What way? This is the way

In 2020, Covid made us realize that our savings are not enough. Also, our parent's savings are not enough to sustain any health or financial crises and covid triggered that thought to ensure that we should be ready for the next one.

Believe it or not, the next big crisis waiting to explode is "The Great Indian Retirement Gap". We (both founders/brothers) sat together and create a retirement plan over excel to see if we can work something out for ourselves & our parents.

And that's how the journey unofficially starts! PensionBox is a purpose-first early stage fin-tech startup, started by two Parashar brothers who lived happily with jobs and come from a small town called Tundla (what? yeah yeah It's a small town near Agra, Uttar Pradesh & yes we are the first startup from our town).

What made us build PensionBox? The magnitude of the problem, its visibility in the society & multifold growth in the next 3 decades to impact 340 million Indians by 2050.

In 2021 January, After 4 months of surveys, interviews, reading reports & building conviction. I resigned from my job with Fidelity Investments (Pioneer in US Retirement Industry) with a lot of learnings & my savings. We planned the entire 2021 with full optimism & savings from our salaries, also asked our friends to support us if we need financial help along the way.

Build Connections (Old school way!)

I started reaching out to everyone who can help us with contacts in the pension industry, went to PFRDA office reception & build my contacts from the ground (old school way). We contacted our college UPES and they had an Incubation cell now called Runway Incubator?but back then it was called UCIE. I shared our vision with Mohit Nagpal,?Mr. Rahul (CEO at UCIE) & Vaibhav Mishra and they believed that in us & in our vision to improve the way Indians retire. That's a lot of motivation & support to start with.

Why do we fall master bruce?

Everything can't go as planned, right? We got covid in 2nd wave! not just us our entire family got covid one by one and we focused on the most important thing in our life for almost two months "family". To be honest, I was worried at first but as we both were into it & we have seen things together from childhood. We were sure that we will get back on track soon!

We came back on track & launched our landing page with just concept and named our venture "PensionBox", simple right? Even people in our small town can read it & understood that it's about a pension.

We started building our co-creator community with an early user list and whenever from sign up they get an email from us to share the reason to join us. If 100 users join that list, 15 users write back to us which means that there is a connection & people understand why they need PensionBox. I will share one of the reasons shared by an early user which we use as our daily motivation:

I signed up because I have seen my mother struggle with a pension as she does not have a government job. To avoid that for me, there was no second thought about signing up for PensionBox as I’m in the creative field of Design.

Do you need more conviction than this? We don't.

Everything you need to prepare is out there! Just look!

Next, We prepared our first pitch deck, first cold email pitch by reading through?100x.vc's?blog?and watching?videos?on youtube by Mr.?Sanjay Mehta?explaining what to write & key points to focus on.

We were sure to pitch to 100x.VC first & we did! we email our first pitch deck to [email protected]. We got the response within 2 days from the team to fill out a detailed form with a video pitch. Next week, we got our first meeting with?Shashank Randev?and then the entire?100X.VC?founding team.

Guess what, we didn't make it in our first pitch. I remember when Mr.?Sanjay Mehta?told us that "Again, do not take this as a NO, let's make some progress and connect again in a few months. we are 80% there!". After a month, we had a follow-up call but this time we showed progress & filled the gap in our business model & product roadmap! (it's more about execution than idea over time, actions build conviction!)

Where magic happens!

The next thing we knew is that we get to travel to Mumbai & spend one week at?100X.VC?office learning/meeting/working along with 9 other unique startups of class 06!

In that one week, we got everything we need from the right feedback to the right people to work with!?Sanjay Mehta's on point feedback on our pitch made us better,?Yagnesh Sanghrajka?and?Lipi Panchmia?taught us numbers to make better decisions,?Ninad Karpe?shared his wisdom & direction with us??,?Shashank Randev?is our go-to person from day one & last but not the least?Vatsal Kanakiya?who stayed till the very end to ensure we make the right pitch (we were the last one in office & he was there with us)

What happened next makes all the difference!?100X.VC?invites legends from the startup ecosystem to share their experiences & key learnings over a session called Master Class!

And finally, we landed on an island "where the magic happens" called?100X.VC!?

This is our way!

You will make your own way to build, plan & execute your vision. You should get all the help you need and don't hesitate to reach out to people, knock doors, build contacts.

P.S. It's not a success story or we have made it story! It's just a post about our honest progressive journey in inception year 2021 and how we met folks who helped us get here. We are building PensionBox day & night and will mark 2022 as the year of execution! Stay tuned!

PensionBox Sanjay Mehta?Ninad Karpe?Yagnesh Sanghrajka?Shashank Randev?Lipi Panchmia?Vatsal Kanakiya?Runway Incubator?University of Petroleum and Energy Studies

#pensionbox?#startup?#experience?#mentoringunlimited?#100xportfolio