If you give up on your dreams, what's left? Your startup fix to start the week

Who didn’t enjoy Jim Carrey's performance as the Grinch in How the Grinch Stole Christmas? But funnyman Jim Carrey hasn’t had it easy. His father lost his job when Jim was only 14 years old, and the family was forced to move into a VW van on a relative’s lawn. The young aspiring comedian, who actually mailed his resume to The Carroll Burnett Show at age 10, suddenly had to take up a factory job after school.

But he didn’t give up on his dreams. “It's better to risk starving to death than surrender. If you give up on your dreams, what's left?” he famously said.

Jim Carrey may have bombed in his first stage routine at age 15, but he kept going. It took him a few years, but in the end, people were laughing their heads off at his energetic, slapstick performances in films like Dumb and Dumber, Ace Ventura, Liar Liar, and many more. And Jimmy Boy had the last laugh!

He said, and we concur: “Life opens up opportunities to you, and you either take them or you stay afraid.” We suggest you take all the opportunities you get and make them work for you, starting this Monday morning.

And as inspiration, we have a fine bouquet of startup stories for you:

Like ’em or hate ’em, meetings are a must. But how does one keep the meeting momentum from fizzling out? Enter Frejun, which listens and takes down minutes as you speak. The Hyderabad-based bootstrapped startup lets users set meeting agendas, collect minutes with voice-to-text technology, and action items. No more meeting madness!

What happens when an IIT graduate who went on to serve in the police force decides to turn an entrepreneur? Rajan Singh started ConceptOwl and is now on a mission to help small-town students. His edtech startup prepares students from Tier II and III cities for entrance exams without having to go to bigger cities for exam prep.

India may run on cash, but things are changing. Doing its bit for that change is fintech startup Phi Commerce, which is bringing doorstep payments innovation to non-metro India. The Pune-based startup has built an omnichannel, frictionless payment processing platform - PayPhi - that enables all modes of digital payments at a customer’s doorstep.

Social media may have put all the information out there, but how do you know what's true and what's not? A marketplace with a difference, Authblue makes verifying blue-collar employees easy and fast. Co-founded by Sujeet Buddiga and Saurabh Tiwari, the platform connects businesses and individuals with companies that conduct verifications.

Benow, which started life as a digital payments enabler for small offline merchants in March 2016, has now identified point-of-sale card transactions as the next big growth driver. The Mumbai-based startup is looking at adding 4 million PoS devices and on-boarding a million small merchants in the next four years.

Lower data costs and increasing awareness are bringing more rural people online. That's why serial entrepreneur Jitender Singh is placing his bets on ecommerce in India's heartland with MiniDukan, which aims to revolutionise the ecommerce business in rural India.

There's a reason this serial entrepreneur is focusing solely on top-level tech recruitment with Purple Quarter. Deepak Singh Ahlawat believes that it's imperative to find the right CTO in a time when technology has taken centre stage, which is why the Bengaluru-based startup focuses on hiring for technology leadership-level roles for organisations.

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