Disclaimer : Previously published on Thump 6.0, IIMU’s yearly Alumni Magazine

My first venture was a cab-pooling initiative, Tripsathi.com, which we never launched. The learning was how not to get addicted to one idea when it does not make long-term economic sense to continue, as well as how not to get caught up in macro regulatory issues which are not in our control. After that, I co-founded Tempawala.com, a tech-based logistics venture. We had our share of success and failure in it. In 2 years, our revenue was more than 3 Crores. We scaled up a team to 30 people but had to scale it down to 8 people very quickly. I left its active management. The company has turned profitable now, but we couldn’t scale it up to a level that we wished to. The learning was sustainable growth is what we all must look at in early stages and to ensure that we do not try to control all variables of our business ourselves, operations, technology, working capital, training and so on, with a limited set of resources at our disposal.

Right now, I am a partner and at the helm of running a data science start-up, CareerSocially.com, where, in the last 15 months, we have scaled the company from 4 to 42 people, three products, two service arms, and ensured that we are self-sustainable and profitable. Our next year plans do not have any motive to raise money as we are enjoying the journey that we are creating for ourselves. While I’ve learnt from past mistakes and ensured we do not repeat them in this one, we are not short of challenges and doubts in this journey too. One common factor throughout my entire journey has been IIMU. The day I am down and out, I call up Janat Sir (Director, IIMU) and ask him to give me some time to meet him. And guess what, each meeting or conversation that I have had with him has given me something new to think about, and to go back and implement. The very fact that IIMU has been a start-up itself, which has risen from the ground to what today it is, is a testament of how we all can learn to lead our ventures, grow and achieve whatever we wish.

There’s a never-ending material of our PGDM courses which I can refer back to when I am out of ideas, but to add to that is a never-ending support of IIMU faculty, Janat Sir, friends in the Alumni community whom I can contact anytime and ask them to vet my financial models, our approach to problem solving, contacts in the industry to guide and much more.

I am proud and blessed to be a part of this community which has always encouraged me to move at the pace at which I wish to, experiment, learn and ensure all this, while I know that the whole IIMU community is backing me up. I wish to be able to give back some portion of so much that I’ve got and thank the entire IIMU community, as there’s a massive contribution of this community to help me become who I am.