From Running Tea Stall To Making It Big In Blockchain Space, This Entrepreneur Has Come A Long Way

In India, the beginning of blockchain has been one of the most exciting technological innovations over the past few years. The country's entrepreneurs have adopted this method to bring a considerable transformation and be the frontrunners in technology.

One such entrepreneur is Amogh Tiwari, Founder and CEO of Deefy. It is a decentralised multi-chain financial infrastructure protocol that provides essential utilities on NFTs, such as renting, lending and pay later. However, the journey has not been a cakewalk for him.

Coming from a humble background, Amogh's father was a truck driver. So it was not an option for him to take risks. His journey has not been smooth, however, design has always been a core characteristic.

"This is my fourth venture. I started my journey as an upcycler, and used to create products out of waste. From there, I ventured into entrepreneurship back in 2016. And it has been a long journey of four or I would say more than five years," Amogh told The Logical Indian.

Journey As A Tea Seller

In 2018, when Amogh's first startup failed, he asked his friend for ₹8000 and made a wooden tea stall by himself with the help of a smart carpenter. He ran the 'thela' for six months, where he would make and serve tea from morning till night. He also learned to make 18 types of teas; however, he had to shut it down for some reasons.

"I don't have a proper educational background, but I had a good command of design. It was hard to find a job back in 2016 without a degree. Since childhood, chai has been the most interesting thing for me. So I thought, let's start something in tea," he shared.

Amogh recalls how his Lucknow tea stall used to get removed by cops regularly and how he had to struggle to run it successfully. "After some introspection, I realised that the way I am operating is not correct. I can't scale the product with this approach. That was when I learned about scaling, business development, SOPs and Operations," he said.

The entrepreneur took a debt of ₹6 lakhs from his friends and colleagues and started his store in one of the poshest localities of Lucknow. After three months, he sold over 45,000 cups of tea and his restaurant became one of the city's top-rated food outlets on delivery platforms like Swiggy and Zomato.

However, he realised it would be hard to scale up from this point forward due to hefty operating charges and other expenses. That's where he decided to bow out and give the company to his co-founder, Abhishek.

How Did Deefy Happen?

Well Decibel was the beginning of Amogh's tech journey. It was the world's first voice-only microblogging platform where one can tweet a voice note and share it later.

"It was around that time that clubhouse was making a lot of noise in India, in addition to its global operations. Alas, I ended up hitting a wall with Decibel like I had with Tea Vibes. We weren't able to raise funds on the correct timeline. Even so, I bootstrapped the whole business for eight months with almost less than Rs. 10,000 as a monthly burn," he said.

He decided to pivot and thus Talkie was born. He envisioned it as the future of remote work and raised $40,000 from market investors like 100X.VC and Kushal Khandwala. Eventually, Amogh realised that he was working in an oversaturated market. He ran Talkie for eight months and personally learned about building an MVP in one month and how to launch a product while keeping a team lean.

"Everything I learnt was because we were actively building and failing. And that's where we pivoted to Deefy," Amogh shared.

After years of trying multiple things and exploring the scope and limitations of the current tech ecosystem, he finally started Deefy. "Today, Deefy is rocking the Web3 space with the most innovative, decentralised finance product coming out of India," Amogh said. "My main motivation for starting Deefy was that I am an artist and a designer. So, I naturally gravitated towards NFT," he added.

While building freelance blockchain projects with his team for other clients, he found a big problem statement in the NFC space that was going unaddressed-the instability of NFY assets and their volatility. So, the startup was born with a great problem statement and artists' interests at heart.

Initially, the entrepreneur pitched his ideas to over 200 investors. He was often questioned about his college degree. For him, convincing people of his potential and telling them what vision he brings has been a challenge. "Slowly it is fading with time as I am putting in more work and delivering it in front of a LinkedIn audience," he said.

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