Episode 13: Akshita Sachdeva, Co-Founder of Trestle Labs: Empowering Accessibility

Welcome to the final episode of The Resilient Entrepreneur, Season 2! We're closing out this inspiring season with a special guest, Akshita Sachdeva, Co-Founder of Trestle Labs, an AI-driven company reshaping accessibility in education and employment with inclusive tech.

Akshita and her co-founder Boney Dave envisioned Trestle Labs as a way to make information accessible for people with print disabilities, including blindness, low vision, and dyslexia. Their tech suite, Kibo (Knowledge in a Box), harnesses AI, Optical Character Recognition, and Translation across 60 languages, emphasizing Indian, Asian, and African languages. With recognition from the President of India, MIT Solve, and the DBS Foundation Social-Enterprise Award, Trestle Labs is transforming lives across the globe.

Listen in as Akshita shares her journey of turning a college project into a thriving business, guided by a deeply customer-centric approach and a passion for creating inclusive opportunities. From staying adaptable in a fast-evolving market to her contagious energy, Akshita’s story is a testament to resilience and impact-driven innovation.

As we wrap up this season, we’d love to hear from you! Which episode resonated with you the most? And what kinds of resilient stories would you like to hear next? Let us know in the comments or reach out through the details in the description.

Thanks for joining us on this incredible journey of resilience. Until next season, stay inspired, stay resilient, and keep pushing forward!

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Brought to you by the team at C2C Organizational Development, a firm that supports companies in bringing people and strategy together. 

Write to us at podcast@c2cod.com and tell us what you thought about this episode.

Brought to you by the team at C2C Organizational Development, a firm that supports companies in bringing people and strategy together.

Transcript

 Hello there. Thank you for tuning in. This is Dhruti Shah and welcome to the Resilient Entrepreneur Podcast, where every month I bring to you the story of an entrepreneur who's proven to be unstoppable because they're resilient. This podcast is a culmination of my own story of resilience as someone who taught herself early on to be mentally tough.

I came to realize that success stories are great to remain motivated, but true learning happens when you fail, you stumble, you reflect, and you rise. This podcast is an attempt to bring to you, to my listeners, the situations That test your nerves, your grit, and your resilience. If you listen closely, you will hear the entrepreneurs reflect.

And who knows, you may have some light bulb moments yourself. The Resilient Entrepreneur is brought to you by C2COD, a firm that specializes in bringing people and strategy together. And welcome to the brand new season of the resilient entrepreneur podcast. This new season is dedicated to social entrepreneurs who are not just grappling the challenges of a new startup, but are also in the business of changing mindsets and impacting lives with that.

Let's meet my guest today. Coming right up.

Welcome back to the final episode of season two of the Resilient Entrepreneur. We are wrapping up this season with an inspiring guest whose work truly embodies resilience and innovation. Today, we are joined by Akshita Sachdeva, co founder of Trestle Labs, an AI tech company, transforming access to education and employment through groundbreaking inclusive tech.

Akshita, alongside her co founder, Bonnie Dewey. Started this incredible initiative at a young age with the vision of making information accessible for all, especially for those with print disabilities like blindness. low vision and dyslexia. Their technology suite, Kibo, which is knowledge in a box, uses advanced artificial intelligence, optical character recognition and translation to unlock printed and handwritten content across 60 global languages with a strong focus on Indian, Asian and African languages.

With accolades, including the National Award for Best Applied Research from the President of India, MIT Solve, and the DBS Foundation Social Enterprise Award, Trestle Labs is truly making a deep impact in the community. So without further ado, let's welcome our guest for today's episode. Akshita Sachdeva.

Hey Akshita, welcome to the Resilient Entrepreneur Podcast. So excited to have you here. Thank you. Thank you so much, Dhruti, for having me here. Absolutely. So let's dive straight into what's your journey been like, Akshita? Um, I mean, the journey of seven years is hard to be explained in a couple of minutes, but I'll try to do that.

