. Almost a decade later, Lalit was back to his mentor. But this time with a different set of problems and propositions. Lalit wanted Sridhar to come on board as CEO.
Self-discovery, Algorithmic Jugaad, & ‘at your own risk’
Sridhar, though, bluntly and politely refused. “Lalit you don’t need a CEO,” he said. The mentor started probing his disciple. “Tell me, who you are,” he asked. Lalit was delighted with the easy nature of the question. “We are a retail intelligence platform,” he confidently summed up the crux of Bizom and the DNA of Mobisy. Sridhar repeated the question. “Who are you.” Lalit came up with a new answer. “We help CPG companies digitalize…” Sridhar asked again, and Lalit dished out a new version of his answer. After an hour or so, Sridhar gave his verdict. “Take two-three weeks, and come back with an answer,” he said. “If the reply convinces me, then I will stay with you for 10 years,” he said. “10 years! I don’t even know if I am continuing in my role for a year,” Lalit wondered.
Lalit came back after three weeks. The guru and shishya immersed themselves in another round of intense brainstorming, and Lalit finally got the answer. “We are an algorithmic jugaad company,” he says. This time, jugaad got quantified and qualified, and it lost its traditional perceived connotation. Algorithmic Jugaad, he explains, is a perfect mix of process and innovation. It’s neither a quick fix nor it is a lengthy process-oriented solution. Lalit goes on to explain another aspect of ‘algorithmic,’ which means perfection. Shree, he points out, is perfectionist. “All the i’s need to be dotted, and all t’s need to be crossed,” he smiles.
Sridhar also helped Lalit rediscover himself. “You are like a rocket, Lalit,” he told his disciple. A Rocket, he underlined, will burn 90% of its energy to just get out of the orbit. As an entrepreneur, Lalit loved to live a life which revolved around zero to one. So even when the company reaches the stage of one, as an entrepreneur Lalit was perpetually hunting for the 0 so that he could scale it to 1. “As an entrepreneur, I was not a good team builder,” he confesses, ruing his inability to build scalable teams.
The problem also stemmed from doing two things which were counter-productive. First, an erroneous belief in ‘fancy resume’ of guys coming from big organisations or grossly-funded fast-scaling startups with high burn rate. Such startups, Lalit reckons, have a tendency to just buy experience with lateral hires. People who have been there, done that. “We tried that strategy but it did not work for us. We think that’s because lateral hires could not imbibe the culture of Bizom,” he says.
But scaling existing teams to take up larger and larger responsibilities is scary. A lot of times they lack the skills and prior experience to fulfil the responsibilities of the role. But it worked for Lalit. He explains why and how. “It worked simply because we looked at that specific weakness as a blessing,” he says. Existing teams did not come with baggage and were willing to try new ideas, fail, iterate and keep trying for fast growth. “We prefer to scale existing teams on any given day,” he says.
Second mistake was Lalit’s hunt for ‘clones.’ “Just because you are workaholic it doesn’t mean you can expect everybody else to be workaholic,” cautioned Sridhar. “The company can’t be crazy. It has to be predictable,” he added. The point was taken. Another mistake was trying hard to raise VC money during the early part of the journey. “I used to be very fanatic about raising money,” he says. “Now, I can say that’s not important,” he says. Money has a purpose. And unless you need that purpose, there is no need to raise money. “Capital, for sure, will not determine your success or failure,” he says.
Okay, mistakes outlined, and lessons learnt. But any suggestions for couple entrepreneurs who are starting their journey? Lalit and Shree quickly dish out a unanimous answer. “Don’t do it. These stunts are performed by professionals.”
