Pooja K. Kumar and Varsha Vadlamani, Class of 2019

In our little pocket of land in Sonepat, we do a lot to make our homes away from home “ours”. Posters, art and fairy lights have become staples and picking up zines and DIYs equally have become a part of every event on campus. Presenting, Shivani Bajaj and Kamala Rao, both from the Undergraduate Batch of 2019, and the co-founders of Jugnu: an entrepreneurship duo who were pivotal in starting this culture of art on campus.

Jugnu began with a simple idea of positivity. From that thought, Jugnu is now a full-fledged brand which has expanded its product range, is in talks with manufacturers outside and is planning on increasing its scale of operations. Shivani and Kamala have successfully turned a seemingly innocuous hobby into a legitimate business. What started out as one product, the famous ‘Letter-Lights’, has quickly turned into a popular business to the point where people are scrambling to get their hands on Jugnu’s beautiful DIY room decorations.

At the brink of expanding outside the red-brick walls of Ashoka, Team Jugnu, had a sit-down with us to give us a glimpse into their double-act as student and entrepreneur.

Both Shivani and Kamala contributed to each answer together.

How has Jugnu evolved over the past year? What are the highs-and-lows of this journey?

The message of Jugnu, which means ‘light in darkness’ or ‘firefly’, has evolved over our journey. Here, we’re all home away from home, and what we, as Jugnu, wish to do is make our customers’ rooms their ‘happy place’. What the world needs is ‘IN YOUR FACE POSITIVITY’, and that’s what Jugnu stands for. Over the last year, our product range has increased. This makes up one of the most fun parts of the process — the ideation. Running Jugnu is all about the excitement of creation for us. We scroll through Facebook or Instagram looking at existing DIYs for inspiration, but we add our own touch to it. Ideation is as fun as just going to each other’s rooms and saying, “Hey, let’s make this!” and then it gets made! On the one hand, we have truly put in some backbreaking work into Jugnu, but on the other, it’s been a labor of love.

The stressful parts, unsurprisingly, are the days before we have to set up a stall or meet deadlines. During the production of the Letter-Lights, the number of orders we got was physically exhaustive to manage along with the rigor of college. From that experience, we started talking to manufacturers, because we don’t want to skimp on the quality. Each product has to have a standard of quality that is worth the money. We want to put a product out there because it’s ready, not just because there’s some demand that we can hastily fill. But what is also amazing is that we always pull through.

When Jugnu had just started, we never thought we would go in the direction of expansion or manufacturers, but watch out, the Letter-Lights may have a comeback very soon!

One question everyone on campus regarding you entrepreneurs is ‘How do they do it?’ What keeps you motivated?

The motivation for all of this is the feeling we get on completing the orders. When we were making the Letter Lights, sometimes we had to do the mundne task of cutting and painting repeatedly, but every time we would switch the lights on at the end of the process, our mouths would drop in awe (laughs, wow, we are so humble). It’s motivating, because with such a product, you have to be incredibly precise and careful, so that final, luminous moment makes this work ultimately effortless. It happens with every single piece we make.

Our customer’s reactions are another enormous source of motivation. From the simple “whoa” to a heartfelt note, we are happy that we spread some happiness. Being a start-up means we can have many interactions with our customers too. One time, we simply assisted someone in filling out a google form and the customer left us a note saying, “Thank you, this made my day!”. This made us realize that even though it was just a logistical task for us then, the product already meant so much to a person who didn’t even have it in-hand yet; just the idea of it excited him so much.

And finally, we haven’t ever seen Jugnu as “work”. At its base, you could say this is simply a chance to chill with a friend while simultaneously pursuing our passion. I mean, there is some compromise on sleep, but — and we know, this is cheesy, but when you love what you do, it’s never work a day in your life.

What is the operative process of Jugnu like? Has it always been smooth sailing? How does daily-life of Jugnu differ to the events time?

So there aren’t any designated, strict roles between us. There are aspects of the business that one of us may be specifically good at, but essentially, there isn’t anything either us can’t do for Jugnu. [Shivani] is the “hilarious brains” behind the marketing of Jugnu; from speaking to vendors in and around Delhi to planning business strategy, she’s the girl. [Kamala] is the “creative genius”. We get inspired, skimp on sleep, produce our items, sell them and then re-invest all that money back into making ten thousand more things!

