Excited to share with everyone here that we have closed our second round of funding at @FreestandIndia
In the last 12 months, we have managed to go from $0 to $100k while selling our platform to FMCG enterprises like HUL, Nestle, L'Oréal, etc
Now on our $100k to $1M journey🚀
Venture Catalysts spearheaded a $400,000 funding in a Seed round for FreeStand, a B2B marketing platform revolutionizing targeted and measurable product sampling campaigns for leading Indian FMCG enterprises.
#retailnews#retailtrends#retailsector
https://t.co/Ri25OJKiJv
Spent the last week building something I couldn't stop thinking about 😁. Mumbai has thousands of street cats (I love cats). They live in our lanes, outside our buildings, in most of the cafes.
So I built meowmbai - A community map where you spot, explore, & pin Mumbai's street cats.
Every cat gets a profile. Every neighborhood gets a count. People can upload cat sightings, discover cats around the city, explore adoption opportunities, & find helpful resources for cat care.
It's live. Go find your local cat. Have fun at
https://t.co/NbY1d7axLx 🐾🐈
#mumbaicats #meowmbai #cats #mumbai
this is actually incredible
a full body ultrasound scanner that takes 60 seconds instead of spending an hour in an MRI tube, without radiation, hospitals or a $2000 bill
soon you’ll just walk into a health spa, order a coffee, step into the pod, and walk out with a 3D map of your body
the future is finally starting to look like the future
I don't know who else to tell this to, so I am going to tell my story here.
Every day is a struggle for a young business, but the last few months have been harder than usual.
We are a small Indian company. For more than ten years we have been building a homegrown brand in a product category dominated by big foreign players.
There are almost no Indian names in this space. We set out to be one.
We started in 2014. Over the years we began making parts in India instead of just importing, and we started selling in the US, Dubai, Nepal, Malaysia and South Africa.
We showed up at global trade fairs to represent an Indian brand on the world stage.
In 2023 we changed the import code we use for our product. We did not do this quietly. Every shipment was declared. Nothing was hidden. We didn't invent our approach.
We followed written professional advice and the way this product is treated in markets around the world.
And now we are facing a government demand running into tens of crores in duty recovery and penalties, plus personal penalties on the founders and even on an employee.
For a company our size, this is not a fine we can pay and move on from. This ends us.
We have not run from any of this. I am not built like that. It is not how I was raised. We have written to the authorities, met officials in person, and we have now filed a writ in the High Court.
All we are asking for is a fair treatment.
I set out to build in India and sell to the world. I am asking only that the system back honest founders trying to compete globally, instead of breaking them.
The process is the process, and it exists for a reason. But process should not feel like punishment.
From where I am standing today, it does.
I am not giving up. I have worked too hard for this. If you have read this far, please share it. If you know someone who can help, point them my way. Help me get the word out.
SpaceX hit $3 trillion market cap today.
This means Elon Musk made more money in the last 24 hours than Warren Buffett made in his entire lifetime.
Insane.
I love tech Twitter, there are days when founders win, and Twitter acts as the memory of the commons and very aptly calls out the naysayers in HD video and succinctly summarises article links and always alwasy proves that the optimists build the world!!!
So hopeful and inspired!
Elon Musk in this 2012 interview:
" My proceeds from PayPal after tax were about $180M, $100M of that went into SpaceX, $70M into Tesla, and $10M into SolarCity and I literally had to borrow money for rent."
$SPCX $TSLA
The guy and the company that invented re-usable rockets actually is also the largest IPO of all time!!!
The story of spacex winning is literally the story of good guys winning!
The founder’s life:
– Try something new.
– Get punched in the face (repeat).
– Pivot from the “brilliant” idea that failed.
– Lose sleep, feel entirely alone.
– Your runway is now negative.
– Hear “no” 1,000 times.
– Realize that nobody will save you.
Keep going anyway.