So, um, uh, the journey started actually in 2015 when I was a third year college student, I was studying computer science. And I happened to develop a project, a college project for the visually impaired community, which was a hand glove and that had a camera. So they could just point and it would read and describe things.

It would help them navigate with obstacle detection. So those are some of the things that I built early on that paved way into what I'm doing today as the co founder of Tressel Labs. where we are on a mission to make education and employment inclusive for persons with visual impairment, blindness, and dyslexia.

And on the way, we have developed our AI powered patented technology suit that sort of serves multiple other use cases in, you know, in the intelligent document processing landscape. So we are now working with the corporates, governments, banks, and other industries to be able to solve some of their pressing challenges with the tech that we have, uh, while we continue to empower the community, um, of visually impaired individuals that we are empowering with our product called Kibo.

So Kibo, which means, uh, K I B O that's knowledge in a box. It's an acronym and, uh, Kibo just, um, helps you listen, translate, digitize, and audio ties. Anything, any printed or handwritten content across 60 plus global languages. Primarily focusing on Indian, Asian and African languages. So that's the unserved and underserved language market that sort of Kibo serves today.

Yeah, and I'm glad you hit on that note because it is such a noble idea in terms of what you're doing. It is truly phenomenal and this is truly a social enterprise from that point of view. Are you limiting yourself only to India or do you have presence in other countries as well? So, uh, starting last, I mean, last two years we have started our exports.

So now we have distributors across 30 different countries and we are actively exporting to 12 different countries. Especially we are focusing on the linguistically diverse populations, primarily in the Asian and African continent, because we are able to add more value with our products in those geographies, but we also have our users in the Western markets like US and European markets.

With the handwritten handwriting recognition technology that we have. So that's something that's even serving the needs to, um, I would say digitize German handwritten manuscripts in some of the parts in Europe. So those are some of the external use cases that we're working on. That's fascinating. And it sounds too good to be true, to be honest, it is a truly a revolutionary product in that sense.

And I'm sure you're doing everything from a business point of view to ensure that it becomes a success. But I'm sure, you know, even a noble idea, um, you know, a great product like this comes with its challenges. So what are some of the challenges you've faced, Akshita? Um, I would say. And what most people think is the hard part, that's, that's been the easiest for us, like the product development phase.

Okay. You are blessed enough to, you know, have a really good, some, uh, supporting community of users who validated and, you know, uh, told false in our product early on that really helped us co create our product through, uh, you know, constant user validation, customer feedback. You're welcome. That really helped us build a really strong, robust technology and a product.

The second challenge, I would say, really started when we started trying to find the customers for our business. So initially, I mean, you know, when you're new in the market, it's a new technology, it's a new product. People really want to, you know, know who else has tried it. Yeah, that sort of became like a challenge.

Initially, I remember when we used to initially go to our first set of customers, especially so when we launched our product Kibo on January 4th, 2018, the first six months we ran like a six months pilot with one of the NGOs, National Association for the Blind in Nashik. Yeah, and it was actually a paid pilot.

So I mean, when we say, you know, when we say that, uh, Kibo has been profitable since day one, we even had a, I mean, uh, even a lot of people have to, um, you know, do free pilots for us. We were lucky enough to have a paid pilot commitment. From one of the biggest, uh, you know, universities in India, like YCMOU, which is Maharashtra Open University.

So they were our first believers. They said if this technology works like for a six months pilot, we'll pay for like the first seven units that you sell. And that was like the first get go. We had money and that's when we realized, okay, let's open a bank account. Let's get started. I'm done. The six months, uh, were like, they went like, uh, anything.

And then a lot of, uh, we started getting a lot of inbound requests. So, uh, like first customer in the university sector was also, I am him. We supplied, I think 12 units. Between August to November, 2018, like after the six months pilot, because everybody was, um, you know, happy that this is the only product that can cater to English, Hindi, and Marathi.

