This is a straight from the heart account of what I went through this year and why I started The Indian Dream Project.
The Crash of the Jenga Tower
All these years, I had been building a Jenga tower in my head. The Jenga bricks were my self-identity, societal identity, experience and all kinds of baggage. Then in the December of 2019, I went through a personal tragedy and the Jenga tower crashed.
I remember being lost, confused, and in an extremely dark place in my head. I had no anchor. I couldn't even relate to the old me. I couldn't recover from the trauma.
I had to rebuild from scratch.
Laying the New Foundation
Beginning of this year, I took a sabbatical from work. Thanks to the amazing people at Ofbusiness who gave me this option, which provided me a lot of mental stability. I decided to take it one day at a time and began with the core question of how I wanted to spend my days.
I started with a blank state. I spent time on things that brought me joy and I eliminated habits that I didn't want to bring over from my previous self. The first was quitting smoking (260 days since I last smoked a cigarette). In a weird way, the pandemic curveball made my support system stronger with everyone now available to interact and engage way more. This made the rebuild easier.
While I was making progress on the personal front, I was still lost and confused on the professional front. I was anxious about what I could do and started looking at all ideas and options with a negative lens. I was desperately hoping for an inspirational break through to strike and give me direction.
Action > Everything Else.
My biggest source of learning and inspiration came from watching Neetika, my better half, execute. Quick back story: Neetika had plans to quit her job and start something since last year. She had invested and set the foundation for a couple of ideas that she wanted to pursue. In spite of the family circumstances, we decided to stick to the plan and pursue those ideas.
Then came the pandemic and all our plans were thrown out the window. The idea didn't have a place in the Post-Covid world. I saw her pivot in real-time. And I saw her execute to try new things. She's still on a journey to figure out what she wants to build, but not once has she stopped executing and evolving.
This single learning changed the game for me.
I realized that the only way to move forward in life is by taking action. Action builds momentum. And momentum is a superpower.
For all these years, I was being a critic to myself. I would come up with excuses to not act. Deep down, it was just the fear of failure. And once I saw it clearly, I decided to drop that fear completely.
I started taking action. Whatever felt right in that moment, I put my time and focus to it. I didn't have any expectations of what different projects would evolve into. As long as I was chasing my curiosity and acting on them, I didn't let anxiety get the better of me. For the first time in life, I truly understood the difference between constantly seeking the 'destination' vs enjoying the 'journey'. This time, I wanted to enjoy the journey.
The Journey from Critic to Creator
I started taking interesting online courses, talking to people I had lost touch with, and just reading good books. For the first time in my life, I wasn't in a rush to be somewhere. I gave myself the time and anxiety-free space to figure out what I wanted to spend the next decade doing. (There were still days where I felt like shit, but thanks to all the friends and family, it was easy to bounce back the next day. I'd be down in the dumps if not for them.)
One serendipitous conversation with Sahil (after 10 years!) led to a discussion on how the current business media coverage was either focused on the large conglomerates (TATA, Reliance, Adani etc.) or on the VC backed hyper-funded startups. We both grew up in SME business families and realized that there was a fat middle of profitable, bootstrapped entrepreneurship that no one was talking about. And it was this kind of entrepreneurship (Dhanda!) that most interested me and where I had the desire to build.
That's when I pitched the idea of starting a podcast around the stories of entrepreneurs who've built profitable businesses. I was confident of finding enough (and more!) stories. My stint at Ofbusiness exposed me to many such entrepreneurs across the country who had fascinating stories of grit, resilience and strategic brilliance. I was sure that sharing these stories with the world would inspire younger generations along the way.
Confident with my newfound desire for Action, I sent Sahil a note on the thesis of the podcast within 30 minutes of our call. In the next 25 days, we kept taking small steps and built momentum to eventually launch the first three episodes on 19th July 2020.
The Indian Dream Takes Shape
We tapped into our networks to do the first few interviews and iterated on improving the format. This is probably the first creative project of my life. The act of creation and talking to the entrepreneurs is so rewarding in itself that it was easy to keep making progress even when the initial numbers on the podcast were low.
