Today we’d like to introduce you to Rik Ganguly.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Rik. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
Hiking in New England can be pretty tough if you don’t have a car, but most people in different outdoor communities don’t understand this. I came to realize how difficult it was to reach places like Mount Monadnock, the White Mountains, and other great places through my friend and co-founder Ari. He didn’t have a car, so he relied on me to go hiking. One day after an eight-hour hike at the now famous Franconia Ridge, we both realized we could start a community based on access to the outdoors, and to honor that collection of mountains, we named our startup Ridj-it. Just as a ridge connects two mountains, we connect you to the mountains through our adventure platform.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Before starting our enterprise, Ari and I had no idea the amount of difficulty in understanding and working with people’s perceptions of the outdoors and carpooling. Most communities we approached with carpooling capabilities found our endeavors to be reprehensible because, “You shouldn’t make money off the outdoors, man.” After we explained that Ridj-it isn’t a way to charge for hiking, but rather a place where people can carpool together to make friends, provide access, save gas, and have hiking buddies, the same hesitant entities operated under the perception that carpool should only be $5 and worked out informally between participants. We understood that the informality actually kept people from going on adventures through the research we did, but the leadership in multiple groups, companies, and organizations still failed to realize that they were actually blocking young people, new residents, and people of color from joining who otherwise don’t have access to their own vehicles.
However, one aspect of the outdoor industry that has been very open to the type of adventurers we are bringing include ski mountains, whitewater rafting companies, surf shops, mountain guides, bike rental stores, and horse stables. All of these small businesses want a more diverse audience, and between the marketing presence we’ve built by sticking to our motto of access for everyone, we’ve been able to provide them with a clientele that otherwise has been ignored by universities, outdoor clubs, and nonprofits. In return they give Ridj-it users discounts for doing the right thing: carpooling.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Ridj-it story. Tell us more about the business.
Ridj-it is an adventure platform where people can carpool to do awesome events together. Imagine a social Uber, but your driver is going to go biking, hiking, or surfing with you because they’re just another person trying to live an awesome life. Riders pay a fee, drivers get paid, and Ridj-it takes a percent to make it happen. Riders or drivers can host a hike, bike ride, or ski trip, and if it involves tickets or rentals, then we use the collective power of Ridj-it to get discounts.
We love the businesses who work with us to give discounts, and because of that we’ve found our model will help us compete with entities like Groupon which bleed small businesses with massive commissions. Rather than taking a large percent, we ask for a discount to honor the people who are carpooling to create a better New England, so we’re proud we can continue to connect parties in a fiscally moral manner.
Ridj-it adventures have gone from Boston to various parts of Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Maine, and Connecticut for a variety of day and overnight trips. A lot of people think it’s pretty weird to get in a car with a bunch of strangers to go to the woods, but we’ve seen so many friendships and memorable adventures happen because of that time together carpooling before getting outside. We’ve taken over 1,000+ cars off the road through carpooling, and we’ve helped thousands of people get outside in a non-bourgeois manner without having to belong to a club or pay memberships. We’re proud of democratizing access to the outdoors and disrupting traditional gatekeepers who previously held all the awareness about great mountains, rivers, trails, and beaches we have in New England.
Right now Ridj-it is restricted to people carpooling from Boston, but we will be expanding to New York and other East-coast cities soon.
Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
Neither Ari or I have degrees in business or entrepreneurship, and with that comes difficulties and advantages. My background is in making sense of big data for clients, and Ari’s is in education. Combined together we’ve used our specialties to make a platform designed to enhance actual human experience, and we’ve been lucky that these two spheres have mixed well together. An additional pinch of luck was finding our friend and co-founder Alex to take on development, the key piece of the leadership puzzle we were missing. Without him jumping on I’m not sure we would have been able to continue on as fast as we have.
Along with this though, we’ve had some rough patches, and I’m not sure if I can say it was bad luck or just a lack of awareness on our part. We got burned by a few contractors and lost money because of that. We’ve also realized how so much of startup culture, and specifically seeking funding, is surrounded by pedigree, which is counter intuitive for a lot of people since it’s portrayed as a sphere for outsiders.
At the same time we were lucky to find two lawyers who helped us make Ridj-it a reality. We’re also fortunate that we’ve met so many cool users of Ridj-it, and they’ve been gracious enough to have an incredible amount of patience while we grew our tech. Ultimately though, the motto is keep pushing on, because you won’t find good or bad luck along the way if you’re not doing anything.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.ridj-it.com
- Email: info@ridj-it.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/ridj_it
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/ridjit/
- Other: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuiWWYZD-G8
Image Credit:
Pictures by Ridj-it users explicitly shared with Ridj-it
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