All the other products, uh, that were out there in the market would only think of, um, you know, Latin based languages, like English, French, and others, this was the only product that could do, um, Indian languages, handwriting, and everybody just wanted to grab a piece of it. So we supplied the first 12 units.

as a paid pilot, post which we spent next eight months, which was, I would call it the third challenge in our journey to build the scale manufacturing capacity. Because as a young business, especially when you're in a hardware business, um, I mean the initial 10, 20, 30 units, you can, you know, build screw, nut, bolt, soldering, everything inside.

But then now you want to move from tens to hundreds and thousands of units. And you really need to take care of quality assurance and everything. Yeah. So that next eight months we spent in design for manufacturing, which was the third challenge in the journey, uh, which was, you know, finding the right partners, the right manufacturing partners, uh, whom we could probably outsource our, uh, you know, our manufacturing process.

We take care of the quality end to end. Yeah. So that was the third phase of this journey. And, uh, I think after that, things have been pretty smooth. So when we finally, we were ready with our first hundred units, like a batch of hundred units and June, 2019, when we launched, uh, our inventory sold out in the next nine months.

So we had a lot of, uh, revenues coming in. People will be leaving in our product. There was a lot of credibility. Also because it was solving a need that no other product was solving because, you know, no, but no other product would take care of Indian languages. And that's the niche that we figured out.

Yeah. It's an underserved market, right? In that sense. Yeah, absolutely. And I would say the fourth challenge hit exactly after those nine months. So by March, 2020, we were done with the first, uh, you know, a hundred units, nine months and that's when COVID hit. So that was our fourth challenge in our journey.

Uh, then, you know, starting April, 2020, COVID and we were figuring out because our major customers happen to be educational institutions, like schools, colleges, universities, and they were all closed because of lockdown. And that's when we thought, you know, we need to go back to the drawing board and figure out our business.

Uh, even in that year, um, though we were expecting to grow, we didn't grow, but we were at the same level as. We were in the last year. So we didn't, uh, have incur a loss, but we were not able to grow at a, you know, exponential rate as you were planning. Uh, so we took actually that time to go back to the drawing board.

We are realized, okay, if it's a COVID world, we don't know how long it's going to last. How do we, um, survive that time and also use it in the best possible way to maybe preparing ourselves for the new normal. So we, um, I realized that. Okay, let's see. Schools and colleges are all moving online. Can we move our technology online?

So we actually use that time 9 months of, uh, you know, between, um, April 2020 till December to actually build our SAS platform that would serve the exact same need. But in a more online, uh, SAS fashion, nine months, we built a completely new product, did everything from validation, assessment, testing, while we continue to, um, you know, run our existing business with the first, I mean, hardware technology.

So our hardware looks like a magical talking table lamp. Anything under it and it would magically read it out to you in any language you want, whether it's print or handwriting and next nine months, we built a SAS version of that, even that we launched in Jan 2021. And that took off really well. So I think the things have been, um, I mean, that.

I mean, you know, the survival instinct in a, in an entrepreneur that just keeps you going, like no matter what, let's, let's figure out some way to, um, make money, pay salaries, build products and survive. That's something that we have been, um, I'm doing all through. So I think those are some of the key challenges, but again, I think when the world got back to normal in 2020, starting 2021, things were getting bad.

Uh, institutions, education institutions were opening up. That was something that, um, I'd say, you know, it was the good phase of the journey between 2021, 2022. Um, 2023 again, we were sort of, you know, starting to see, um, uh, I'd say a like, you know, we have a tech it's serving a need. Uh, what, what does it mean to scale for any business?

Once you're done with the first five year window, now it's time to, you know, gear up for the next level of your journey. And, um, you really need to think about scale, uh, think about how do you grow your revenues? So thankfully for us, the last three years, we have been growing like four X every year. Uh, even the March 2024.

So that was when I would say it all started like between 2021 to 2022. We had a certain amount of growth, reach, credibility in the market. And now it was time for us to really think bigger, think scale between 22, 23, 24. So that's something that we spent our time on. We realized that our growth cannot be a, you know, a function of one to one sales that we could do, it would actually be a function of the partnerships that we can have.

