A Real Throwback
By: Prarthana Gupta
Tags: Pandemic, Funding, Startup, Startup Lessons

12th August, 2018

Dear BitGiving,

I have stared at a blank screen for some time now, backspaced this sentence a few times, all with the hope that I’d find some way to begin writing this. It’s been a glorious three-year run for me, and nothing but memories that will make me smile, or stories that will always give me goosebumps.

This journey began three years ago, when I met the two-people team that you were at that time. A conversation with Ishita and Ela at the corner table in Costa Coffee at SDA, and there has been no looking back ever since. I joined as the junior most on the team, with the freedom to explore, make mistakes, and learn with each passing day.

The biggest challenge for me was to take on each new day as an opportunity to learn and grow. Crowdfunding was a space that was so new in India, so getting the basics in place and understanding the nuances was what the first few months were all about. There have been multiple days in the office when I have opened a new page in my diary and written down a to-do-list for that day. Well, nothing from the list got scratched off, but only more things got added. No one day in the office is the same for us — there is always something amazing happening in the wonderful stories our campaigners shared with us.

As you evolved, and got a new look with the super-awesome BitGiving 2.0, I too grew in the organisation. I started understanding tech terms and no longer had to scribble the tech jargon in my diary to google the meanings of later. As BitGiving grew, the team grew. We became one crazy family. For the first time, I had a team.

Of course that meant a lot of responsibility as well, but we were all out there to do one thing — make sure it’s easy for people to raise funds and not let their projects die out just because they did not have the money for it. I soon started looking into different aspects of the business. For someone with zero knowledge on how startups work, I surely have come a long way. I joined when BitGiving has raised its first round, to expand the team. Today, I’ve seen the whole lifecycle of what it is like to raise a round funding, starting from the basics of who’d even be the right person or organisation to give you that money. While social impact will always be a core, it was amazing to see how this space, too, was evolving.

Everything has its course of time, and there will be many a times you will question your decisions. Did I take the right call by doing this? What if I had done this the other way? Never regret what decisions you take — go with your gut, ’cause that will always be something you strongly believed in and will do all you can to make it happen. You may fail, and that’s okay. Pick up the pieces, figure out a plan, and make it work again.

We soon reached a point where certain important decisions were needed to be made. There will be a point in all our lives when you will need to take call on when to let go. I don’t think we were ready for this, and kept holding on to those tiny slivers of hope. But finally, it was time. There are often changes in the way you perceive things, change in business and outlook on things — and that can change everything for you.

That is what happened with us, and we realised it was time to take the call. Time to let go and bow out. I still have days when I think of campaigns that are close to me — not because of the money they raise, but only because it was that story that touched my heart. Be it Karishma wanting to study at Harvard only so she can come back and change the lives of children the way education did hers; Shravan and his love for animals saving baby rhinos in Kaziranga; or Roney and Obaid calling me and telling me that the bore-well they’d dug with money they raised has provided water to families in Vashala.

What these three years have taught me, I don’t think I could have learned this much anywhere else. I will miss walking into the office, making my morning coffee, laugh at some silly memes with the team and go about making amazing things happen with all our campaigns. To all the campaigners I have interacted with, thank you for giving me a chance to do something crazy with you, and be a part of your story in a small way. It’s you who have brought us where we are, and each day, we celebrate that.

To you, BitGiving. You have been my life for 3 years — thank you for making me who I am today. To the team, my home away from home, thank you for everything. We’ve always got each other’s back — be it knowing each other’s food order on Swiggy/Zomato, knowing the next move someone is going to play in that oh-so-intense game of Monopoly, or just getting the perfect gifts, and enjoying so many ‘cheesy’ meals together. I know for a fact that we have a lot to celebrate about and be grateful for, but goodbye’s are never easy, specially not this one.

BitGiving, you’ve been a beautiful journey, but I guess we’ve reached the last stop, and it is time to pick up the bags and head home. You will always be an integral part of my life, and nothing can ever change that.

I wish I was cool enough to pull off a mic drop, but that’s all folks.

Signing off,

Prarthana