Event-specifically, we start work weeks in advance and our strategy tweaks at the end of every event too. The amount of work we have does escalate towards the end, but there’s usually never any last-minute race against the clock. Finishing on time acts as the motivator to keep this going in the long-run and really expand!

The failures from an event act as teachable moments, and we try to look at them as an opportunity to correct those mistakes. Focusing more on the business strategy- such as a cost-benefit analysis, pricing, etc. are to-dos for the next event. But the thing about Ashoka is, there is something happening here every day –which means we can just KEEP trying!

How does Jugnu manage financially? What were the financial hurdles you had to come across to get to where you are today?

When Jugnu started out, we had put in a little of our own money (from our fail maggi cooking days, OGs will remember). However, with respect to our line of products, it was more of an investment of time and effort rather than money. We spent days and nights working on our first product, the Letter Lights. With such a huge, rather unexpected demand, it took us by shock. However, as time passed, we learnt to manage time and finances fairly well. Once we got back the money we invested, it gave us the confidence to invest it and more of own money into Jugnu, without much hesitation. At the end of the day, it was a learning experience for both of us.

Initially, as the Letter Lights orders poured in, we were not exactly ‘professional’ about it. We maintained records but hardly updated the excel sheets, which really kicked us at a later stage. We got so carried away with orders and physically making the letter lights, that the management part of the business got a little messy. “EXCEL SHEETS FOR THE WIN GUYS!”. We also learnt the importance of payment. With products that involve such a high level of skill and manual labor, we realized some sort of advance payment system was necessary. The absence of such a system at the beginning of the business made the process a little more challenging.

Competition is always growing. How does Jugnu manage to stay #1 on campus? Do you guys take your competition into consideration while marketing for Jugnu?

We believe that our first product, the Letter Lights, is quite unique. Since we customize it according to our customers’ needs, it feels more personal and it works! But with the other products we make, yes, definitely! We see competition every day, which motivates us to add our own touch to it.

In terms of marketing within Ashoka, we just try to be what we want to be. We try to keep it simple, and we think that works best for us. We stand for happiness and positivity, and we just try to put it out there in the best way we can. Since we are looking to expand and make Jugnu exist outside Ashoka — we are taking a more serious look at marketing outside the campus. Hopefully, everything will go as planned!

What does the Entrepreneurship Network in Ashoka mean to you? We learnt that both of you had business ventures prior to Jugnu. How did Jugnu start, in itself?

Shivani: Center for Entrepreneurship (CfE) is where my tryst with Entrepreneurship started. I find them very motivational; they inspire you every day. It is easily one of my favorite places on campus, without a doubt. It is very conducive to good vibes! I would recommend the CfE to every aspiring entrepreneur!

Even though our prior stalls barely made any profits, we found each other’s ideas very inspiring. We learnt from our failures and created something new. See, that’s the thing with Ashoka — there is always hope for success. Even though we failed multiple times, we never really looked at these stalls as failures. To be very honest, it never dragged us down. It only pushed us to strive for success at something we both believed in. It does not make sense to lose hope and stop after a failure. Yes, something did not work out, but that is exactly the reason why we wanted to get back at it again. Ultimately, what is there to lose?

What are the future plans for Jugnu? Do you think Ashoka is the best place for the inception of Jugnu?

We want Jugnu to mean something as a message, and we are trying to do this through our products, which, unlike us, won’t graduate (laughs). We have a strong message that we want to deliver, and Jugnu is just the face of that. With respect to future plans, we are thinking of holding workshops. We had one during the O-week and it brought smiles to our faces!

Honestly, we do not think any other place would have given us the kind of opportunities, mentorship, and such a warm audience. Ashoka has been a real package-deal for us! If Jugnu had started elsewhere, we do not know if we would have had the environment to get back up after having failed. Ashoka is such a lively campus, with something happening every day. It gives us a reason to go back into the game!

With respect to expansion, Dabbawalas is now two years old, and they have recruited and added new members to their team. Does Jugnu have similar plans? Apart from that, does Jugnu wish to go for outside Ashoka fests as well?

