When I started Rentux.in, it was just a random project I was exploring. Slowly, I got attached, I wanted to make it work, no matter what! Reality hit me and I realised it's a capital intensive project if you plan to own the assets and if it's a marketplace, you'll have to burn a lot initially to get that scale. Also, the fact that it's gonna be really tough to raise funds as people had messed up in the past. Many Investors had burned money behind such rental platforms. All of them, eventually failed or are struggling! Things didn't align. The timing, funding, ability to scale were missing, even though there's a market demand - this is proved because today I have thousands of people visiting Rentux to rent the products without a single rupee spent on marketing!
And this pattern continued whenever we pivoted or tried a different project. There was always something major, that didn't align. Sometimes it was lack of demand, thin margins, capital intensive nature, operatianal complexity, time constraints because of college, lack of a better partner or a combination of many of these or maybe, the timing was not right or I was not good enough (basically founder market fit was not there). One misalignment is enough for your project or venture not being feasible. It took almost 3 years for me to get this understanding.
I am writing this because a few days back, we announced Verispace . It's something that has got most of the things aligned, of course, I'll always feel that I'm not good enough yet for building this and that's what forces me to keep upgrading myself. I might be wrong, but if it works out, Verispace could be it. The problem is really big and there's a huge market gap, that's the reason we have the biggest rental businesses in Pune supporting us even before the launch. The scalability is huge, the alternative data market size is growing at 52.6% CAGR (if you don't know CAGR, 52.6% is simply huge!).
I have the owner of one of the largest camera rental businesses in Pune as my business partner in Verispace. We already have interests from 3 investors for funding. Of course, there are still a lot things that needs to be figured out. But compared to all my past projects, here, there is Alignment!
I might be wrong, this may totally collapse, go down to zero. I don't mind. The upside is huge and I'm betting on it.