So starting 2022, we started partnering with distributors, both in India and internationally. So that's how we got, um, 30 different, uh, 30 distribution countries that we are now exporting to. Uh, we have some good, really good partners who are helping us Actively export to 12 different countries. So it all began in 2022 when we were really thinking scale, we were thinking bigger than what we were at that time.

And, um, I think some of those partnerships that we signed in 2022 have really paid off now or are paying off now. And, uh, a similar, I would say change happened this year as well. So this year in February, we were on Shark Tank India season three. Right. Uh, that is, I would say the. Uh, next level jump that we had from where we were in terms of, you know, just scaling our business in a more.

Organic fashion, uh, because that just gave us, um, the kind of marketing that, uh, us, uh, startup like us could not even imagine. We started getting, um, inbound distribution requests all the way from Australia to Canada to Slovakia. And like, it is, it was amazing to see such inbound, um, you know, response coming in.

So I would say that was another phase of our journey where now we were more eyeballs were reaching out for us. And, uh, we also got some, you know, good amount of B2B deals because, um, I would say pre shark tank time, people used to look at, uh, at Tressel Labs as a company that builds, um, education products for, uh, persons with visual impairment.

Of course, education in the education sector, we were also serving multilingual education and other needs, uh, audio based learning and all of that. But it was still pretty much around the education industry itself. Okay. What Shark Tank changed for us as, as a business, as entrepreneurs was, it opened up doors to, um, other opportunities.

So after Shark Tank, people started looking at Russell Loves as a company that can provide, um, intelligent document processing solutions, because it's an AI powered technology that serves Indian languages, that serves handwriting. And then we started getting inbound requests from banks, media research companies, insurance companies, Who wanted us to digitize their, um, you know, media stuff, their, uh, patient records, healthcare records, insurance claim settlements, or even banks reached out with their, um, you know, requirement of, um, digitizing handwritten, uh, you know, maybe checks or deposit slips, something of that sort.

So I would say those were some of the use cases that our technology could solve, but, uh, we were not really looking at it that way. So Shark Tank, I would say was an eye opening experience for us. And also for the world, because now the world was looking at Russell Labs from a completely different lens, like a AI technology company focusing on Indian languages, handwriting, that can serve multiple use cases in the OCR or the vision related, uh, you know, challenge statements.

So in the document processing. So I think that the journey has been amazing. We have just been grabbing onto every opportunity that we could find. Yeah. Surviving and growing through the way. Thriving, I would say. Well, sure, because I what I'm hearing is, um, you started off with a very clear vision. You know, your purpose was there.

You were clearly passionate about what you wanted to do. And you topped it off with a lot of strategy as well as what I'm hearing, because you would keep going back to the drawing board. thinking about it in terms of the what next, you know, how are we going to scale, for example, or how are we going to pivot if need be.

Um, and clearly you've remained open to, I think, opportunities and possibilities. And I love the fact that, you know, you never thought about it in terms of, no, no, this is what we've started. So you're not rigid. In your vision as well. I think you're very well aware that as a startup, even your vision can evolve.

And I think that, um, again, kudos to you, um, in terms of being able to think like that. And, and I'm sure it's, it's been great. It's going to be great going forward, but actually, was there ever a point where you felt like I'm going to throw in the towel? Like, I'm, I'm calling it quits. Uh, this, I cannot do this anymore.

You're telling you literally tearing your head apart. Trying to find it within you to keep going. Has there ever been a time like that? Um, I would say COVID was exactly that time. I mean, I still remember it was so hard for us to manage our finances, payout, salaries. We took, I mean, me and my co founder Bonnie, we took it as a, you know, we decided as a co founders that we'll not lay off anyone.

We'll not do pay cuts. And we need to, we somehow, I mean, that's set in stone. Now, how do we build on top of it? So I think that was the most strugglesome time. Like we were really figuring out education institutions are shut down. We have to pay salaries. We don't want to lay off anyone because we love our team.

