Small Enterprise India, had caught up with a few of the Startups during the Headstart’22 event and had
an insight into their successful journey. Excerpts from our interview with Payal Jain, CEO & Co-Founder,
Funngro
- Brief intro about you and the company, your team, and your journey so far.
Funngro as the name suggests – Fun N Grow. We are making it fun to grow for Teenagers and helping them get experiential learning by working with startups on a real project. We call it Teenlancers, Teens who are ready to think innovatively, bring fresh ideas, and have the intent to learn and add value to companies are the ones we help.
I am truly happy to have created an impact on the lives of hundreds of Teenagers in the last few months and super excited to expand this to lakhs and crores now.
- What made you become an entrepreneur?
The challenge of solving a large-scale problem with a significant impact on the next generation was my primary driver towards entrepreneurship. The scale of what we are doing will change the lives of 20 Crore teenagers and Lakhs of companies in India and that is a goal worthy enough to focus on me.
- What purpose does your brand solve? Which industry does it fall under?
Our mission is to help teenagers and companies achieve their full potential. We connect smart and talented Teenagers with companies that can use these skills on a project basis. Our proprietary algorithm makes the right connection and helps companies with innovation, fresh ideas and cost-effective delivery while allowing Teenagers to learn while working with real companies.
- Have you raised any funding earlier? If yes, what was your experience and how many investors did you meet until the final meet clicked?
We have largely funded the business on our own with help of a few angels who have helped us in the early stage and believe in the mission that we are working on. We have not closed the formal funding round yet and have worked on CCD as the format to access funds.
- If you haven’t raised any funding, what are your plans for fundraising?
We will continue to raise through CCD for the time being before closing our round in the last quarter of this financial year. We do have soft commitments from well-known angel investors.
- Briefly explain your Business plan – Why your brand, competition, USP and how do you see it growing in the next 5 years?
Funngro will impact the lives of 10 Mn Teenagers in the next 5 years giving them the first experience of earning money and getting experiential learning. Additionally, we will enable companies to use smart talent to achieve their business goal. Our clear focus on enabling Teenagers and Companies to achieve their full potential makes us stand out and our product journeys, match-making algorithm and execution capability make us stand apart. We do not have direct competition in this space and hence are truly excited to be a category creator with a deep impact on the future of our country.
- How was your experience at Headstart HS.X 2022?
Headstart was a great opportunity to meet like-minded people. Great to see the wide spectrum of problems being solved by such talented people. Also, really happy to see an ecosystem being developed by Headstart to help the community.
- Please share your advice/suggestion for those aspiring Startups
I would not presume to advise others but would want to simply say, one should take the route of starting a company only if you are solving a problem that you think is worthy of all the sweat and blood that you will have to put into making it work. The startup is fancy only from the outside, one has to be ready for the real grind and commit to making an impact. A startup journey is really rewarding when you see the impact you are creating for the consumers, simply forget everything and focus only on the impact you will make for that one stakeholder – the customer.