Anshul GuptaFounder of Fabence Published On: Monday, October 05, 2015 Views 3193

"Be passionate, dream big and take bigger risks."

A person with a strong entrepreneurial mindset, Anshul has always had a knack of finding market trends before they come to the forefront. He always had multiple interests across several domains, strong academic performance, represented schools in various sports and optimal market awareness. His ingenuity is evident from the fact that he has joined the ranks of entrepreneurs before even completing his graduation. Currently he is undergoing his B.com from Shri Ram College of Commerce. He is an avid football player and like listening to house music.

He is currently engaged in a startup set to change the way people discover fashion online. Fabence is a personalized fashion discovery app that aims to make fashion discovery lot smarter and relevant through intelligent integration of multiple sellers (for now) and categorization of products underpinning it all with an extremely robust personalization algorithm all under one app. It is like having 50 fashion sites in one app personalized just for you.

Please provide a brief overview of your product/ service.

Fabence is a personalized fashion discovery platform that not only allows you to discover fashion products from your favourite fashion websites and apps under one roof but also allows users to discover products and looks that match their style and budget across the marketplace. Its like having 50 fashion websites in one app personalized just for you.

Fabence has been able built a very robust tech platform allowing us to have one of the strongest search and filter mechanisms in the market, or an ability to show users looks in real time that match their style and budget unlike any other player in the market.

What inspired you to build the above product/ service?

The idea of Fabence came from a personal experience. I was looking to buy a buttoned down shirt! Though I spent lot of time hopping from one site to the other , I still failed to find what I was looking for. Besides, during this discovery exercise, I found different user experience with each site (some quite painful) and in some cases quite limiting. I realized there is no major player in the market focusing on providing an end to end fashion discovery platform and helping a user in their buying decision and that is where Fabence would carve its niche.

Very early on, I also realized that shopping journey is not just about finding the best product, but also how you find that product and what decision making aid one can get to make purchase decision. This led to us deciding that our core focus would be personalization and smart discovery.

What is your life mantra?

The life mantra that i live by is ‘Greater the risk, Greater the reward’. A big part of my life has been taking risks and seeing them through. I feel if you are really passionate about something and have the perseverance to see it through things eventually fall in place. Too many people are scared of failure but for me the biggest failure would be never giving it a shot.

What was the most challenging part of your journey till now?

Well, the very first hurdle was convincing myself to take the plunge and start! It was quite overwhelming, as a first time entrepreneur, I had no experience whatsoever! Second was, of course, putting together a team that shares the vision, believes in the idea and competent enough to execute! Third, of course, as always, was cash!

Once these were overcome – execution was relatively easier (though not easy!). We had to overcome lack of interest / resistance from various online sites who were hesitant to commit to a new concept! Other challenges were more from technical perspective – as we were working on concepts which were new and difficult to implement – for example – constructing an intelligence based technology platform! There were some (a few at least!) mistakes made along the way but team learned quickly – becoming more matured and experienced in the process!

How did you overcome those challenges?

Help from our mentors and learning from our past mistakes fundamentally helped us overcome the above challenges.

Share some details about the investments that you have been able to fetch for the business till now.

We had raised a seed round late last year and are now in the market to raise $300k-$500K as a pre series A round which will allow us to set a base for a series A round in the next 5-6 months.

How do you protect yourself from the problem of Brain Drain?

Well, I football and house music is something that helps me relax. Occasionally i like to read and go on long walks to clear my head.

According to you, what are the three qualities an individual must have to achieve success?

I dont think there are any strict qualities one must have to be successful but i feel is very important is being passionate about what you are doing as if you are passionate you are bound to work hard, have perseverance and the will to make it work.

Which online tools/ services/ apps do you use the most and would like to recommend as well?

Asana : Team management
Google anayltics/ mixpanel : for analyzing data and user behaviour
Git Hub : Code repository

Share any one habit which you think makes you more productive.

Everyday i set targets for myself that need to get done. I think having short term targets for yourself not only allows you to improve focus but also allows you to improve productivity and quality of work.

Share any one habit which you wish to change in yourself.

One habit i would like to change in myself is that i tend to over think. This causes stress and anxiety and is not good for someone running a startup

Answer in less than 50 words

One tip to success:

Be passionate, dream big and take bigger risks.

One mistake you believe every individual must avoid:

Not learning from past mistakes.

One most important lesson that you have learnt till now:

Data is key, All decisions need to be backed up by data.

What are your plans for next 3 years?

I have one single aim: Make Fabence one of the top destinations for people to discover fashion.

If you get a chance to start your career again what would you do differently this time?