So how do we, how do we really do this? Um, I would say that was a moment. Uh, and we like, we just, uh, discussed with each other and we figured out that, you know, we need to. We need to find out a way. We, I mean, we have been doing this for the last like three years. We, we should be able to do something and that just kept us going.

Um, and other such moment I would say was also like before COVID when we were just starting out with the first sale. So now we were like, when in June, 2019, when we launched our products, we were like really excited that, you know, we have the next big thing and we should be like, Customer should be lining up never happens that way.

So it's like, you know, the first, I would say 10, 15 customers. So, I mean, we started working with IIMs, IITs, you know, just to build that whole credibility piece in our business. So when we reached out to them, someone, um, or even other institutions, uh, you know, maybe government sector, government, central university, state universities.

We would always get that thing, you know. We just have one visually impaired or five of them, you know, should we really invest so much? And then we were like, okay, what do you want? They said, you know, we get so many students from different states of India. So can it also translate, uh, or can it, you know, uh, give me audio books so I don't have to buy audio books from outside.

So I think, um, Those were the moments when we actually said, you know, we build something, we feel the world needs it, but then customers are telling us, um, they just have two, five, 10 visually impaired students and they do it. They don't want this. And it was so disappointing. So there was a time when you were like, okay, we build something.

We spent three years on this. And then we were like, I mean, how do we go from here? Uh, so there was a time when we were like really, um, struggling between. Choosing impact and, uh, you know, business at the same time, we're doing something impactful, but as a business, if no one wants to buy it, uh, how will it make business sense, but then, and that was the time, like, we were like, why did we even do this?

Uh, like spending two and a half years of our life trying to build something, uh, only to hear that, you know, uh, Our beneficiaries and customers are different. So while our users would be visually impaired students, but eventually the payer or the one who has to pay for the service, like the customer, is not willing to do that.

So that early distinction that our customers and our users are different, and we need to, while we serve our users, we need to Attend to our customers needs. Yeah. So that was a disappointing time. But we again, you know, went back to the drawing board. We said, okay, what does the, these customers want from us?

Okay. They want translation. Let's build in, you know, spend some more months, build something that would translate books. So they would keep a Bangla book here and in Hindi, or maybe keep a Sanskrit book and hear it and. French or even Spanish for that matter. So we were, we sort of, uh, kept on understanding what our customers want while continuing to serve our users in the visually impaired community.

And that actually made, I would say our product more robust because we were just. It just had one feature you keep a book and you can or a handwritten note and you would hear it. But now you could keep any book and hear it in any language. And that's what started, you know, getting more traction. It was also bridging language gap.

And starting, I would say in 2023. We actually started working with a lot of rural public libraries. So recently, last year, we got a letter from the Rural Development Panchayati Raj Department, Government of Karnataka, to implement Kibo and 2000 rural public libraries, not just for, not just for the visually impaired community there, but actually for the people who face literacy barrier, language barrier, because people like elderly could read a Kannada newspaper, because they can understand Kannada, but they cannot read it.

Or there were school kids who could read an English book in Kannada and, you know, understand it better. So I would say earlier it was just solving one need, like for persons with visual impairment. Growing forward, even in the impact space, we saw it serving the literacy, language, and disability barrier, like all three of them together.

Um, actually, that just made it more, you know, worthwhile. You know, your story is such a great example of focusing truly on the customer. We say that, theoretically, we learn it in schools and universities, wherever we learn it. But doing it is a whole different ballgame. So, uh, fantastic, right? Because you're making knowledge and information accessible for all.

That's the way we're looking at it. And You know, what keeps you going? Do you have any success mantra where you say that? Okay, uh, this is what I go to besides the whiteboard that you keep going to for your strategy. Uh, what else do is your go to thing, you know, to keep you going? Uh, I would say two things.

