Rajat Nigam is the founder and CEO of Bungee Tech. Bungee Tech empowers omnichannel commerce and CPG brands to compete effectively in an ever-changing landscape. Their platform uses artificial intelligence and advanced machine learning processes to unlock compelling analytics and insights that once blended with verified partner data from trusted sources such as Nielsen, paints a complete picture of the competitive landscape.
Hoping to learn more about his experience as a founder and the advice he would give to the next generation of entrepreneurs, we sat down with Rajat for a conversation.
What inspired you to start your own company?
My family owned a brick-and-mortar store in India when I was growing up, so I experienced firsthand how hard it can be for a business to adapt to changing technology and consumer behavior.
I wanted to create a way that any business, whether it is an e-commerce business, a physical store, or an omnichannel enterprise, can use the power of the internet to their advantage and level the playing field. And Bungee Tech does just that, providing businesses with a way to get the competitive intelligence needed to drive price, promotion, assortment, and content-related business decisions. This ultimately delivers a better end-customer experience.
Bungee Tech is a rather unique name for a company. Where did the name come from?
In 2018, when I was thinking about starting my own company, my friends remarked that it wasn't a leap of faith but a scary bungee jump. I was up for that challenge and the company name was born. The name also comes from the fact that we tether businesses with authoritative data and competitor intelligence as they leap into e-commerce and omni-channel commerce.
As a founder, what question are you asked more than any other?
Most people ask me why I quit my well-paying executive job to start Bungee Tech. So I tell them about the Regrets Minimization Framework that Jeff Bezos talks about. The framework is pretty simple - when faced with a decision, ask yourself, "In 10, 20, 30 years, will I regret not doing this?" Then you make decisions in a way that leaves you with as few potential regrets as possible.
I knew that if I didn't start my own company, I would regret it somewhere down the road. I already had a product built and a paying customer. I wanted to scale things and build a larger company, so I took a calculated risk, including a temporary loss of a stable income, and planned my exit from a corporate job to work full time on creating and scaling a solution that I love the most.