City youths empowering social change through innovative venture

Nagpur, Feb 16

There is an opportunity in every crisis, but one has to sense it and act. Three city youths ventured into an initiative to help local and small households, who were barely meeting their ends by selling house hold items, but the pandemic ruined it for them.

In midst of chaos and uncertainty, when the pandemic had thrown life out of order for everyone, these young minds came together and started LoGrow Technologies LLP Ltd, a unique platform to support the local house hold business, who did not have means and resources to market themselves and reach potential customers as physical moment was completely restricted.

Talking to Lokmat Times Arpit Mangrulkar, Co-founder and CEO, LoGrow Technologies said, “When the lockdown happened everyone was clueless as to what’s next, for a month all enjoyed and thought that this will pass quickly, but hopes began to shatter when curfew was imposed, coronavirus cases were rising every minute and there was a gloom and despair across. At that moment, myself and two of my friends decided to help the local households grow and LoGrow Technologies LLP Ltd came to life.”

The other partners in the firm are Co-founder and Technical Head Vivek Pawar and the third partner is an IT professional working with a firm in Bengaluru and wished to remain anonymous, as he is playing a mentor’s role pro bono to help the social cause. They also have team members to support them with marketing and allied functions.

Sharing more details, Arpit said, “We have started the venture in September and on February 2, 2021 recognised by Startup India in the retail and social commerce segment. It was not easy to get the certificate, as it’s a we had to convince bureaucrats, lot of pitching went in, but we were persistent and got it.”

LoGrow has currently 25 vendors on their platform who are local house hold business who make household items, such as home décor, homemade foods and snacks, artefacts, home décor, dhoop sticks and pooja materials et al. Currently they are managing the entire operations through website and manually and now they have around 75 more vendors, for which they are developing an App which should go in beta testing by March end. So that all the process is automated and they can manage more vendors.

LoGrow started with a small initial capital of Rs 75,000, which the friends brought in from their own savings, but now they are pitching for seed funding as they want to go beyond the boundaries of city and state and create a platform for people and businesses across India, who do not have digital know-how and lack resources to do so. Till now they have thrived on mouth-to-mouth publicity, but now they want to take a leap and expand their social initiative for inclusive growth.

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Startup India recognition in just 5 months

LoGrow LLP has been recognised by the Department of Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade, which works under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry which recognise and reward outstanding startups and ecosystem enablers that are contributing to social uplift. They have also been awarded by Nagpur Municipal Corporation for providing employment to many during the lockdown recently.