Dhananjay Choubey, is the co-founder of Revent, an e-commerce platform enabling a circular and sharing economy for electronic assets in the MENA region.

Back in December 2023, Revent graduated from The Riyadh Techstars Accelerator programme.

‍🛠️ Breakdown what you do?

We help entrepreneurs and businesses conserve their capital and time for growing their core business rather than buying devices. We offer them devices on flexible monthly rentals and take care of all their device and data related tasks. 

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🚀 What gets you up in the morning?

Well, there are 3 key pillars in my life which maximise my happiness.

Family, Revent and sports.

While I spend most time these days trying to optimise the right balance, it usually is one of these three I wake up looking forward to.

Sometimes it is to get to that discussion where we are about to onboard our 10th business on newly rolled out the Device Rental vertical, on other days it is to go on a quick 10 min walk with my 3 year old daughter, and some days it is to sneak in an early 10km before I start the day. 

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💼  Leadership advice you wish you had known sooner?

There are quite a few but the one which I would like to share here is active listening and that of horizontal relationships. 

Active listening is something easier in theory but takes practice to get good at it. I am still early in my journey but I can already see it making me a much better leader and co-worker. 

Horizontal relationships comes from the Adlerian school of thought where it is proposed that each person be seen at the same level but with different roles and no distinction in our approach be made by virtue of how we treat someone only on the basis of that person’s role. I recommend reading The Courage to be Disliked by Ichiro Kishmi and Fumita Koga if you are interested.

This has helped me improve my existing interpersonal relationships and build much better ones. In the last 2 years I have come to realise that great inter-personal skills can greatly influence the outcome of your entrepreneurial endeavour

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🌟 What's been your most rewarding career moment to date?

Hmmm, it is hard to pick one. I would pick the moment when one of our customers came back three times adding a new category every time since we started the device subscription with them. 

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🗻 And the most challenging?

This is easier since almost every day presents a new challenge. Jokes apart, it is always difficult to see your team members go through difficulties.

Knowing that we are all running super hard to make Revent the device bank of the businesses, it affects the wellbeing of the team sometimes and that is something I would really want to avoid. We support each other and reiterate that the wellbeing of the team comes 1st always. 

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🔍 What's a start-up trend you’re keeping an eye on in 2024?

Like all other businesses we are keen on integrating AI into our business flows to ensure better customer experience. 

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👶 As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?

I grew up watching my father teaching at university on weekdays and managing family farms on weekends/holidays while also being on the village council (Panchayat as it is called in India) to help the community.

The constant activity with no concept of weekends or weekdays with him just doing different things at different times is something which stayed with me.

Though I took up corporate jobs after finishing my business school, I always want to be in a position where I can do multiple things without being cast in a fixed mould.

I would say doing something where I make a positive change to community was what I wanted to do as a kid, though I did not have the clarity yet.

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😅 Go-to activity to decompress?

Time with daughter

Run or Yoga

Walk

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📚 A book that stopped you in your tracks?

The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt.

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🎧 Favourite podcast?

I am more of a book person. Some of the Books I would recommend are Hacking Growth, Scaling Lean, Atomic Habits, Trillion Dollar Coach and The Ancestor’s Tale (if you like history of evolution like me).

🛎️ Meet The Digital Hotelier! A UAE-based traveltech providing an SaaS platform designed to streamline hospitality operations and enhance guest satisfaction.

And, they just raised $1 million in a Seed round.

• The company was founded in 2022 by Ali Fouad and Qutaiba Alali, and claims to boost in-room dining sales by an average of 25%.

💰 Investor lowdown: The round was led by Silicon Valley-based VC firm Plug and Play, Bahrain’s Hope Fund, and a group of angel investors.

• Hope Ventures, the investment arm of Hope Fund in the Kingdom of Bahrain, co-invested $200k through the fifth episode of the entrepreneurship-themed reality television show Beban - Season 3.

🏨 Hospitality challenges

Picture this: front desk agents swamped with room service calls, international guests grappling with language barriers, and outdated room service menus with last year’s specials…

In an industry where guest satisfaction is the name of the game, the above description doesn’t exactly scream “seamless guest experience”.

Enter The Digital Hotelier 👋

🛠️ Break it down

The Digital Hotelier enables guests to easily order food, book restaurant tables, and schedule spa treatments using a simple, app-free system accessible through a QR code.

• Want to update a menu with seasonal specials? Easy.

• Need to offer promo codes for that signature cocktail? Consider it done.

The Digital Hotelier's intuitive interface allows for real-time updates, ensuring guests have access to the latest hotels have to offer.

• For international guests, the platform also speaks their language—literally. Its multilingual capabilities ensure that language barriers are a thing of the past, allowing guests to explore, order, and book in their preferred language.

📈 Back-office benefits

This platform not only caters to the convenience of guests but also supports hotel staff, handing them the reins with TDH's comprehensive back-office suite.

• From editing menu items to generating detailed reports on guest preferences, hotel managers gain a 360-degree view of their operations, enabling a data-driven approach to personalising the guest experience.

🔮 Flashforward: 

The fresh funding will be used by The Digital Hotelier to further product development and expand its market presence.

• Cache you never. Google will no longer back up the Internet: Cached webpages are dead

• Hmm. Do shoppers actually want Amazon’s GenAI?

• Bit-much. Over 2 percent of the US’s electricity generation now goes to bitcoin

• Trust the Zuck. Meta shares leap 20% as investors cheer dividend and $50bn buyback

👋 Message from the team

Thanks for reading! We’ll see you all again on Friday.

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