founder story

an average IIT'ian who said no to technology overload.

who I am, why I started trring and the version of future I want to create.

I am Dhiraj Chaudhari, born and brought up in a small town in Maharashtra, graduated from IIT Kgp in 2019 with a dual degree and chose not to join MBA at IIM Calcutta right after engineering (why I did not go). I worked in IT division of an MNC bank for about 5 years after college before starting trring - India's first digital wellbeing brand.

During Covid, I worked from home straight for 2 years from my hometown Karanja lad. After the first few months, I slowly started to experience constant brain fog, loss of productivity and ability to focus, increase in baseline anxiety. My screen time was through the roof, and I am the guy who quit instagram in 2019 to never go back yet I was always getting drawn to my smartphone. Once I narrowed down the problem to my own digital addiction, I started noticing addictive smartphone usage patterns of people around me.

And everyone seemed to be controlled by their smartphones. It was not about one app, nor limited to any particular age group. I realised it is much more than that, our minds are always stimulated by cheap and easy dopamine, our sleeping habits are getting worse, we are losing ability to focus and to regulate emotions. It became most interesting parallel study with my job.

Smartphone addiction is a well engineered addiction because your time spent online is the revenue source for the big techs. We are aware about the manipulative nature of algorithms that make sure you spend extra hour glued to the screens. The issue is unrestricted access of smartphones, the seemingly harmless habit of escaping to the next feed refresh all the time.

The current solutions are detox apps which act like fancy locks, but rarely work as long term solutions. The reason is it's not a problem to be solved by another app, it is a lifestyle issue to be intentionally identified and human willpower alone is not enough to come out of this, it needs change in our immediate surroundings to cut down the triggers.

That's when I decided to go all in to help people spend at least 1 hour less on their smartphones daily. That's how I started trring - India's first digital wellbeing brand. The first product we launched under trring is trringphone. The idea is profoundly simple yet practical and easy to implement for

  • taking daily break from smartphones without losing connectivity over calls,
  • creating no-scrolling-zone at your home or office, no distractions high intent space,
  • keeping addictive algorithms away during daily digital break.

It's not an extreme solution of digital detox, not another smart device, just a purposely dumb device, which does not connect to internet nor analyses your data, it just does the bare minimum so that your attention stays with you. It does not need any additional connection nor sim card and it is portable inside the house.

It acts as a behavioural nudge to remind you of your commitment towards taking a pause, away from algorithms. It helps you build the habit of daily breaks from technology overload and inspire the people around you to do the same. 

I see the future where humans consciously create no technology zones, and choose to be disconnected daily for few hours from algorithms in order to actually feel, and connect, and think, and live intentionally.

The trringphone is a bridging device that helps you create surrounding of calm, away from all the digital noise. It's not a magical solution to bring down your digital addiction in a day or week but it acts as the first step towards digital wellbeing.

I believe in a future where digital minimalism is a lifestyle widely practiced and a virtue of modern life where we protect our attention from being extracted by machines all the time, where we choose healthy disconnection to protect our imperfect human-ness.

If you resonate with any part of this or even reject all of it, reach out to us. I read each message personally and would love to talk to you!