However, we soon started hearing good things from strangers who had heard our episodes. That gave us the necessary push to keep making the content better. Over the last 3 months, we've spoken to 20+ entrepreneurs across different industries and dug deep into their journeys to pick out the unique insights that helped them build their businesses. I've loved creating every single episode and I have a personal target to take this to atleast 100 before I decide if I want to continue doing the podcast or not! You can checkout the podcasts here.
Solving for your own Itch
While the podcast was great to help me channelize my creative energy, it was pretty clear that a Podcast couldn't be a source of revenue. I was still on the lookout for something to focus the next decade on. I let my curiosity take me in different directions and explore different Industries/markets. I kept talking to people to get a deeper understanding about what to build.
Similarly, Sahil has always been keen on researching new markets and ideas to invest.
That's when we came up with the idea of Trends. We spent so much time researching topics and speaking to people and we could easily make it open for the larger audience. We realized that we could build a community of like-minded people who are curious about the future of products and want to build or invest in them early. This time again, we dipped into our curiosity and took action!
We started a newsletter and released podcast episodes of the discussions we had with industry experts and startup operators. Our first topic was the Hemp & Medicinal Cannabis Industry in India (I also sourced my first angel investment in the process of researching). Since then we've done Audience-First Products, and Cloud Kitchens with Ayurveda 2.0 and Electric Vehicles just around the corner. Only 6 topics till date but this involved talking to dozens of people from diverse backgrounds and initiating contact with far more. I would have never spoken to most of these people if not for my most basic learning - Take Action.
This week, we released a terrific report & podcast on Micro-SaaS - something I've been curious about for months. We got to speak to several people with deep from this industry. My next step is to Act on this now. Build or Invest in this space. My curiosity has been itched for now.
At least until the next trend that piques my interest.
Where are we today?
A place where I couldn't have imagined myself 3 months back. If not for that single learning of taking action, we wouldn't have released 21 episodes of TID podcast & 4 editions of the Trends Newsletter (With many more coming up!)
And we surely wouldn't have reached Top 10 in the Business Category, Top 4 in the Entrepreneurship Category and Top in the 'Inspiration for Business' category on Apple Podcasts!!!
What next for TID?
We're going to continue with the Founder Journeys & Trends Series. However, our goal has always been to build a community of people who relate to the kind of content we're creating. The idea is for the members to discover new opportunities to build, invest and work together on. As part of building the community, we're exploring different ideas: Masterclasses, AMAs, Book Club. We're still iterating on how to build this :)
If you're interested in this or have point of views on how we can do this, would love to hear from you!
Time for me to be shameless and ask for help 🙂
If you have liked our content or if you just like me 😆, consider helping us, please?
- We're looking to collaborate with people on writing the Trends newsletter on upcoming market trends. Would you or anyone you know be interested in doing this? If so, drop us an email at theindiandream20@gmail.com
- Can you help us spread the word about the Podcast and the newsletter? The best way to do that is to share this link of a Whatsapp group where we post quick summaries of the Podcast & Newsletter. No spam, only 2-3 messages a week.
- Do you know anyone doing interesting stuff in the Ayurveda, Eclectic Vehicles, D2C Brand space that you can connect us with? We'd want to explore doing a podcast with them for our Trends Series.
- Lastly, know any bootstrapped entrepreneurs who've built a successful business and have an interesting story to share? Please connect us.
What next for me?
Well, I'm still figuring out what I want to focus on professionally for the next decade. Neetika and I are doing a bunch of interesting experiments to figure out an opportunity that we want to pounce on. And thanks to our decent saving habits, we have given ourselves enough of a runway to go out and explore. Hopefully, we figure out our entrepreneurial journey before we have to go back looking for jobs. The old me would've gotten anxious and let the baggage of expectations (self and societal) get the better of me. The new me knows better. Live in the present and keep taking action! Hopefully, the moolah follows.
All of this would not have been possible without the help of my family and friends! So grateful for the support system I have around me. 🙏
Until next time