Sep'15 - Sep'20 [The tale of 2 Series Bs]

Each Financing Round is Special. Not because of the $MMs raised but because of the bittersweet ride life takes you through in between these milestones. Here’s mine -

Sep’15 - Zostel/ ZO Rooms closed a Series B from Tiger Global & Orios

Nov’15 – 7 Founders; different people, different ideologies. Sell Vs Raise? And amid conversations, Term Sheet to sell to OYO got signed

Dec’15 - April’16 – Acquisition gone wrong! [confidential/ sub judicial matter]

2016 - Moved out of Zostel – pit of depression/ anxiety – mental models crashed, paper valuation in ashes, the problems were taken away from the problem solver and the tools snatched away from the builder – it felt extremely empty and purpose-less [will share more details of this period some other time]

2017 - Wake up Call! Helped few startups, started earning some money [during Zostel/ ZO Rooms days – cumulatively earned <15L b/w Aug’13-Dec’15 in salaries, not that as founders’ we ever cared], tossed around b/w Fintech and Gaming – 2 spaces I personally found quite exciting with infinite potential

2017 end – zeroed in on the idea of WinZO – a 2-sided gaming platform, similar to ZO Rooms [Game Developers instead of Hotel Owners, Gamers instead of Travellers]

Dec’17 - Feb’18 – met a bunch of folks for Seed Investment, but a lot of them were more keen to know about OYO-ZO story than knowing about the new venture. Got turbo-charged through those days every time I spoke to Manish Agarwal- the main man of the Indian Gaming Ecosystem.

Mar’18 – started with a $0.5MM cheque from the very awesome Revant Bhate via K-Start [who has also invested in our Series B in his personal capacity – his ultrahigh conviction puts a <healthy> performance pressure on all of us]. Vani shared few important words of wisdom as we kickstarted Entrepreneurship 2.0.

Mar’18 - May’19 – built WinZO in a STINGY [not capital efficient, not frugal but stingy!] manner with a super awesome team of 9 ninjas with Anshul, Sahil, Siddharth, Rahul, Pawan, Vivek, Chander

Mid’18 onwards – market started heating up; at one point WinZO was several times less funded than its most funded contemporary [never got much deterred and tried to put the best use of resources and maintain a product-obsessed approach, courtesy ZO-OYO experience and all the hindsight perspective building during 2016]

May’19 – raised $4.5MM Series A – the super helpful Rahul Garg came on board from Kalaari; kept on executing to a T; achieved beautiful customer cohorts and deep consumer/ market understanding; Kaushik, Vikas, Dhruv, Abhishek, Akash, Gaurav, Manish, Mayank Vasu, Priyanka joined the dream team; grew 6X over next 6 months!

Jan’20 – Mar’20 – What happened? Happy to tell you but then I will have to kill you ;)

Apr’20 - June’20 – aggressive fundraise at the peak of Covid 19; turned the business profitable amid global ambiguity; Déjà vu of Nov’15; only difference this time both founders 100% aligned on strategy – to stay put and stick to the core values – integrity, perseverance, agility, innovation, and data orientation.

June’20 – heavens opened doors – got a TS from one of the most prolific interactive entertainment investors across the planet - Makers Fund

July’20 – soon after Kai Bond at Courtside Ventures joined the party

5 years hence ->

Sept’20 – we have $18MM, a business with +ve unit economics, a large business opportunity with a good product market fit, 2 large global gaming investors, 1 existing investor who’s seen us through more thins than thicks, and tonnes of wars to be fought and war stories to share :)

Still on Day 0, Let’s see how it goes from here!

1 Constant throughout this journey = Saumya Singh (my Co-Founder and an incredibly smart hustler), would rate her 11/10 on perseverance and out of the box thinking

Made some strong bonds along the way with Prithvi (Indigoedge), Gopal and Vipin (Finadvantage), Sohini (Vertices Partners), Abhishek (TMT Law), Abhinav Shukla (Kalaari), Rehan (Orios Venture Partners), Chanchal Kurele

Note - this narrative shouldn’t be mistaken for a success story but simply a story of few comebacks and a lot of persistence. Hope this might motivate some fellow entrepreneurs and friends who are not having a great day/ week/ month or may be a year. Keep grinding! :)