In the past year, as Jugnu, we have not had the need to recruit external members. However, we have thought about it. Our product is very different from the Dabbawalas. We deal in hand-made products and they deal in food. Hence, the recruiting process in itself would be very time-consuming.

We do wish to explore other colleges as well. A lot of discussion goes into a decision like this: product establishment, quality control, and marketing, among many others. Hopefully, we run as per plan and execute this soon.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Shivani Bajaj and Kamala Rao, both from the Undergraduate Batch of 2019, are the co-founders of Jugnu

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Ashokan Entrepreneurs is an initiative to put under the spotlight budding entrepreneurs among the existing students and alumni of Ashoka University.

Anirudh Pisharam, Class of 2019

Not many student-led start-ups in Ashoka can boast to have had as much impact on the campus population as the Dabbawalas. Where many saw a deficit in Ashoka’s relative geographic isolation from New Delhi, two young entrepreneurs saw an opportunity. Dabbawalas began as a food-delivery start-up back in October 2016 and has grown into much more. Indeed, they have been running pretty much non-stop over the last 4 semesters, where they have served countless happy and satisfied customers.

I sat down with the founders, Abhinav Verma and Anirudh Rao, both from the Undergraduate Batch of 2018, to understand their fascinating journey in building a successful start-up on our campus.

How did it all begin with Dabbawalas?

Anirudh: We’re both foodies, and I often used to visit Delhi over the weekends to explore different places. My friends would often ask me to get them some food, and I’d end up carrying 5–6 packets of food on the shuttle. It was Abhinav who then told me, “Why don’t we do it for money?”. It was a genuine problem; people wanted food from Delhi, but they couldn’t have it.

Abhinav: The way Dabbawalas runs today is not how we initially started our operations. What we did in the beginning was exactly was Anirudh was doing; a food delivery startup with a commission. Every week we’d plan out trips to GTB Nagar or Khan Market. We would share a menu on Google Drive and people could place their orders. We’d charge them a 15% fee. Back then, we used to literally have these dabbas — these suitcases — filled with food like pasta, pizzas, donuts and Khan Chacha’s rolls.

Speaking about the risks, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced?

Anirudh: Sometimes if the shuttles get cancelled or we fail to get an Uber, we have had to hail a local auto with 30 boxes of pizzas. Then there have been times when for some reason the sale hasn’t gone well, and we’ve had to go around selling our food like street vendors. There were even situations when we have had to eat the food because there was so much left!

Abhinav: We can’t really complain about that, can we? (Laughs) Also, generally working in the food industry, transporting the food and keeping it warm, equipping ourselves with everything from plastic gloves to even buying a momo steamer and running it live in the mess; it’s been fun but has its own set of challenges.

Anirudh: Then, of course, there was the big one — Banjaara 2.0! What happened was that the Banjaara team had told us that a certain number of people would turn up, and for all the fair reasons, that did not work out. To be fair, there was miscalculation on our part as well. It turned out to be a gross miscalculation, and we barely sold half of our order. Financially, it was quite burdensome, and we failed to break-even: this was one of the rare instances where we made a loss. We spoke to our vendors and tried to reduce the order in the last minute but that didn’t really help. Banjaara was an experience — I wouldn’t say a bad one — but it did slow us down. We were riding high our horses and doing well, but this brought us back down.

Often things do not work out as planned. Could you tell me an experience where you had to improvise a solution?

Anirudh: One of the things we’ve learnt with Dabbawalas is crisis management. We had a unique experience during the winter haat sale this semester. We had ordered Pizzas and Biryani, and for some reason, none of our team members could go to Jahangirpuri Metro Station to collect the food. I thought we could do some jugaad and talk to the security guard at the Metro Station and ask him to put the food in the empty shuttle, but in the last minute, he told us that this would not be possible. So, I booked an Uber, called him up and requested him to get the food from Jahangirpuri to campus. We asked him to load the food, and to be quick; this was at 12 PM and the haat was to begin at 1 PM. We didn’t have a choice, we had to trust him. Half an hour later, I get a call, “Sir, you have to come to Rai Police Station to collect your food”. Turns out, his car met with an accident, and the cops had stopped him. So, I had to take an auto and go to the Rai Police Station. Thankfully, nothing bad had happened to the driver or the food. The car was severely damaged, though, and I felt sorry for him. So, I gave him whatever money I had and thanked him. I got into another car, came to campus, and we sold the food. I was a little late, but things worked out.

