abillionveg is a platform for members to voice their opinion about anything plant-based or cruelty-free. They share members’ feedback with business owners to help them shift to more plant-based options, and they support animal rescue work around the world every time a member submits a review.
Three years ago, Vikas Garg, Founder and CEO of abillionveg left his high-flying career at one of the world’s largest hedge funds. He had found a new mission — to help and inspire a billion people to go vegan in the next 10 years.
Prior to leaving his corporate career in 2017, Vikas had felt a nagging sense to do more for society, attributed to his lifelong passion for sustainability and being an absolute animal lover.
His first stop was a three-month coding bootcamp. Interestingly, He was there not to learn how to build the product entirely by himself, but to find a like-minded engineer to build a minimum viable product (MVP) with him. This was where he met Jonathan, one of the best coders there.
Jonathan had a love for food and had worked as a chef in a Mexican restaurant in Melbourne before giving up his apron for the keyboard. The duo spent the summer of 2017 at Vikas’ dining table building the MVP and launched the abillionveg app in May 2018. Vikas says:
“We were also supported by many amazing interns from the local universities. Several of these interns have also joined the team as full-time staff.”
Vikas Garg
Along the way, Vikas has had his fair share of challenges in building abillionveg.
“When I was in finance, I could hire the cream of the crop easily as talent would come to me naturally. But as a startup founder, I was basically a nobody. I also made a big leap from finance to tech and I had to work really hard to learn from others because there wasn’t a recipe for success.”
Vikas Garg
He constantly had to make decisions with limited amount of information and experience. His advice for the aspiring founder would be to surround themselves with good investors and people who have the courage to challenge them, rather than simply follow directions. Especially in the early stages, a startup should be data-driven in its decisions, says Vikas.
Vikas has seen the environment, social and governance (ESG) space grown tremendously over the last few years. In the past, investors were just throwing out deals that could be potentially harmful. However, the paradigm has since shifted and investors are helping their portfolio companies to strengthen their ESG impact and reward them for their outcomes.
Today, the leading vegan product review platform currently has more than 150,000 members across 122 countries and has secured US$2M in seed funding. Vikas and his team hope to remove obstacles for individuals to lead a vegan lifestyle and for them to find and connect with vegan options no matter where they are.
The platform relies heavily on user generated content. Consumer data generated is shared with businesses, who then use this data to help improve what they are selling in the stores. Vikas shared he wanted to be different, using the data for good rather than for mere profit motivations. This way, the platform also supports customers in making businesses better.
When asked on the long-term vision for abillionveg, Vikas shared that he hopes the platform will be the leading marketplace for sustainability and location for entrepreneurs to find capital and community to drive sustainable initiatives.
Written by Adriel Yong