Uh, you know, first is, of course, the user stories that we create. Yeah. Uh, like every now and then someone would, you know, call us and, uh, like recently, I mean, I would if I were to share some examples. Yeah, like Professor ab, he teaches in, uh, like Delhi as a professor and he calls us and he's like, you know what, the last year I was asking my colleagues, can you check my handwritten answer sheets of my students because he's visually impaired?

And he's like, uh, this year. I have checked all of mine and I'm asking them, Hey, do you need help? And I'm so happy today. And he was so excited and we, we, you know, draw energy from all of those instances where, uh, I use this. So that is, uh, Miss Nandita, she's she's a lawyer. She's India's first visually impaired notary.

Uh, she's based in Nagpur and she calls, you know, telling how. Before Kibo, she was only able to process, let's say two case files per month. After Kibo, she's able to do 15 to 16 files. And, uh, I mean, I, and that just makes me so happy about the use case that we built around translation because she's like I get, uh, you know English to Marathi and Marathi to English translations for the high court because she is a pleading lawyer at high court She's like I can easily translate and submit it for them So I I mean that translation bridge as well as accessibility bridge is, you know, done for her.

I mean, being a visually impaired, uh, lawyer. So I think some of those really good instances of, uh, students clearing IES exam, becoming IES officers with, uh, you know, having keyboard with them. Those are some of the stories that really, uh, keep us going. Like, you know, uh, the reason that we started With seven years back in 2017 still holds true.

People are still achieving their dreams. They are fulfilling their aspirations, especially when you know, some of the times they are the sole breadwinners of their family. And if they get a job. They start working, they make money. It's the entire family that, you know, grows. So I would say those are some of the instances that really keep us going.

We always think about them in tough times and that just helps us stay strong, looking at the impact that our work is creating. And the second, second thing that really keeps us going is our team. It would not have been. I mean, we would have, you'd love your team. You would have not survived, um, you know, COVID or anything.

If it was not for them. And because, uh, I would say we, we have been blessed enough to have a really good team, people who are. Who take ownership of their work, who are sincere, who are fully committed, as committed as I and Bonnie are to the company, to the team, to the work that we are doing. And I mean, that just, we draw energy from them every single day.

We see them coming to office, putting their time, effort, and you know, making things possible magically. So that just, it's just so, um, I would say, uh, contagious, like their energy is contagious that we just keep extracting from them. Um, even during COVID, I think that was so, um, so in, at the time of COVID, we were just a five member team.

So we had one of our team members, uh, who was, uh, who was visually impaired. His name is Ranganath. He actually, he's an MBA in finance. He's a national level chess. And blind cricket team player. So he's all of it. And he was, he worked with us for like four years. labs. And, uh, I still remember like when we gave him his, uh, offer letter, uh, for a full time role, we asked him, okay, you know, Ranganath, what was the next thing you want to do?

He said, I go back. I'll tell my mom, you don't need to, you know, work in the factory. I can take care of you and my grand mom with the salary that I make. And, uh, in fact, during COVID, his mom actually got laid off from her job. So it was, he was the sole, um, breadwinner of his, for his mom, his grandmom, himself taking care of vaccination and everything.

So I would say that that just kept us going, like, we'll not have any layoffs. We'll not have any pay cuts. We rather should be in a position to be able to support our team at that time and just make sure they, they are able to survive this time as well. So I think that that whole thing about having our team with us, um, just keeps us going.

That's fantastic. And of course, you know, you, um, and your co founder Bonnie, I think you, the two of you make a great team as well, because I've seen you in action. So I definitely can vouch for that. Um, do you have any daily practices or rituals that you follow as an entrepreneur that keeps you resilient?

Um, I think some of them definitely, as I said, uh, you know, we draw energy from our team. So the first daily ritual starts at 10 a. m. So we actually, um, get on a call, we have everybody, uh, like entire 15 member team that we have now. So we have everybody on the same call, like for half an hour. Everybody is just for two, three minutes.

They are sharing, you know, what, uh, what's the plan for the day and how are they going to plan the entire day around it? So that just, um, pools creates a big pool of energy that everybody can share. And that's how we start our day. Uh, even like we end the day around 6 PM where we catch up again, like a wrap up call.