How is the entire leadership structured and how is Dabbawalas is organized?

Abhinav: Right now, we’re six people — Anirudh, Aashay Verma (UG 19) and I, we’re the equity holders and split the profits. We have two people from the UG 20 batch — Jonathan Fernandes and Vinayak Sahi — and one more from the UG 19 batch — Preetha Datta. They work on a weekly basis, where they’re paid depending on how much time they spend working with us.

Anirudh: It depends on the hours as well as the scale. For example, if the Banjaara sale had gone better, we would’ve paid them better, because the volume would’ve been larger. It also depends on the kind of work they do, like who goes to Delhi to get the food, who does the delivery, and so on.

How was your experience of expanding the team?

Abhinav: It was exciting. We were going through the process of building an organization, which was quite interesting. We even booked the meeting rooms in the Student Commons, and put up posters saying “Dabbawalas Interviews”. It was fun doing that. It was also humbling knowing that an organization that you create can help students become financially independent. I’m talking strictly from a student’s perspective, as people who work with us don’t really need money from home; they earn a sufficient amount just to survive off our sales, so being able to do that while having fun is great.

Anirudh: When we started off, it was just the two of us. Aashay came in last year (2016–17) because he was interested in what we were doing and the whole model we were following. He personally spoke to us, and that’s how he became a part of the team. This year, we thought that we need to start expanding, and hence we’d need more people.

How have you adapted to changing dynamics, say in terms of increasing student population and the presence of new competitors?

Anirudh: I’d say that there is healthy competition. We’re glad that people are doing something like what we’re doing. We shouldn’t start to monopolize the business. Whoever the competitors are, we’re on good terms with them, where we inform each other about our upcoming sales to not eat into each other’s’ business. That way it’s good, it’s healthy. As people are starting to do this, we’ve also had to change some of our strategy, because if we do the same thing, it becomes redundant.

Abhinav: Competition has forced us to expand and start selling things others haven’t sold previously. We’ve started selling brownies and more appetizers. The competition has made it exciting and has ensured that this doesn’t become a boring job, and it’s also useful for the student body as it now has increased variety in term of food options. It’s also exciting because as the student body grows, we also grow with it due to increased demand. I mean, last year I would’ve never thought we’d order 50 kilos of biryani and sell all of it, and that’s where we’re moving to now.

How do you manage your supply chain?

Abhinav: It is a learning process, right from approaching vendors to negotiating prices, figuring out how to get the food from there to the mess on time, and delivering it hot. In general, we take it one step at a time. So, if we need to find vendors, we look around in GTB Nagar and find places we like to eat at. I particularly like to eat at Spezia Bistro, and we’ve built a great rapport with the owner now. We usually call them a day in advance, and they send it to the Jahangirpuri Metro Station by 6–7 PM on the day of the sale, from where we bring it to campus on the shuttle in time for dinner.

Anirudh: When we sold Momos, we got in touch people who were vendors for a couple of restaurants, told them that we’d be buying a fixed quantity every week, and quoted our price. For Biryani, we went on a tasting tour to Jama Masjid, and to other iconic and old places, and chose the best option considering three main factors — price, taste and safety. We follow this pretty much for all the new things we offer.

How has the support been form the non-student body and the administration?

Anirudh: They’ve been very helpful. We aren’t a registered club, because this is a money-making project. To get our own official Email ID, we approached the Office of Student Life, and we spoke to Ms. Vanita and Ms. Rashmi. We convinced them that getting this would make it more streamlined and efficient for us, and they agreed. Apart from that, being felicitated last year as the “Best Entrepreneurial Initiative on Campus” was really motivating, and made us realize that we needed to take this up in a bigger way. The faculty has been great in supporting and buying from us. Professor Rudrangshu Mukherjee (besides many other non-student staff) is a regular customer and has given us a lot of feedback.

How does the future look for Dabbawalas?

Abhinav: Getting more people on board was a conscious decision as we knew we’d need some people to carry this forward, and we’ve been happy with what we’ve seen. We think they’re more than capable of carrying this forward. We don’t want to dictate everything to them.

