Letter #13: A Loss
Dear Friend of Ashaya and Without,
As the new year breaks, this is a story about a loss, and Ritu (Ritu is a pseudonym used to protect her privacy).
Ritu was 20
Letter #12: A Dreamy Scary Trip
Dear Friend of Ashaya,
It has been an INTENSE three months.
I have been stressed out – a little down and a little drained, with my tank of energy craving some sort of re-fuelling.
But then, last week, I got a chance to reflect on everything we have managed to pull off in
Letter #11: Finding Signal In The Noise
It’s been quite a whirlwind since we launched. A raging tempest whose shrill laughter doesn’t always seem like fun.
A lot of new folks have been added to the distro since that sacred launch thing: BETA customers (“the FirstEvers”), investors (uh oh), and some curious souls. So,
Letter #10: And We Launch
Dear Friend of Ashaya,
It has been over two years since I started writing these letters to you. 28 long months that have flown by. And we are finally launching.
We are launching the world’s first recycled sunglasses made from packets of chips! And we couldn’t be more excited
Letter #9: The Long And Short Of It
Dear Friend of Ashaya,
Three months is such a long period of time but also, so short. Like every quarter in our little world of Ashaya, so much has happened, but we are not there yet.
We’ve scaled up our lab into a micro pilot plant of sorts, we have grown as
Letter #8: Patience Is Mostly A Virtue, Right?
Dear Friend of Ashaya,
An interesting little incident happened with Jayashri, our informal worker.
Wide-eyed and usually with a wide smile, Jayashri works part-time with us. She leads the pre-processing processes at Ashaya of washing and shredding plastic packets, and sometimes even dabbles in some of the more complex processes like filtration
Letter #6: A Numbers Game
Dear Friend of Ashaya,
Just as we started inching towards some sort of normal, the northeast part of the world had other ideas.
I would love to just dive in but it’s thoroughly disheartening when we still live in a world where large-scale invasions are a thing. It puts the concept of
Letter #5: Humans, Machines & Control
Dear Friend of Ashaya,
Where do I even start?
The last three months have been a whirlwind – like other earlier whirlwinds, but maybe with an increased velocity that makes flying by the seat of my pants more real than metaphorical.
Let’s start with people.
While
Letter #4: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back
Dear Friend of Ashaya,
Everything isn’t always hunky-dory, especially in the start-up world. And we know this, but when you see it happening in slow motion, it’s quite daunting.
So far, we had really ridden our luck, making swift progress where it mattered – early breakthroughs, validated direction, and some sort of