We want to understand how the day went, if there were any challenges, if there is any dependency on somebody else that we can solve. So I think that, um, you know, pulling in the energy from within the organization really helps us stay resilient. As a team between me and Bonnie as well, I would say, um, we are like yin and yang, we are like completely opposite.

So my, uh, for me, I'm like, uh, I'm a driver, like a highly on, you know, take a risk of this opportunity, just bounce on it. And Bonnie would be the, you know, that integrator kind, he would be like, okay, let me understand the situation. Let me analyze everything. Let me do this calculation so that I can tell Akshata not to bounce.

Now, once I have done my analysis, then she can go. So I would say we are like, um, we are like, um, Good business chemistry in terms of, you know, having that opposite, um, personalities, but that really helps keep me in check and also pulls him forward when he is stuck at a point. So we are able to, you know, move together as co founders and also bring, I mean, I keep our team together.

So I think that's something that Helps keep a balance in our personalities as well. Amazing. So I'm hearing a lot of, you know, clearly the purpose, clearly the passion, as I said before, but you're also guided by your values, um, that, you know, in that sense. So, uh, I think that's where your people, your co founder, your customers, the end users, the stories that they have, all of that is what really keeps you going.

And I hope, and I'm sure you have miles to go. Um, hundreds and thousands of miles. So I wish you all the very best, Akshita, to you and Bonnie both. Um, I'm sure you'll do great. You're making fantastic impact and you're creating an ecosystem of winners in that sense. So, um, thank you. Thank you for doing that.

It's been a great conversation. Thank you so much. Thank you for taking me through this journey. I mean, I loved, uh, recalling all of this and I. I'm so, I'm so happy and energetic right now. Way to start your day. You're weak actually. Fabulous. Thank you so much. Bye.

Wow. Another exhilarating episode. I don't think I ever get tired of listening to entrepreneurs talking about their deep seated beliefs, what drives them. So let me bring in my producer Remina to hear her thoughts. Hey Remina, what did you think of this one? Hey, Dhruti. Um, well, you know, from the get go, uh, I think I loved how natural this conversation felt as I was listening to you talk to Akshita.

And, and, and, and it really is very clear just how much she enjoys her work and how passionate she is about it, right? Um, her energy is very contagious. Uh, I'm sure you felt it. I felt it personally. And, and all of that really definitely reflects in her success, you know, from day one, her business has been a hit.

So that really says it all for me. Yeah. And, and, you know, she has this sense of calm around her and, uh, is she's wise beyond her years is what I feel to be honest. It's fantastic. Um, as I was listening to Akshita's story, I think, you know, just from a business perspective as well, what really stood out for me is just how customer centric her entire vision is.

She's always, you know, her business is always evolving. Uh, she's adapting to new technology when needed and her passion. This is such a great example of how you're driven by your purpose and passion. So her passion for making education and employment accessible for people with visual impairments. I mean, that is really inspiring.

Uh, and it's incredible how she turned what was a college project, right? Into a thriving business. Yeah. grounded in such a deep understanding of an ever changing market. And, um, that really stood out for me. So, um, kudos to Akshita, Bonnie and the team and, um, you know, from the entire team at C2COD and from all of us here at the Resilient Entrepreneur Podcast.

Akshita and Bonnie, we are rooting for you. So kudos to you guys and wish you all the success that you so truly deserve. And, uh, with that, we wrap up season two of Stories of Resilient Social Entrepreneurs. What an amazing journey of resilience it's been. We hope these stories left you inspired and ready to take on your own challenges.

Now we want to hear from you. Which story from this season resonated with you the most? Let us know in the comments or drop us a message. The details are in the description below. And while you're at it, tell us what other kinds of resilient stories you would love to see us explore next. All right, folks, until next time, this is Dhruti Shah signing off, stay inspired, stay resilient, and we'll catch you in a brand new season, bringing different entrepreneurs from across the globe.

Take care. Bye bye.