NUCLEUS VISION : My Story Behind The Idea

By Abhishek Pitti, Co-founder & CEO of NUCLEUS VISION, retail IoT on the blockchain.

As my friend gleefully ran down the street, shouting “Are you ready to play soccer with us?” from across the dusty street, I immediately replied, “I can’t” as I hung my head and unhappily trudged alongside my dad in the opposite direction. It was another day where I had to support the family by working at my parents’ store in case my dad had to step out for a customer site visit in the afternoon.

Many days I received a pat on the back for my day’s shift, or occasionally a cupcake, my favorite treat. As I paced the floor and let out some sighs, I would wait for customers to show up so I could make a standard pitch about this or that plumbing appliance that my dad had taught me. It was fun when I knew the customer and could stir up some conversation, but for others, I had no idea what might influence their purchase and knew nothing about information such as past purchase history that might help increase the chances of my making a sale to them. Many days I would dream about what it would be like to grow up and be an astronaut or what I would be doing if I my parents did not own a store.

Every afternoon during the end of my shift, I would look up at the clock a zillion times, hoping my dad would show early that day. As the evening came around, I would look out the doorway at kids playing in the street and wished I could join them when I would get off my shift in what seemed at the time similar to slavery. I tried making staffing the store seem as interesting as I could. For example, I created games for myself like trying to remember the plumbing appliance numbers and their various prices. By the time my dad had come back, I was usually bored and exhausted by meaningless conversations with customers, and depressed that I had missed yet another opportunity to play with my school mates.

I hated staffing the store so much as a child that I was determined to never carry on my family business in retail as a career. I put all my efforts into paying attention in school even more, and ended up being accepted into and graduating from a prestigious Aerospace Engineering university in the States, and making my way up the corporate ladder. I was proud of my efforts, to say the least, but felt like something was still missing.

The days of staffing my parents’ store became a distant memory until 2002 when I watched the Minority Report after having dinner in my apartment, I remember telling my dad about the episode that I had watched which described how retail advertising would change to focus on anticipating customers’ demands.

As years went by, I couldn’t get the Minority Report episode out of my mind. After years of working at the Aerospace firm, I was admitted into Harvard Business School with stellar recommendations from my superiors and colleagues.

During my first year at Harvard Business School, I began to lose sight of my original goal of pursuing my own venture through business school as whispers and rumors went around across campus around peers that were being offered six or seven-figure salaries to join prestigious hedge funds and work on Wall Street.

I decided I would remove myself from the pressure cooker of being surrounded by other Type-A personalities by flying across the country after my first year at HBS and join a startup accelerator summer program in Silicon Valley. I realized, one late night that I wanted to solve a problem that I could relate to personally around inefficiencies that I had witnessed everyday at my parents’ store as a child. The startup I pitched at the end of Demo Day was far from perfect, but for the first time I felt the thrill and endorphin rush behind seeing my own vision brought to life.

During the Fall of my second year as a business school student, my peers dove head-first into case studies and lecture notes at the campus library, while I began spending a majority of my time outside of class learning more by talking to brands, retailers, investors, and technology companies and understanding the problem I was trying to solve.

I decided to drop out of school one fateful day. As the phone rang and I waited for my mom to pick up, I practiced what I was going to say over and over in my head. When my mom picked up, I broke the news to her. “I’m going drop out of Harvard” I blurted out. She immediately hung up the phone and cut off all contact with me for a month.

As I began to focus full-time on my company, NUCLEUS, I felt for the first time that I was working on something that I was meant to do. My passion was contagious when I pitched to legendary venture capitalist Tim Draper, who was impressed by my enthusiasm and agreed to back me and my company.

My vision while working on my startup NUCLEUS is now in the process of being realized. We recently installed the NUCLEUS product into 10 stores and have secured partnerships with many major telcos. I feel excited to wake up everyday, knowing that I am one step closer to my goal of eliminating the disparities around sophistication of knowledge and resources that mom and pop stores have lack compared to huge retail corporations with deep pockets.

With the advent of blockchain technology, I recently decided that I could add another layer of value for mom and pop stores by collecting in-store data from customers by granting them incentives for their permission. This data will now serve as an alternative stream of revenue for mom and pop stores, who will have the option of selling their data to other stores in return for currency in my ecosystem.

With the launch of my Token Generation Event this upcoming January, I hope to democratize the landscape of retail by creating value for small business owners such as my parents. Even more than that, I am allowing individuals to follow my journey.

I am excited to publicly post about my story for the first time and announce the reason which made me first embark on my journey to change the landscape of retail, and I know there are many years to go to materialize my vision.

As I embark on this path, I am honored by all the individuals who continue to show their support through our Telegram channel, an introduction, or a kind note. I hope that you, my dear reader, will also join my community and mission today by joining my Telegram channel here. I know with your support, we will democratize the future of retail for everyone.

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To learn more about NUCLEUS , visit our website here. Abhishek Pitti is Founder & CEO of NUCLEUS and you can reach him on LinkedIn here.

Disclaimer: This is not an investment advice. Please do your own research before investing in any avenue. The information contained in this post is for informational purposes only. You should take independent advice from a professional or independently research and verify, any information that you find in this post and wish to rely on, for the purpose of making any decision. Through this post you may be able to link to other websites which are not under the control of Nucleus Vision. We have no control on the nature, content and activity on those sites. The inclusion of any links does not imply a recommendation or endorsement of the other website, its products or views.

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