Jai Bharathi Addepalli, Co-founder & CEO, MOWO Fleet 

Hi, I'm Jay Bharti, founder of MOWO Fleet from Hyderabad, where MOWO means moving women. We are building a fleet of women drivers, more specifically driving electric two-wheelers and three-wheelers, to offer last-mile commute as a ride or last-mile deliveries within micro-neighborhoods of 8-9 kilometers.

A lot of people were interested in funding us. But we were like, We are still not investment ready because we are still experimenting. And like in many cases, the investor would hear us out, listen to everything, and then finally say that this is a fantastic idea to work on. We'll continue these discussions, and we should have a call probably once you have 1,000 drivers.

So that scale becomes a very crucial thing. And in our case, building those first 1,000 drivers is a bigger challenge. Once I'm at the 1,000 drivers, making that 1,000 into 10,000 and 1 lakh [100,000] is an easy job. But initial support I need is for those 1,000 drivers. And irrespective of whatever endless conversations we had, it again zeroed down to, why can't you scale faster?

I think as entrepreneurs, and especially as social entrepreneurs, because we come from ground-up, we always try to be very conservative in our projections. But I think we need to get out of that bubble of being conservative. We don't have to give up fancy numbers, but make sure that before we get into an investor call, we are ready with whatever we have. We don't need to have 100 things which are already working. Even if we have two things that we have drilled down and which we know will work, that has been the innovation and that will work, go with a lot of confidence. You may get the fund right then or not. But the idea is if someone knows what you're building, and the takeaway is if they can remember you for what you're building, if not today, they'll come back to you tomorrow.

The same investor I was talking about, I ended up meeting after the Acumen program, and the investor was there, and she looked at it and she's like, Great progress. We should keep in touch. I know that it is actually relating into something better, but I think as founders, we should stay extremely confident in what we are saying and let the world know what we are building. If that is cracked, then the rest, there are many programs to learn, but confidence is not something somebody will teach you. At least for something that we are passionate about and we are building, we should have that 100% confidence in what we are building.

Jai’s Lessons 

• Don’t be discouraged by initial setbacks; stay persistent and confident. 

• It’s not about having everything perfect - it’s about believing in your vision, showing up with conviction, and letting people remember what you’re building.  

• Keep pushing forward; today’s ‘not yet’ could be tomorrow’s ‘yes.’