Anirudh: I’ll be leaving after graduating this year, but Abhinav will be staying on for the fourth year, so we’re devising a concrete plan. There are a few things like loyalty programs, dealing with more types of food, and probably expanding the team as well. But we’re still working on a plan.

What would your advice to other student entrepreneurs on campus be?

Abhinav: If you’re driven and passionate, you should start something, and once you start, don’t give up. There have been so many issues and difficulties with the way we’ve run our business, we’ve learnt from the problems, mistake after mistake. It’s a fun process and it’s important to learn from it.

Anirudh: I think it’s important to also be passionate about your initiative, and not just care about money, because if you do the right things, money will come. Even when there is failure and you lose money, it is important to be passionate to be able continue. I also think having the right vision is important. You shouldn’t do something just for two months, and once you make Rs. 20,000, just let it go.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Abhinav Verma and Anirudh Rao (Undergraduate Batch of 2018) are the co-founders of Dabbawalas.

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Ashokan Entrepreneurs is an initiative to put under the spotlight budding entrepreneurs among the existing students and alumni of Ashoka University.

Devvrat Raghav, Class of 2019

Among the several eye-catching events on April 6 2017, one of the most eagerly anticipated was an address by Prof. Muhammad Yunus at the invitation of Ashoka’s Centre for Entrepreneurship (CfE). Speaking in the context of his recent book, titled “A World of Three Zeros: The New Economics of Zero Poverty, Zero Unemployment, and Zero Net Carbon Emissions”, he illustrated the ideological and operational challenges faced by social entrepreneurs.

Needless to say, Prof. Yunus has enjoyed a long and successful standing as a social entrepreneur, perhaps best reflected in his role as the founder of Grameen Bank — the biggest micro-finance banking institution in Bangladesh. By turning it to a non-profit ‘social business’, he was able to revitalize the future of thousands of economically-marginalized households in the country. This culminated in both him and the bank receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.

Drawing from these experiences, he illustrated how traditional banking systems had effectively excluded a large mass of people from gaining access to much-needed credit, thereby condemning them to a cycle of poverty. The need for collateral and security had limited both entrepreneurial spirit and economic mobility. He argued that any change in this system must come from those who seek not profit, but economic equity.

After all, that is the core principle of social business — profit eschewed in favor of enabling social improvement, such as by allowing poor people to engage in self-sustaining employment. “But this is not the same as charity” said Prof. Yunus. In the case of charity, there must be people who are ready to keep giving unconditionally and with no expectation of a return.

On the other hand, he said that social business does not require such giveaways. Rather, it depends on the basic trust between individuals that ensures the investment’s return. According to Prof. Yunus, this was the real reason behind the Grameen Bank having a 99% recovery rate of loaned funds.

This trust allowed the Bank to establish over 2,600 branches and lend to nine million people, 97% of whom were women. As a result, thousands of small-scale enterprises were created and operated by poor people who had finally gotten a chance to break the cycle of poverty and unemployment. On a larger scale, he said that this shows us a possible path to reaching two of the ‘three zeroes’, namely ‘zero poverty’ and ‘zero unemployment’ — something which a profit-focused market system cannot ensure.

In fact, a broader point that Prof. Yunus stressed upon was the inadequacy of how human behavior is perceived within the economics curricula. He attested that the notion of a selfish, utility-maximising individual is belied by empirical observation of the Grameen Bank’s debtors, who had repaid the principal and validated the Bank’s trust.

Having shared the Grameen Bank’s story, he further called upon the next generation to join the wave of social business, rather than to restrict themselves to the contemporary capitalist system. Not only would that expand the scope and scale of social business, it would also allow poor people across the world to gradually move into better conditions that could facilitate greater energy efficiency. After all, by keeping a large part of human society away from technological innovation, it becomes impossible to truly mold our energy consumption needs and patterns into sustainable practices that will yield the final zero, i.e. ‘zero carbon emissions’.

He concluded by saying that ultimately, the attainment of all three zeroes relies on a shift towards social entrepreneurship, such that it helps human beings come together to maximize their collective gain and minimize the degradation of the environment they live in. Therefore, he said, cooperation, and not just competition, is required if humanity wishes to tackle the biggest problems that have implications for every single one of us.