Celebrating 10 Years of RDEP: A Journey of Resilience and Growth

As we approach July 28th, 2024, it marks a decade since we embarked on this incredible journey with RDEP. Reflecting on our story, it’s clear that our path has been filled with challenges, learnings, and remarkable milestones, as like any other startup.

We began as BluPay, a fintech product focused on proximity payments and engagement over Bluetooth. Despite the initial excitement and numerous meetings with banks and regulatory authorities, we faced significant hurdles in obtaining the necessary permissions. Realizing this, we pivoted to focus on the engagement aspect of shopping and began working on an MVP, keeping the lights on with projects in allied areas.

Our first break came with India’s largest retailer, Future Group in 2016, where we presented our mobile-based self-checkout app to enhance the shopping experience and eliminate queues. Over a year, and several meetings/pitches later, mid 2017, we were given a pilot store for a mobile-based POS product for Central - the premier apparel format of Future Group.

All the elation on the out side and on the inside, several challenges. Losing a significant project from Canada and seeing key team members and my co-founder depart was a huge setback. From a 30 member team, we had suddenly gone down to a 10 member and a single founder team.

Three years in, we found ourselves with a small junior/mid-level team, no cash, no customers, and substantial debt.

The turning point began post-2017. We started rebuilding both the team and the product. Huddled in a 10x10 meeting room provided by Future Group, our small team went LIVE in one store in August 2017. Six months later, we saw serious traction and had the opportunity to work with another format of Future Group, Brand Factory. We did fairly well. By mid-2019, we were live in over 400 stores across the Future Group.

This remarkable journey was made possible by the incredible team. We repaid our debts, won legal cases, and started taking salaries again. We then made a strategic decision to shift our registered office to Singapore and rebranded from BluPay to RDEP. This was more than a name change; it was a transformation of our outlook, tech architecture, team’s confidence, and location.

A key factor in our turnaround has been the culture and the amazing team behind RDEP. Individuals like Pallab, Rashid, Madhav, Ritesh and then followed by Morshalim, who spearheaded our tech overhaul, Sagar, who brought in his expertise in the support and solutioning, and eventually when Vikas who came in and ensured our product management & operations ran smoothly, have been all instrumental. The culture at RDEP is not just about the perks; it’s about empowerment, trust, and freedom. Our team members, both old and new, embody this culture every day, making RDEP a place where innovation thrives and challenges are met with enthusiasm.

Now, in 2024, we are proud to have international clients, strong partners, a great angel investor team, and a super-empowered team. We are now a profitable entity with a good foundation. The only way now is scale and grow. While many of our current team members haven’t experienced the early struggles, they understand the value of our current situation. As we step into our 11th year, our focus is on rapid scaling and ensuring our angel investors see the returns they deserve for their patience and support throughout the decade.

The turnaround of RDEP is a testament to the power of organizational culture. Culture is spoken about a lot in the management circles, but is mostly represented by a bean bag, a Table tennis table and lots of coffee. A lot of culture building does not need money. You need to have lots of empathy and lot of freedom. We went "work from home" since the first wave of COVID and never really felt the need to go back to office ever again. Our team is now in different regions, working from the comfort of their homes, taking care of their parents and enjoying their freedom.

Our culture is built around the following points -

• Trust & Transparency - Go beyond plans and timelines. Allow each member to OWN not just their task but ASSIST others. We win if everyone wins. The trust and transparency needs to be nurtured and encouraged. Work from home becomes complicated when there is no trust. We have followed a "no leave policy" approach. This helps everyone to take time off from work and be with the family as required. We have seen that the responsibility of each team member has increased manifold with this approach.
• Enjoy the process - this ensures that the pressure to "run and win the race" is eliminated. Work from home has allowed the team to complete the tasks without missing any time with their family. A lot of innovative features and functions at RDEP is only because of the the team. Everyone contributes. The team enjoys each others association like a family and though we all know, this is not going to last forever (like the real family), it is so much fun to enjoy while it lasts.
• Core values - there are some non-negotiables for us. Never Lie, Never Cheat your customer or anyone for that matter and Ask for help. We try to practice this all the time and have realized that the bonding of the team keeps getting better every day/week/year. These are not just our tag lines, but our way of life.

While nothing is guaranteed in the startup world, I take pride in knowing that we have facilitated in building a team capable of achieving wonders now and in the future.

Thank you to everyone who has been part of this journey. Here’s to the next decade of growth and success!

Three cheers to the current and previous teams -

Pallab Kumar Sahoo Mohammed Rasheed Madhav Reddy Morshalim Shaikh Sagar Panchamukhi Vikas Rathod Ritesh Matwale Syed Abdul Majid. J Arun Ramanujan Pallavi Satsangi Abhinav Lunawat MOHAMMED SHAFIQULLA Rani Singh Lekha Shitut Shivani Biswas Sumedh Dhawale Ajith Hiremath Preethi K Deepak Jammu Rema K Sunil Kumar Bhatta Aaditya S. PRASEETHAA V

Angels -

Rajesh Venkatesh Mani Rajagopalan Venkat Narayanan Natarajan Rajkishore (Raj) Agrawal Rohit Surya Balu Deepak Vajir Mehul Vajir George Abraham Ganesh Krishnan Srikanth KT Mukesh Singh

Mentors/Advisors

Subinder Khurana Raj Subramaniam Guhesh Ramanathan Saravana Mani Sanjay Saini

Friends and Well wishers

Vikas Mahendra Debasis (Deb) Chakraborty Amarnath Narayana vasanth kumar Amit Kasat Dharmesh Jain Vivek Biyani Vijayan Srinivasan Ashish Tiwari Justin Paul

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