📖 365 Days of Stories: Day 29: 🚀 My First Entrepreneurial Journey—Left Incomplete, But Revived After 2 Years!

I’ve shared many turnaround stories, but today, let me take you back to my first entrepreneurial attempt—one that didn’t go as planned.

💡 The Idea: Solving Traffic Congestion

I wanted to tackle a universal problem—traffic congestion.

So, I spent nearly a year building a ride-sharing product. But before I could launch it, financial constraints forced me to put my dream on hold and return to a corporate job.

⏳ 2 Years of Regret (2016-2017)

While working in the corporate world, I often spoke about my startup experience. But every time I did, I felt a deep regret—like carrying a child for nine months but never bringing it into the world.

Then one day, I said to myself:

👉 “It’s time to finish what I started.”

🎯 The Comeback – Quitting My Job Again!

I took the bold step once more—I quit my job to finally launch the product.

But there was one problem…

❌ I had always been a backend developer

❌ I had zero frontend experience

❌ UI/UX was completely new to me

Instead of wasting time & money on design, I decided to keep it simple.

I took inspiration from Google Maps, Uber, LiftO, and Facebook and got to work!

🛠️ 3 Months of Relentless Execution

⏳ Every single day counted.

💻 I taught myself Android development

📱 Designed & built a fully functional mobile app

🚀 Finally, on February 14, I launched the product! (An auspicious day, as my mother said 😊)

🎉 The Launch & The Big Realization

Excited, I told my wife: “Inform your office colleagues to use my app!”

She asked me a simple, yet powerful question:

“When they request a ride, how will it get matched?” 🤯

That hit me.

I thought, “Once we have enough users, ride-matching will happen naturally.”

But then…

⏳ Days passed.

⏳ Weeks passed.

We onboarded around 30-40 users from personal connections…

🚫 Not a single ride was getting matched.

🔍 What Went Wrong?

The answer was simple but painful:

👉 We didn’t have enough ride-givers on the platform.

I realized:

✅ Tech alone isn’t enough—market adoption matters.

✅ Building is one thing, but getting users is another.

✅ No matter how great the product is, without users, it’s just code.

So, I had to figure out marketing & growth… and that’s what I did next.

What happened after that? I’ll share tomorrow. Stay tuned! Refer to attached mock up design document for all screens