Shubham Bansal, the founding father of the meals supply startup TinyOwl, took to social media to recount the early days of meals supply big Swiggy and its rise post-2014. He stated that again then, TinyOwl had raised large funding and expanded throughout 5 cities with an worker base of over 1,000 and an order e-book replete with over 50,000 orders.
Referring to Swiggy, he referred to as it a “tiny startup in Bangalore” that struggled with little or no funding and even much less enterprise on the time.
“I used to be a founding member of TinyOwl – a sizzling meals supply startup in 2014. We have raised $20 mn+. Expanded 5 cities. 1000+ workers. 50,000+ orders each day. In the meantime, a tiny startup in Bangalore was battling lower than $1M in funding. They’re doing possibly 1/tenth of our quantity,” Bansal wrote.
Going forward, he stated that the administration at TinyOwl would joke about buying the rival meals supply model. Bansal defined that Swiggy, which leveraged a hands-on supply mannequin, outmanoeuvred TinyOwl by miles.
“Internally, we joke about buying them. ‘We may kill them simply.’ That tiny startup? It was Swiggy. The remaining is historical past. The factor is, aspiring founders at all times ask me the identical query: ‘I’ve this startup concept, however I am unsure if it’ll work. Is it good?'” he wrote.
Moreover revisiting Swiggy’s journey, he had a phrase of recommendation for aspiring founders who’re not sure about their enterprise concepts. The TinyOwl founding member stated that due to this uncertainty, aspiring founders are inclined to hold sitting on concepts until another person launches it.
“My meals supply expertise taught me this: Concepts are price 20 rupees a kilo. The distinction is not within the considering. It is within the doing. In case you’re sitting on an concept proper now, what’s one small motion you may take TODAY? One buyer name. One tough prototype. One embarrassing pitch. There’s a marketplace for all the pieces. Each market wants a number of gamers. So the one recommendation is – Execute quick. Execute now. Execute at all times,” he signed off.
In 2016, TinyOwl needed to shut store in most cities as a consequence of rising logistics prices and market saturation.
On the time, the meals supply startup carried out mass layoffs. In 2015, one of many founders Gaurav Chaudhary was detained for two days by laid-off workers over past-dated checks.
