Our first guest in the South Asia series is Nepali Sixit Bhatta, CoFounder & CEO of Tootle, a ride sharing app developed in Nepal. Tootle allows riders to take hassle-free rides anywhere inside Kathmandu valley. If you are curious, then listen in.
Conversation Overview
Sixit is a telecom engineer by training but then something happened and he caught the entrepreneurial bug. It was a pleasure to speak with Sixit, who is very passionate about what he is doing and to learn his startup story.
Connect with Sixit
bhattasixit@gmail.com
Conversation Highlights
- “I could always sense that these people when retiring would tell me to do something of my own. Banks have good salaries, they would give you cars to drive, there were lots of benefits ………but you always felt that the future is not always going to be as good as the past. Sixit B. [1:37]
- “To be very honest with you I did not become an entrepreneur to solve a problem but to express myself. I think an entrepreneur like any form of art is a form of expression. So, it is basically about expressing myself.” Sixit B. [5:20]
- “When we created Tootle, we knew we were solving a problem but we did not want to be defined by that. …We were trying to search for what Tootle really meant to us. We wanted to know what Tootle actually meant to us.” Sixit B. [7:25]
- “Freedom is a word that means a lot to us. Freedom is taken for granted in developed economies.” Freedom of enablement and movement is what inspires us and that is our story.” Sixit B. [9:24]
- “When we are thinking of mobility we are thinking of people. ….I have always believed that we should enable people’s mobility. What people need more is mobility.” Sixit B. [12:00]
- “Infrastructure should not discriminate between the rich and the poor, the enabled and disabled and make and female.” Sixit B. [14:00]
- “We were the pioneers so we began the entire movement in 2016..We pioneered the shared economy, we have been bold and we have led the way.” Sixit B. [16:00]
- “When we began our service the biggest challenge is to change beahviour. For us in Nepal, we did not have an existing behaviour of using an app and taking a ride, so that behaviour did not exist, so companies did not know that companies like Uber existed….Many people did not used digital payments. So we had to change people’s behaviour en masse. In cities like ours in emerging markets we di not have something called dignity in work…. We did not just create a startup, we created an industry and we are very proud of that.” Sixit B. [20:00]
- The biggest lesson has been the lesson of optimism. I have always felt that if you want to bless anyone, you have to bles sthem to be an optimist. I think it is optimsim that keeps you going when things are dire. The journey of an entrepreneur is challenging and hard. Glorified today and punished tomorrow…..It is a huge challenge but optimism can help you sail through the challenge.” Sixit B. [24:40]
Resources Mentioned
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