There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Farewell 2020. Welcoming 2021!
As with most people, 2020 is one such year for me as well, in multiple dimensions. As per my 2020 year plan, I am supposed to start with Grassroots works by Q2, 2020 while my team executes all the Client projects.
But lockdown happened in March end, client projects dropped for 3-4 months, had to reduce the headcount in my team. Tried doing that in a reasonable, gentler way as possible.
By 2020 end, did a lot in Grassroots and feels like am on the way and now looking at making a bigger jump in this track.
Here is a high level Grassroots journey in a nutshell:
March, 2020
- Completed How to start a Startup video series by YCombinator.
- It’s literally 100x way more effective than the Lean Startup book, which I read years back.
- Wish my friend Sanjay Kutty had sent me this link 4 years back!
Apr, 2020
- Launched a simple listing site for Amma unavagam in Chennai. Thanks to Beulah for supporting on this.
May, 2020
- Market research on Recurring Fundraising platforms in India.
- While rewriting the whole Grassroots codebase
- to a new framework, StencilJS that supports awesome level SEO.
- Migrating our backend from Firebase RTDB to Firestore.
- Huge thanks to Raghav and Hemath in helping here out.
Jun, 2020
- Launch Recurring Fundraiser with Thozhan, Lit the Light.
- Launched biz website of a close friend, Sathya Narayana: The Global Prime barters, for their global venture with our traditional rice varities. Ashok and Parthiban did a great work delivering this.
Jul, 2020
- Expanding to more NGOs.
- Started with Startup school
- Deployed our Client website The Charulatha Publications. Sahana and Parthiban worked on this end to end and it came out very well.
Aug, 2020
- Book Completion: Sapiens: A brief history of Humankind.
Sep, 2020
- Launched beloved friend Krupa’s photography website Kays Photography. Thanks to my team mates Ashok, Sahana and Parthiban for their near perfect execution, it came out very well.
- Realized only 1 in 100 NGOs actually Recurring fundraisers, while more ratio of NGOs, needed a quick way to send Donation receipts to their Donors. So added another feature to Grassroots: E-Receipt module. Thanks to Thina, for setting up the base of this module.
- Book Completion: Romancing the Balance sheet
Oct, 2020
- Satta Panchayat embraced our Recurring Fundraiser and raised Rs. 16,000 / month, through their Loyal volunteer base. One of few NGOs, who post their monthly financials on 5th of every month for last 7 years since their Inception.
- Our new e-receipt modules brings in more revenue for Grassroots, than the Recurring Fundraiser, which is 10x more complex in terms of both Technical and Operational stuff.
- Launched our Client app, பயிர் செய்யும் முன் – Payir Seiyum Mun. An app to help farmers take informed better decisions on what cultivate in next season. Beulah, Sai Sundeep, Jeevitha, Parthiban Siva did excellent job in solving the challenging problems and delivering this app with neat UI and quality.
Nov, 2020
- Trips: Sathuragiri and few places.
- Obsessed with NGO Darpan data and scraped all 1 lakh+ NGO data from their website.
- Book Completion: Business Adventures.
Dec, 2020
- Enabled one time fundraiser and launched Thozhan’s ‘To farmers with Love‘ campaign. It is driven by Arappor fame Chandra Mohan to support the Farmer’s community fighting both the bad Government policies and the dead cold weather.
- Was working on a super interesting campaign. Actually a biggest campaign from Grassroots. Will publish details soon in Grassroots Facebook page.
Huge shout out to these people for their support in Grassroots
- Saravanan Mani – For all the late night brainstorming calls, hours and hours of call on deciding various things.
- Sanjay Kutty – For the UX and inputs on the startup, product front
- Haribabu, Sonam, Beulah, Manu Mohan – For their support with testing out the modules then and there.
- Raghav, Hemath and Thina – With their excellent support, whenever required.
- Parthiban – On all design support
- Paul Durai, Nakkeeran, Karthik Pandy, Sathya – For all critical important brainstorming session to discuss the ideas
- Satish – On all areas from Making demo videos to may other things.
- And of course the beloved NGO people: Barath from Lit the Light, Radhakrishnan from Thozhan, Jai, Mani, Siva Elango from Satta Panchayat Iyakkam and all other awesome people from awesome NGOs.
Going forward
Soon starting with Grassroots full time with greatest, boldest plans ever. Super excited about it.
