The fact that you are here shows that you are curious to know about our story and I being one of the 4 founders of ROBU, believe that I am the right person to tell you.
The obvious question is What is ROBU? But an even more important question is why does ROBU exist? Why did we start this company?
To answer that we will have to go back in 2010. We, the 4 founders, graduated from engineering & had good offers from different companies. We started our careers with decent packages and everything seems to be going well. But soon we realized that something was missing. Money was not the issue, Satisfaction was. It just didn’t feel right! We were so confused back then. We spent hours on the phone and made many trips to meet each other to decide on what to do.
Finally, after a year, we quit our respective jobs. It was not easy to convince ourselves to leave our cushy jobs, but even more difficult than that was to convince our parents! And it was not their fault. We did not have any plans what so ever. After leaving jobs, the only plan was to meet at a friend’s place and think about what business we can do? Sounds crazy, right? Even I think it was a crazy idea.
And there started our struggles. We somehow decided that we will make a Chapati making machine. Without any expertise in machine making, market study or timeline. We struggled for 2 long years and finally arrived at a dead end. No more money, No more hopes of getting any success with machine & the pressure from all around ……. We failed.
We decided to end our machine making business. But fortunately, our dreams of doing business were still alive. We gave ourselves 6 months to figure out what to do next and till then we did all kinds of jobs which came our way. Sourcing, trading, manufacturing, designing, literally anything that we could do. The only motive was to sustain ourselves.
During these 6 months, we came across many students, individuals, companies and other organizations which needed electronic hardware products. These products were not commonly available in India and it was too expensive and difficult to source them from abroad. It stuck to us that even we have faced the same issue when we were hustling for making our Chapati Machine.
That was our Eureka Moment.
With a little bit of planning and some hard-earned money, ROBU.IN was born in 2014 as an E-commerce platform for all kinds of Electronic hardware, components, Robotic, mechanical and DIY products.
But, getting ROBU to a position it is today was not a cakewalk. It had its own challenges. But those 2 long years of repeated failures & struggles helped us immensely to take ROBU from 4 men team to what it is today.
Today, India is taking giant strides forward. Innovation is at the forefront & the people who are making this revolution happen are makers and innovators. ROBU exists to support and accelerate this Maker’s Revolution and play a part in taking India ahead.
I would end this by a few lines by Robert Frost which perfectly depicts our journey so far….
“Two roads diverged in a woods, and I —
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference”