Grassroots - Idea to Launch - Part 1 of 4

8 months of Grassroots story...

April, 2016 - Tic Tac Toe Extended

Tic Tac Toe (TTT) game works are going on at full pace with Think Digital team. The games' intent is only to form a team of students, train them on game dev techs.

My idea was this:

1. In 1 year, I should be running a company where we do Games that yield us economically and once the economy is stable, then we will start doing Social impacting projects.
2. Once the games earn atleast Rs. 5000 / month, then I am to get loan to run family for 6 months, quit my part time job and put my full effort on further Games.

But I couldn't wait one year to start with Social impacting projects, especially with 3 awesome social impacting ideas in my mind. So I thought of crowd funding, get the cash before hand and working on any social impact project after TTT. Immediate 3 ideas were

1. Online RTI Generator
2. Traffic Violation Portal (TVP)
3. Volunteer App

in that order. RTI Gen and TVP are close to my heart. But there will be a big friction for even NGO people to understand the problem it will be solving. Rather Volunteer app is something which will connect to NGOs/Volunteers easily, will be much appreciated and I can get quick support.

Executing the same with just volunteers is not at all an option, because of the experience with Indian National Developers. So it will be clearly with a freelancing team, who will be paid through Crowd funding.

Then decided on Volunteer app, started R&Ding, putting down the ideas which I had in mind for almost 2 years. By April end, it was something like this.

Crowdfunding to Business idea - Advice from Friends

We launched Tic Tac Toe game in Play store, Chrome Web Store by May after a delay of nearly 3 months. I kept improving the mocks and also estimated the time and cost of the project, along with Resource requirement.

Nakkeeran and Karthik Pandy
Then with these basic documents, I started speak to people to get their feedback. It was Nakkeeran and Karthik Pandy first @ T. Nagar Natesan park. Clearly remember that meet, including having Dosa in that crowded road side shop :-)

The outcome of the discussion is this: It's a fantastic idea and to evolve the product to great heights. Crowd funding wont be a sustainable option. But rather the money required to build the system, should be generated by the system itself, so the whole system will be sustainable.


Prithviraj and Satish Bonthu
Then met with Prithvi and Satish in their Organic Depot. Had quick dialogs on App idea and lengthy conversation on Sustainability model.

Here I concluded that I should be charging NGOs to use the system, as they are the beneficiaries of the project. Ha NGOs, who already stuggle to get donation to do their own activities, will be my customers. How challenging!

Bought some Organic groceries as well.

To be continued...