last updated: jan 30, 2022
Hello, today I want to talk a little about how life has been in the past few months, why I quit corporate & a few reasons why I'm super bullish on RipenHQ.
This time last year, I had applied to intern with a few start-ups of my choice in Ed-Tech & Fin-Tech, but as luck may have it, right before I could sit through the process, I got lucky with a decent Finance company on campus -- Nomura. I was obviously feeling lucky, happy & relaxed since I didn't have to put in the hustle for a while, chill for the next 6 months and see how it goes. I did feel guilty though, because deep down I probably knew I'm not as attracted to the corporate as I thought i was, I knew working in a start-up as an operator, being self-employed or starting a cash-rich business is where my gut was guiding me towards.
I went ahead with Nomura either way, but only a few months in, I had a wave of revelations spanning across 2 months, the revelations were something like this:
When you're 20, you don't have any responsibilities in life -- I have no EMI's or loans to pay off, no family member to take care of, no direct dependencies on me. Except myself, obviously. But that's it, a few years down the line I might be paying off a potential MBA loan, might be looking after someone et al; Taking risks then, would be much harder than what it is right now.
A consequence of the above-mentioned rationale made me realise how guilty I would feel if i never choose to explore curiosities & live life like water, without structure, without obligations -- just the way I would want to. So in an ode to not say "Oh, I wish I would've been courageous then" a few years down the line, it made sense to me now.
Worst case, I don't fit in here as well; Worst case, I might have to go back to corporate again -- but i'm more confident to enter than ever since B-schools will be gives me an ideal exit & plenty of opportunities to enter the corporate again. It's a back-up plan, but if the next 3-4 years don't work out, I might have a way out.
This was why ^ it made sense to take the aforementioned leap of faith. Now coming to the present, I think a lot of puzzles were put in place by Ripen, which is one of the key reason why I'm joining them. The problem is super interesting, there is massive potential, I've known & worked with Ritvik closely for over 3 years, and the opportunity came by at the exact time I would've wanted it to --- Nomura has a strict policy of 3 months of notice period UNLESS you quit in the first 6 months of your stint (i.e probation period). My probation was deemed to end on the 28th of December, 2021.
I started working with Ripen in the 2nd week of October. That was the time when there was a team of super-talented designers, coders & Ritvik. But there was no Ripen squads, Instagram/Twitter page, website was under construction, Lifeschool was just an idea & inception capital had just been raised. It was a 'ripe' time to enter RipenHQ and understand the nitty gritty's of an early-stage.
Since then, we've launched our social media pages and grown to 700+ followers on both Twitter & LinkedIn, launched Ripen squads, executed it in entirety, helped 10 struggling adults become super-adults & re-structured ripen squads 2.0 for 22 more adults (starting in 2 days) & built a community on discord (public access live soon, folks). We've also increased the team size from 5 to 10 in this period, and I think now's the right time to build a product & community for struggling Gen-Z's by the Gen-Z.
There has been immense traction ranging from users, early-adopters, the start-up twitter community & a bunch of VC's, and this felt like just the right opportunity to enter a very early-stage start-up, and here I am, partaking in the wave of great resignations. If you like the product, the team or the problem statement to work on, give me a holler at tike@ripen.in and we'll see how we can work this out :)
Also, did I tell you about how excited I am to work with this CRAZY team of super-adults? To Aviral, Ritvik, Shivika, Shubham, Rishabh, Aishwarya, Molina, Arshiya, Karan & Rohan -- I'm blessed to be working with you all :)
The why and how of Ripen:
A natural observation we make growing up is seeing fellow young adults struggle in non-linear ways. And, we'd be lying if we told you that it wasn't the case with us. Here's a little anecdote for you.
For starters, we'd lost 1,00,000 in a security deposit. Meanwhile, our siblings were struggling with their finances. Ritvik (Ripen's Chief Adult) procrastinated on a driver's license while Shivika struggled with laundry. Aviral's only bank account was a joint A/C with his dad, and lastly, I grappled with a routine.
Realisations happened day in and out, and finally, Ritvik decided to materialise a sidekick to adulthood after ignoring all the cookie-cutter advice. After graduating from 'university' to 'can't count all our responsibilities in one hand', Ritvik figured it was time to create a community tailored solution for all things adulting.
What we're built on:
Our foundation is twofold -
1. Building a social super-app that caters to all your adulting woes. We educate you with quests, engage you with the community, and refer you to products that almost instantly ends the adulting misery.
2. Life-school - This is what you're a part of, a CBC that aims to solve different areas of adult life (like wealth, health, career & day-to-day life) using niche-based cohorts.
The vision ahead:
The path ahead is simple. We want to start the user journey by being the social Khan Academy they need and eventually evolve into INDMoney or Cred for adulting.
While this is just the tip of the iceberg, We hope to become an indispensable tool in your arsenal (fingers crossed!)