Motivational Story of Ramakrishna Iyengar Who Has Founded India’s First Free Item Sharing Website – Passiton.in

In an interview with our team, the man behind Passiton.in Ramakirshan Iyengar who has founded India’s first free item sharing website, He has shared this motivational story about his life, the story behind this amazing venture, shared about the challenges he faced during startup. An amazing thing about him is that He is a one-man army. I am sure you guys will really get motivated to achieve your goal after reading this :

VID : Introduce yourself

My name is Ramakrishna Iyengar 23 year old born and brought up in Bangalore, I have a degree in computers but dropped out of Master degree to pursue my business. At age 19 i started my first business after selling of my motorbike of importing a certain chemical from China and selling it across India. Successfully ran it for 3.5 years and due to some really unfortunate events i had to let go of the company that i worked for and built for years. I lost a lot of money and was depressed about it. I tried my hand at several other business in which i succeeded but didn’t continue it as i lost interest in it. I wanted to do something good for the society. I believe we as human beings have a greater cause than just earning money and being a 9 to 5 worker.

VID : How did you think about this startup?

Wanting to do something for the society i initially wanted to make an online barter site where people could exchange their items just like old times when money wasn’t there. I had made all the preparations for it. It all happened when we renovated our house we had left over construction material like stone sand etc. We just wanted to get rid of it since it’s our parking spot. It was very hard to find someone who would take our item even for free. It hit me at that time that “What if i create a site in which people could donate their stuff to fellow human beings, I’m sure there are a lot of other people who want to do clutter their house and since they can’t find a suitable person they end up throwing away their items”. If i could establish a site that would give a new life to people’s valuable trash it will definitely help a lot of people. I completely scrapped by barter site and started working on this months pass and i launched it.

VID : Introduce your Team

None, I’m the only one doing this.

VID : Explain passiton.in, What passiton.in does?

Passiton.in is India’s first and only free item sharing website that connects the donor of an item to a receiver. Aiming to bring the concept of free recycling to the masses. We all have so many things in our households that we want to shed, But we simply don’t have the time to go out and find a suitable receiver for our items, Hence we end up throwing them away to trash. India produced hundreds of tonnes of trash the last year out of which many items were still in usable condition. All one has to do is take a picture of his item and upload it on passiton.in after which he will get multiple requests from people and the donor can choose whom he wants to give his item to . The receiver will come and collect the item from the donor.

These things just lie around our house and when we don’t have any use for it why not give it away to people ? A lot of stuff are thrown in to the garbage without it being used to it’s fullest potential. We don’t think twice before throwing away but when the same item is given to a needy individual it makes all the difference in the world!
Here are a few things that we just throw away without thinking :

Clothes

We all frequently buy clothes or gets clothes from our loved ones and other accessories that are not our size, What are you going to do with it? You don’t feel like throwing it away, It just takes space in your wardrobe forever and ever, A better approach for this is to pass it on to somebody.

Glass bottles

Don’t throw glass bottles because there are a lot of creative artists who make regular boring glass bottles into beautiful pieces of arts by converting it into a Lamp or any other decorative thing. So kindly next time, pass on your glass bottles on our website!

Books

Have you just finished your study? Thinking to just throw away your academic books to your local “PaperWaala” now ?
Please don’t do that, A better solution for getting rid of your books is to pass it on to a student via our website, because there are many other students you can’t afford books.

VID :  What challenges did you face while setting up this startup?

The main challenge is that people will try to bring you down no matter what you do. It’s so hard to find people who will just put some motivating words in to you and pat your back. Stay away from negative people who just complain, laugh at others and do nothing. The most important skill a human being needs is to overcome failure, Although skill , talent,perseverance plays a role, Overcoming failure is the most important skill one has to learn.

Everyone laughed it me and told me no one would give things in India for free. I didn’t pay much attention to them just after 2 months and i had people putting up items on a daily basis and over 12000 visits to the site and a lot of registered users. But unfortunately the site got hacked by Pakistani hackers thrice and i lost a lot of data and users for the site, that incident broken me down but I never lost the track towards to my goal. Now the site is fully equipped with all latest security measures for preventing this from happening again.

People quit very early, Any business or organization for that matter needs some time to get traction, Always follow your heart and do the right thing , Don’t just get a job and follow the “herd”. Have the guts to chase your dream, You don’t want to regret it when you are like 40 years old. Take risk at young age if it doesn’t work out you will still get a lot of experience doing new things. Of course it’s a hard path, All this entrepreneurial thing is not for the weak minded, You would have to deal with failure on a daily basis and have the guts to get up one more time and try, You may fail 1000 times but you only have to be right once to be successful. Don’t always go chasing behind money take care of friends, family.

VID : What’s your current focus and future plans?

Currently focusing on getting more users, I always want to keep this a non profit organization.  Right now i am tying up with NGO’s, NPO’s, orphanages, old age homes etc. to channel the items donated on the site.

Read Also : How A Young Squad Under 20 Started “Dealwala”; A Discount Coupons Startup

At the end, Ramakirshan shared a few words about Viral Indian Diary(VID)

In the present situation I feel the media is responsible for all the negativity that is being spread about our great nation, They are manipulating people’s mind in a subtle way all for money and TRP. This is the right time for the creation of a media outlet that spreads positivity and good vibes over the Internet and VID does just that. Gives hope for the hopleless and make’s people’s day. I’m glad to have connected with such an organization that is dedicated to bringing upliftment and positivity to people. My thanks and congratulations for the team and hope it goes a long way in the coming years 🙂

Join Passiton :

Facebook : facebook.com/PassitonIndia

Twitter : twitter.com/PassitonIndia

Thank you Ramakirshan for sharing your and your startup story with us and thank you for the kind words. That is exactly our target, to motivate, inspire people to be bold and confident, empower everyone to achieve their goals in their life. We wish you all the very best and we believe that PassItOn is surely going to be the next big community in India.