From College Project to ₹15L: The Picapool Story

At the start of my third year, I began my entrepreneurial journey by joining the founding team of Picapool, aiming to solve overbuying by connecting people to pool resources for similar products.

Validation: 2,000 Interviews

We validated our idea by interviewing 2,000 individuals in Delhi and Mumbai. This helped me develop empathy and a deep understanding of diverse perspectives. This experience was my first exposure to large-scale networking, helping me cultivate resilience and the ability to communicate clearly and effectively.

The Learning Sprint

To prepare for the technical challenges ahead, I invested heavily in upskilling:

• AlgoExpert's Systems Design
• Flutter Development
• AWS Certified Solutions Architect
• Docker & Kubernetes

On August 17, 2023, we began development after expanding the team with some of the best developers from IIT Hyderabad.

The Makeshift Office

A picture taken from my hostel room during discussions on Picapool's app flow.

I took on the responsibility of leading the team and converted my room into a makeshift office, lining the walls with whiteboards labeled:

We worked tirelessly, often until 5 AM. Every day was a dev night, and it was the best team environment I had ever experienced.

My Role: Frontend & DevOps

Handling both frontend and DevOps, I worked jointly with my team on client-server integrations and maintained an active loop with the designer to ensure all ideas were accurately translated into designs.

A picture taken at Google Hyderabad Office, with me sitting near the heart of Google.

Launch & Victory

I delivered the product in a month and launched it on the Play Store on September 17th. The result? Picapool won first place with ₹15,00,000 and no equity dilution in Suzuki's Global Seed Innovation Challenge on September 23, 2023.

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September 24th 2023

Lessons Learned

Picapool taught me that with the right team, clear vision, and relentless execution, you can build and ship a production app in record time. The late nights were worth it.