We invited Hiranmay Mallick, Founder of Tummoc (formerly Bykerr) for an interview with Most Popular Stories to know more about his entrepreneurial journey.
Tummoc (formerly Bykerr) is a Multi-modal Public Transport Connectivity and Trip Planning Platform in India, headquartered in Bangalore. They offer convenient and comfortable first & last-mile pick/drop service to the daily metro and bus commuters.
- Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey as an entrepreneur
After finishing my BTech and MBA, I started my corporate career in Bangalore as a Management Trainee way back in 2008 in HCL and was given a new challenging product to manage. With lesser expertise and experience in BD and sales, though I had enough passion to go after this opportunity.
With initial failures and learnings, I was able to cope up with the product and grown with the product for the next 7 great years. I was successfully able to establish the complete sales ecosystem for the product in Karnataka and gradually to the south and have taken the product from scratch to a steady multi-crore revenue stream.
This was the start of my entrepreneurial journey in HCL and the learnings and experiences throughout gave birth to an entrepreneur in me.
So after 8 years of exciting corporate journey in the fields of Leadership, Sales, BD, Operation, P&L, and marketing I finally started my entrepreneurial journey full time in July 2016 in TUMMOC (formerly Bykerr).
- Why did you choose entrepreneurship over a job?
I was more of an entrepreneur than an employee in my Job in HCL as mentioned earlier and was always wanted to get on to solving a real-time problem for the mass. When I reached a juncture, where I could take the leap and start addressing the problem all by myself I was more than ready to take the entrepreneur route.
I started this journey with none other than my best partner in crime, my wife Monalisha who happens to be my colleague in HCL and came up with an idea of addressing a critical mobility issue.
With multiple brainstorming, market study, validations, and reassuring internal and external factors, I finally hopped on to Bykerr (Now Tummoc). Immediately after the inception, I got Narayan on to the vision and we are more than ready to leap!
- What was the vision behind it?
The vision was always clear to make the public transport stations accessible to every doorstep and address the micro-mobility issue by enabling an alternate commute option.
- Describe the services that you offer to your customers and in what way they are unique?
We are a multi-modal connectivity and trip-planning platform, where we help daily commuters travel from one point to the other with the best possible public transport options within a city. This platform enables the first and last-mile connectivity to ensure multi-modal public transport connectivity.
In simple words, we are the smart feeder service for public transport but with intelligent integration, navigation, connectivity, and convenience.
- What difficulties which you have faced or you are facing?
The most difficult part was absolutely the funding. The initial seed which was our personal savings took care of us for some months, but once the product was ready, got early traction/users, we struggled to scale-up both in terms of user acquisition and technology (team and infrastructure).
- How do you handle the pressure and manage stress?
When you have your wife on your right side like a respiratory system, half of your stress is taken care of. Also got great support from Narayan throughout the journey, we all understood each other with every rise and fall in Tummoc.
The persistent eagerness of the whole team to reach the vision and constant pumping of “We Can Do it” from within, gave us enough strength to survive, keep afloat and grow to where we are now.
- What is one strategy that you believe has helped you grow as a person/startup?
The vision itself (Multi-Modal Connectivity) which is very futuristic yet relatable and the need of the hour helped us keep going, becoming strong and confident in each passing day.
- How your company is helping India to grow?
Our Platform is the only platform to “promote public transport” in a smart way. We are creating a smart multi-modal ecosystem to reach 75 million+ daily commuters by making the public transport stations accessible to every doorstep across the length and breadth of the country.
We are trying to establish a healthy ecosystem between the 3 key stakeholders i.e. State Transport Units(STU), Daily Commuters and driver-partners (for connectivity) for a scalable and sustainable organization and to create an alternate commute option through public transport for all to reduce the travel cost and save carbon footprint.
- In your opinion what are the keys to success?
In my opinion, there is no specific key to success, but I would say few attributes to achieve your vision, in a scalable and sustainable way, which will create great opportunities and wealth for the country and its people, we say “creating a legacy”.
The attributes are,
- Self believe (what you are creating)
- Risk-taking (how you are creating)
- Surviving (product innovation and future susceptibility)
- What advice would you give to someone starting out as an aspiring entrepreneur?
Keep dreaming, take the best vision out of it, aspire to think big, have an appetite to take risks. Connect well with the user especially when you reach heights and choose a sustainable way to stay afloat!
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