Biz Stone and I knew one another on a need-to-know basis, as my previous startup Innoz had a partnership with Twitter. What started off as a general exchange of ideas on the Indian market and its potential, turned into an investment discussion on Lookup. He also introduced me to Twitter’s other founder, Jack Dorsey, who I turned to for advice.
Facebook also has introduced chatbots. Is it going to help Lookup spread its reach faster?
We are going to launch a Lookup bot inside Facebook shortly. Previously, we launched Lookup inside Twitter called Lookuplite.
What are your plans for Lookup for the future? Where do you see it 5 years from now?
Our future plan is to have 1 million local businesses and 3 million users by 2017 on our platform.
India has over 40 million small urban businesses with less than 10 employees each. These include everything from coffee shops and groceries to small restaurants. Traditional organized retail never really got big in India, our bet is that mobile commerce will leapfrog it and work with mom and pop stores. About 95% of these small merchant businesses (SMBs) do not have a good digital presence.
The future of Lookup would be to bring all the SMB’s online and enable them to do commerce over chat, which we believe is the simplest platform that everyone understands. We want Lookup to become one among the top five apps in India in the next five years.
You are a big soccer fan and it seems that the world of business is not much different from that of soccer. Recently, Leicester City won the Premier League. The odds of Leicester winning at the beginning of the season were 5000/1 and yet the David managed to beat the Goliath. Is Lookup also the David of hyperlocal business ready to take on the Goliath and bring about a disruption!
There is over $10 billion invested in all ecommerce companies in India so far. The odds of Lookup beating these well-funded companies is tough. However, we believe our model is very innovative, and nothing is impossible. Leicester City is definitely an inspiration.
As a young founder, what is your best advice to the budding entrepreneurs?
Take chances when you are young, tell stories when you are old.
A leader you look up to?
By far, my mentor and role model has been Kris Gopalakrishnan, one of the co-founders of Infosys. The biggest learning I got from him was humility. No matter how big and far you get, maintain the simplicity in your life. In other words, work more, worry less. Despite being one of the richest Indians in the world, he leads a simple life and is the humblest of all people. That is how I want to define my life as well.