An Exclusive With Gaurav Aggarwal: Co-Founder of Sleek

• How did you come up with the idea, and what are the objectives?

After my bachelor's, I went on to work for Microsoft, LinkedIn, and Google; In that order. I led multiple projects for them making billions of dollars of impact for these technology giants. After leading the projects successfully and making a good living in the USA, I was not somehow satisfied. I was always fond of technology, but I always had the dream of working for myself. My experience so far in companies has been really pleasant, and I have learned a lot during these times, but somehow, I decided to quit and work for myself. Hence, we came up with the app Sleek. The main objective of Sleek is that it provides people the option to be in line without actually holding a physical position in line. You will be surprised to know how much time people waste just standing in line. It is a waste of human capital.

• What are the challenges you faced?

As an entrepreneur, you are responsible for everything. Anything that goes wrong is your responsibility. There is a 100X strong sense of ownership as compared to working in an MNC. Impact and rewards are high as well, and so are the responsibilities and risks. In addition, entrepreneurs usually also come from some specialty background, and they are learning about other features of the business on the job.

• How difficult was it to convince restaurant owners and event organizers to use your app initially?

Sleek is an app that changes the way people stand in line. It has happened many time's a person want to eat from their favorite place, but because of the wait in long lines and busy schedule, the person has not been able to eat their favorite dish. We are solving this problem through Sleek. So, Sleek partners with Restaurants and event organizers. Through Sleek you can be in the line through your phone, which will update you about the estimated time for your turn and even allow a select few people to pay extra for a priority line similar to Disney's Fastpass. At first, restaurant owners and event organizers were anxious about using the AI-powered Sleek app for managing lines, but with the COVID-19's it soon turned out to be a must-try, and now these vendors love it. In this pandemic situation, people needed to buy daily products and maintain social distancing, and this app helped in doing so. Retail outlets couldn't maintain social distancing among their consumers. Sleek came in handy at that time. One can be in line by not being actually in the line and saving a lot of time, and stay safe in these unprecedented times.

• Any new stuff you will be adding to it?

Sleek can be set up at your venue in just 2 minutes and needs no hardware setup. It factors multiple sources of data to calculate customer wait times accurately down to the minute. During high demand or long lines, the dynamic fee adds extra revenue to your top line. We are working on integrating with more data sources to support a more diverse set of vendors.

• How much covid impacted your business, and what did you do to overcome it?

Despite a few delays because of COVID-19, Sleek is currently live and serving several essential businesses as part of their partnership with Roaming Hunger. The COVID-19 Pandemic impacted live events severely. There were nearly no events after March 2020. We had to pivot from Live Events to essential businesses, which was a long procedure and took a few months. At the moment, events are coming back as vaccines are rolling out, and we are working with key event organizers to be back in live events in late 2021. With great determination and positivity, we believe that Sleek will be a market leader in the live events space. We imagine a world where no one is waiting physically in line as we will expand into SMB space.