Talent & Ideas : Lowfundwala
Co-Founder and
CEO of Lowfundwala Productions,
Kashyap Swaroop
a man of varied
talents tells us
why startups fail and what is it that
drives him.
1.Give us an Elevator pitch for Lowfundwala (If you
had 30 seconds to make us want to take your card
at the end of it)
30 seconds - 80 words
Mortality rate in the startup ecosystem is high, 9
out of 10 startups are bound to fail. But 4 out of
these 9 aren't necessarily bad startups. They're just
startups that failed to communicate their brand
message, their "Story", in the right way. Enter Lowfundwala. We tell startup stories that are unique,
stunning and visually engaging. Our ideas are
crowdsourced from the brightest young minds in
India, and realized by the most promising filmmakers in the city of Bollywood. We have a short turnaround time, despite heavy investment in in-depth
research. We help startups thrive, not just survive,
and have results to show for it. 4 out of 18 of our
clients have raised funding, with one getting acquired too."
2. What's in the name?
It's a play on the word Lokhandwala, Mumbai's goto place for film strugglers. Perhaps because it has
a lot of gyms. After our first video, we didn't make
any profit. Wondered if we'd end up broke in Lokhandwala. One brainwave later, voila; we have
Lowfundwala. It's also Lowfundwala because I
started it with my pocket money. We're completely
bootstrapped and perpetually broke.
3. Start ups. A glamorous world of failures? TELL
US MORE ABOUT IT.
The beautiful thing about failure is that you can
always learn something from it. In the west, failure
is celebrated. So, yes. The startup world has those
gutsy, experimenting folks who aren't afraid to fail.
But failure is socially unacceptable in India, which
causes a lot of entrepreneurs to slide into depression. I've had those moments myself.
4. Your most fun/ successful video. You most
disliked/ epic fail one.
My most fun video… hmmm. I have a soft spot
for two videos, actually. Our video for Codechef
where we integrated the story of WWII with the
message that coding can be fun and fruitful, and
our video for Commonfloor (The Mumbai Tribute Film) where we paid tribute to the city that
never sleeps, through a poem by Satyanshu
Singh. You could add our latest video for Option
Three
Consulting
to
the
list.
Our biggest fail: Our video for superprofs.com
It was an interesting idea where we were teleporting professors from different places to a village boy's farm. It failed in execution.
5. Introduce us to the team you work with
As of now, Lowfundwala crowdsources its talent. Which means that our team is fluid. We're
two founders, including myself. Mona Raina is
an early investor and mentor at LFW. She's an
MBA holder in business strategy from INSEAD,
Paris. Initially, my sister, Ardra Swaroop was a
co-founder who recently decided to take the
leap and enter the film world. Neil Merchant,
currently studying at BITS Pilani Goa in the final year of his 5 year course, is an evangelist and
marketing strategist in an unofficial capacity.
Everyone else is hired on a per-project basis,
though we do have plans of hiring 5 full-time
executives once we move into our new office.
6. Famous last words?
We're trying to create magic with Lowfundwala.
Keep your eyes peeled. Follow us on Facebook
of Twitter, maybe?
Also, your mom.
Want to tell your Start-up story? Get in
touch with them on
[email protected]