Stepping away from failures
KOCHI: Success stories always inspire us to follow our dreams passionately. But how many of us are willing to hear stories of failure, survival and odds that try to push us down? The Kitchen, a non-profit meetup, brought together by Andrine Mendez, introduced for the first time, a unique concept called ‘Failure Labs’ which was showcased at the TiEcon conference held in Kochi last week.
Andrine, who is also the founder of Pling, an ethnic snack brand, said it was initially difficult to find people and startup owners who were willing to talk about their stories of failure at a public platform. “We spoke to them about the benefits of telling their struggles to the world because it would help encourage people and wannabe entrepreneurs who could get a taste of reality. Not all startups end up being a success,” says Andrine, who believes there are different kinds of failures people face in their struggle to reach the top. Andrine says he came up with the concept because he felt it would be helpful to others. “My first two ventures were failures. My third venture Salt Mango Tree and fourth venture Pling are the only ones that clicked,” he said.
The failure labs
Neil Gonzalves likes to term his failure, a learning experience. When his startup Cliensys, a business selling network and computer hardwares, started doing good, he decided to venture into the hospitality business. This is when he set up a coffee shop Area 51 at the Kaloor-Kadavanthara road in 2013. “We had everything that seemed perfect to start the business.
We had good investment capital and I felt confident in running this well. There were also good clients who would often visit our coffee shop. But, that was not enough. We were not able to reach our daily billing expectations. Thankfully, I knew it was time to stop and after seven months, I wound up my business. Now, I am glad that I took that step due to some divine intervention. I was able to identify my failure,” says Neil.
He says in many cases, many startup owners don’t realise when they should stop which is why their ventures don’t click. “In business, people say to take risks, but I would say, always take calculative risks,” he said. Rafeeque Kavanur whose Ernad Agro business, is still struggling to make profits, spoke about how his business which was supposed to take off in 2013, took over an year to find its footing. “Even when it did, we had multiple issues. We were getting good reviews about our banana chips and other flavours, but there were problems with the pricing. It’s only been six months since we changed our product and introduced it at a different price,” he said.
Speaking about the concept of discussing the hurdles at their ‘Failure Labs’, Rafeeque said he finds such a concept to be positive and encouraging for other startups. The other startup owners who spoke included Mukesh Dev (Thoughtskool), Tess James (rawsqueezed), Jofin Joseph (FullContact), Ricky Jacob (Paysack), Jayakrishnan (Asimov Robotics) among others.
Kitchen is a not-for-profit started in the year 2015 to give the business fraternity of Kerala a platform to interact, share and learn new things. They host monthly events on last Thursday’s of every month. They plan to continue holding similar Failure Lab meetings in the future.