Entrepreneurship is all about being your own boss and converting risks into profits. To many, it might appear that India with its traditional education system and structured societal patterns, may not exactly be the ideal place for budding entrepreneurship but the incredible diversity of the country turns what appears to be an obvious theory right upon its head.
Today, there seems to be a market for everything and thanks to an exploding population, even the tiniest market proves commercially viable if tapped into in the right manner. As such, in more recent years, globalization and increased awareness has spawned a new breed of brave, young Indians. The kind who look past traditional expectations and have applied a whole new set of challenges for themselves in an effort to chase their own vision. In that theme, featured in this first edition of our 'Jugaad' series are seven young Indian entrepreneurs who are galloping towards success.
Most of these young men and women believe that nobody can secure a good future. Risk or not, the best way to secure the future is to create it.
perpetuates the stereotype on Indian tech prodigies and he started by building things for profit and fun. At the age of 14, Sahil started playing with Photoshop. By the time he turned 16, he learnt HTML ,CSS and all major softwares that come handy while designing websites and apps for web and mobile devices. Sahil was a designer on the founding team of Pinterest and turntable.fm . By 18, Sahil conceptualized a revolutionary idea and founded
Gumroad allows people to sell stuff using a link and till date, even celebrities like Girl Talk, Wiz Khalifa and David Banner have used this platform to sell their work. A year later, he quit college and started hunting for investors. With a strong technical background, he convinced venture capital stalwart Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers to invest $7 million. At just 20 years old and has giants like Twitter , google interested in his product. When asked about his success, Sahil quips an interesting perspective--“You almost need to be inexperienced and ignorant to be successful."
Sahil Lavignia, Indian , Entrepreneurs
II. Abhinav Kumar
Kumar believes in Jugaad, a term that's used to denote a quick-fix solution to any problem, usually working around the law. A mechanical Engineer by profession, Abhinav wanted to join a racing team. However, his visit to UP introduced him to a completely different meaning of ‘Jugaad’. He received repeated instructions of how they shouldn’t be on the road, they are highly unsafe and they don’t meet any safety criteria. The truth is however, that people have to travel. In case we've been confusing you, Jugaad is a highly unsafe vehicle which is used for travelling in rural north India.
At 22, Kumar decided to build a better design and quit his job to register his own company ‘Evomo’. Now 27, his designs have been passed by NID, his source of capital funded by government grants and loans from friends and family and he has already begun work on an alternate design for 'Jugaad' which he has promptly titled 'Savaaj.' Ask him about his struggle and he simply states that “Economic slumps do not hurt good ideas.”
Abhinav Kumar, Indian , EntrepreneursIII. Sharad Tandale Tandale claims to have become an entrepreneur because he failed at each of his small time jobs.He comes from an economically marginalised farming community and only a rare 1% people of his community start their own businesses. Yet he turned a $20,000 loan in 2011 into an engineering company boasting a $500,000 annual turnover. Sharad’s family opposed his entrepreneurial ideas but with the help of a government scholarship, he got an Engineering degree from a rural institute and succeeded in pursuing his vision. Today, Sharad’s infrastructure services business, Innovation Engineers and Contractors, is a one-stop shop that provides ready-to-use (turnkey) products, normally the domain of large companies. His clients include government departments, including the Pune Municipal Corporation. At 32, he now owns a company with 161 full-time and 14 part-time staff. In a recent interview he made clear that his visions had a deeper purpose. “I wanted to boost the spirit and the belief of the local community that nothing is impossible in the world if you try hard.”
Indian , Entrepreneurs, Sharad TandaleIV. Godavari Satpute Satpute bagged the title of ‘Woman Entrepreneur of the Year’, 2013. Godavari, 33, runs a business manufacturing paper lanterns in Nari Village in Solapur district of Maharashtra. Within a period of four years, her company has managed a turnover of $ 50,000 and employs 75 other women proving that it is not just economically beneficial but societally and socially as well.
She initiated this venture when she was just 20 years old and now supplies a variety of novelty lamps (for festivals, holidays, weddings and celebrations) in Maharashtra as well as Surat in Gujarat. She is increasing her manufacturing activity to cater to markets across India, and is even exploring the idea of exporting directly to the United States.
Indian , Entrepreneurs, Godavari SatputeV. Vineet Kumar
At 24, Vineet has achieved monetary success working for a noble cause. When he was 18 years old he met a few ethical hackers and founded National Anti-Hacking Group (NAG). NAG is a non profit organisation. So to keep the money flowing Vineet founded Global Ethical Hackers Association (GEHA). Today, he is one of the world's youngest Microsoft Certified Systems administrators. As a mark of appreciation, Microsoft Corporation chairman Bill Gates invited him to the launch of Biztalk servers in India in 2006. Fondly referring to his team as a group of white-hat hackers, Kumar claims “he was never good at school. He just liked computers.” Now if only it were always as simple as that!
Indian , Entrepreneurs, Vineet Kumar
VI. Arjun Rai Rai was a dreamer. He grew up watching business news channels and knew in his heart that he had a dream to chase. He wanted to make big bucks and he wanted to do it on his own terms. More importantly still, he did not approve of the idea of working for someone else. For advice, he looked at the internet. Arjun created a Linkedin profile and started interacting with other entrepreneurs and this is exactly how he gained a depper insight into the world he was to become an essential part of.
He applied at places and built up his network, often being named one of the youngest COOs of many companies but he would quit shortly after simply because he had grown bored of it. By 18, he finally founded an advertising company called Odyssey Ads. His company offers online advertising solutions to the clients. He is now only 20 years old and his company is already generating huge revenues. His mantra in life is to simply stay away from anybody who does not encourage his endeavours and it seems to be working wonders for him.
Arjun Rai, Indian , EntrepreneursVII. Sachin Bansal & Binny Bansal By 2015, Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, college-mates from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, expect their online venture Flipkart (which hardly requires introduction) to reach gross sales of $1 billion. None of this would have been possible if the two Bansals, who are ironically not related to each other, had not teamed up six years ago says Sachin, the chief executive officer of the company.
On October 15,2013 the Bansal duo restructured the ownership with a Singapore based company. Both of them have been promised heavy paychecks with bonus. The two entrepreneurs are in their thirties and have given India its most successful online shopping forum till date.
