Iterate to Arrive

Story of role-model Aayush Jha

Aayush said, 'In college, I had a passion for cars. I would help my father’s friends find good cars.

I wanted to be an entrepreneur.

I ruled out car-dealer immediately. No scale? Not for me!

I started Think Wheels. We wanted car owning employees in corporates to benefit from bulk deals.

It did not scale up well. A corporate would use our services but we will have to provide pan-India support. We did not have that stretch.

In my quest to find a niche and build a scalable business, I attended a Coursera course from Stanford - ‘How to scale up without screwing up’. 

The course - and my passion for scale -  brought me in contact with Bright Box. 

Their Chairman offered me the India CEO position. It was a break for me.

In the ensuing 2 years, we launched an on-board diagnostic device for cars. It could monitor how the car was driven. 

This had uses. It could help insurance companies charge more premium from rash drivers. 

I learnt to launch a new products, working closely with stakeholders. It affirmed my belief that a scaled up future lay in the products space.

I was iterating. Dancing on the chances that opportunity offered me **yet** moving with each step, closer to where I wanted to go.

I understood the automotive space. I wanted to do a product of my own.

In 2015 - I co-founded Bumper.com. Instead of aggregating customers, we now tried aggregating service providers. 

I preferred the B-B route and offered our services to corporates instead of individuals. This was our way to scale. 

It had its own pains, that limited scale.

At about the same time, my father relocated to Delhi on a transfer and the pollution was so bad that he had to be hospitalized.

In the course of his recovery we installed air purifiers at home. Curious-me opened one up. It opened some new doors for me.

Here was a product that charged 25K for a fan and a filter. People paid because the pain was real.

How could this be done to scale, I wondered, as usual. I tried to apply what I had learnt up to now.

If we could retrofit into an existing product, capex costs would fall. More potential buyers.

If we could sell to a corporate they would buy in bulk.

So I got into the clean air business with ClairCo. 

We said to cult.fit we will host clean air in all your gyms by modifying your ACs. They became our biggest customer.

It was still not the scale we wanted and we were heavily dependent on 1 customer. 

People in a gym sweat and sometimes open windows. The windows open easily enough because the gym is not in a controlled facility. 

If we could find our way into offering clean air when facilities were being constructed, we would touch scale for sure. So we pivoted our business once again and started partnering with the likes of Brigade group.

This helped us finally arrive at what we wanted to do. Difficulties from Covid aside, we have now grown to serve clean air customers, with what we do best and at scale.

I iterated to arrive here.