Day 84 · Ninety Days of Runway · Pulse Beat
The first investor email came back on a Tuesday, three lines long, perfectly polite. Thank you for sharing. We love the founder energy. At this stage, we are looking for something with a larger…
The first investor email came back on a Tuesday, three lines long, perfectly polite. Thank you for sharing. We love the founder energy. At this stage, we are looking for something with a larger addressable market.
She read it standing at the window with a chipped cup of tea. Larger than what? There were seven million small kitchens in India. She had counted. Tiffin services, canteens, hostel messes, wedding caterers, roadside dhabas. Each of them threw away between a fifth and a third of what they bought.
She wrote back three paragraphs about the market. Then deleted them. Then wrote one sentence: Thank you. If it helps, here is a short note from a customer. And pasted Sunanda's message.
The reply never came.
That evening she took the bus home, standing all the way, holding a rail slick with other people's hands. At the second stop a man got on with a steel tiffin carrier in each fist, the kind her grandmother had used. He sat down heavily, opened one, and began to eat with his fingers, carefully, saving the last rice for the pickle.
She watched him until her stop. She did not think of addressable markets at all.