Everyone has a desire to get a piece of the planet we are part of, but what if the desire is to leave behind more than the six feet all of us are destined to get? A simple question like this can help you when you have to make a choice at a crossroad. Most youngsters who meet me are curious to know how we made a fun learning sport like quizzing our full time profession and how we built Greycaps?
We were a bunch of youngsters out of college with a deep desire to keep quizzing, given that our college days were over. We soon realised the avenues were few, very few. We realised that quizzing in the early 90s was becoming a ‘nerdy activity’. Only a handful truly enjoyed it. We were part of a few quiz shows where the teams on stage were so thrilled and excited about a great question they cracked, while the audience was still trying to understand the question. This concern became a part of some of our coffee discussions and we asked ourselves how quizzing could be more inclusive and entertaining.
So we started hosting quizzes that everyone (teams on stage and the audience alike) would comprehend and enjoy. In essence, we thought of quizzing as a learning platform and not a test of knowledge. We added a dash of technology into our presentations. We soon saw results and with our full time jobs (I was at Disney then, I had a batch-mate who was at 3M and another at Modi Entertainment who would help us code) we could only host shows on weekends. We also started pitching these shows to clients as a clean brand building platform with the youth. It clicked! In the year that followed we were booked for 46 of 52 weekends.
We were happy, but we were at a crossroad. Was this good enough for us to quit and start on our own?
March 1999: It was the time when dotcoms were mushrooming all over. With the idea of a quizzing portal powered by a six slide power point presentation (as print outs, since we had no laptops) I went about meeting the big bosses of all major dotcoms like Indya, Sify, Rediff, indiainfo, 123 India. Three of them liked our idea and made us offers. We chose to be incubated by indiainfo. It was a great place, packed with smart young people and we learnt a lot. We built quizbrain.com, the world’s first ISO certified quiz portal and in three years had over 3 million followers. However, the online revenues were scanty.
May 2003: We had the option of shutting down the quiz vertical or parting ways. We believed in the idea. The online medium was perhaps not ready for it, we reasoned and moved on to create what is today, Greycaps.
Greycaps, was modelled more on the brick that brought revenues, than the click that brought ‘eye balls’. A decade later, we are working in close to 10 countries, have over a quarter million children reading our publications each year and host close to 300 quiz shows, annually. Our passion has sure become our profession but we had the will to endure a lot of turbulence. We were prudent to listen to feedback, which some call criticism and change accordingly.
If you want to pursue your passion as a profession, first be clear what difference it can create. Can it solve an existing problem or help make someone’s life better? Maybe give it try while working somewhere, especially if you are not sure if the idea can earn you a livelihood. Most important of them all, think long term and allow your revenues to fund your first phase, that is a significant key to building a successful start-up.
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