The best way to grow fast is to grow together
Starting up is a challenge of its own, it’s a test of one’s persistence, hard work, faith, ability to plan and execute, ability to adapt to the situation.
We started our journey back in 2015, with a mission to change how fleet management is done in our country and around the world, it’s been a 3-year journey, but the best learnings had been in the last few months after being a part of a startup incubator.
Had we been a part of the incubator in our early days, we would have achieved what we currently have in half the time, with a startup speed in everything.
Starting up is a challenge of its own, it’s a test of one’s persistence, hard work, faith, ability to plan and execute, ability to adapt to the situation.
One needs to have a burning desire to create something of significance and burn all the bridges that take you back to being ordinary, these are not things that a conventional education system teaches one but can be gathered only through experiences.
The best place to interact which with this rare breed of people that change the world is at incubators and similar ecosystems.
This drove us to work towards being part of T-Hub. As soon as we walked into the building, we knew that this was the place for us to take things to the next level, the atmosphere is such that it fosters creativity, and being surrounded by passionate geniuses, inspires one to go the extra mile.
We at IoT Research Labs have been fortunate to be a part of such an ecosystem.
In our journey there have been many benefits to being a part of this ecosystem, they are:
1. Focus on your business: To get a business off the ground, there’s a lot of legalities, formalities and such activities that take time and effort and anything that takes time away from your core business is only delaying you.
Our incubator provided us with the necessary business services, now we don’t have to focus on looking for an accountant, lawyer, company secretary and so on, they are all available at a fraction of the cost, providing a better quality service than we would have received on the outside.
These facilities help us put out high-quality products without wasting time on non-core activities.
2. Network: The strong network of investors, mentors and fellow entrepreneurs are the biggest advantages of an Incubator.
With access to mentors, new ideas or strategies are quickly validated, improvised and rolled out.
Whenever one encounters a challenge, all they got to do is shout out and it almost always happens that someone else would have encountered the exact same problem and solved it, or the experts in the house will definitely have a solution, it’s that simple!
3. Visibility: Incubators provide startups with a ton of opportunities to get the right visibility without having to burn any cash.
From being awarded the innovator of the year award at Road to GES 2017 to being the best startup at the Geospatial world forum in 2018 to being featured on Business World and many other opportunities and the access to all these were directly or indirectly due to us being a part of the ecosystem.
4. Programs: Running a startup is incredibly overwhelming, it’s nothing short of a battle. Programs are what equip the startups with the right armour, weapons, and strategies to make it through this battle.
We have recently been through a scaling program called T-Scale. The program is tailor-made for growth stage startups. This program really helped us identify key industries to address, establish the right frameworks to put in place to achieve a 10x growth.
We are very optimistic of achieving such numbers this financial year, one of the biggest reasons is through this program, we as an IoT powered fleet management company, were able to identify our target industries i.e. Transport & logistics, mining & infrastructure, FMCG. This focused approach allows us to really provide value to our customers.
We are now part of a Program called Lab32, which focuses on equipping startups with the right knowledge in the form of playbooks to get each and every piece right, right from branding to sales to marketing to product management to finance and so on.
With all of this made available at one's disposal, it’s very important for founders to get immersed in the ecosystem and get out of their comfort zone to leverage the benefits and see it reaps the fruit.
It’s not good to be a lone wolf, one must leverage the experience of mentors, investors, teammates and fellow entrepreneurs to solve problems and build great products and take advantage of the opportunities along the way.
