প্রতিদিন আমাদের সাইটে কয়েক কোটি ক্রেতা প্রবেশ করেন। আমরা চীনে প্রায় ১৪ মিলিয়ন নতুন চাকরি তৈরি করেছি। আমাদের শুরুটা ছিল মাত্র ১৮ জন মানুষ দিয়ে। এখন আমরা ৩০ হাজার মানুষ কাজ করি। ছোট একটি রুম থেকে শুরু করে আমাদের এখন কয়েক গুণ বড় অফিস হয়েছে। ১৫ বছর আগে আমরা কিছুই ছিলাম না। ১৫ বছর আগের কথা ভাবলে আমরা এখন বেশ বড় কোম্পানি, কিন্তু আগামী ১৫ বছর পরের কথা চিন্তা করলে আমরা এখনো শিশু, ছোট বাচ্চা। আমার বিশ্বাস, ১৫ বছর পর মানুষ ই-কমার্সের কথা ভুলে যাবে। তাদের কাছে ই-কমার্সের অস্তিত্ব বিদ্যুতের মতো স্বাভাবিক মনে হবে।



আমাদের কোম্পানি আলিবাবার আইপিওর মূল্যের পরিমাণ বেশ ছোটই, মাত্র ২৫ বিলিয়ন। আমরা সারা পৃথিবীর অন্যতম বড় মার্কেট ক্যাপিটাল কোম্পানি এখন। আমার দল আর আমাকে আমি মাঝেমধ্যেই বলি, এটা কি সত্য কিছু? আমরা ততটা বড় নই, যতটা দেখায়। বছর খানেক আগেও মানুষ বলত, আলিবাবার ব্যবসার মডেল ভয়ংকর। আমাদের চেয়ে অ্যামাজন ভালো, গুগল অসাধারণ বলে সবাই ভাবত। আসলে তখন আলিবাবার মতো ব্যবসার মডেল যুক্তরাষ্ট্রে ছিল না বলেই আমাদের নিয়ে সবাই এমনটা বলত। আমি নিজেকে ও অন্যদের বলতাম, লোকজন যা ভাবে, আমরা তার চেয়ে ভালো। কিন্তু এখন সবাই বদলে গেছে, আমাদের অনেক বড় বলে ভাবে সবাই। আমি সবাইকে বলতে চাই, আমরা বড় কেউ নই। আমরা ১৫ বছরে পা রাখা একটি কোম্পানি মাত্র। এই কোম্পানির জন্য ২৭ বা ২৮ বছরের কিছু তরুণ এমন কিছু কাজ করছেন, যা কিনা মানুষ এর আগে কখনো চেষ্টা করেনি।
১৯৬৪ সালে আমার জন্ম। চীনে তখন সবে সাংস্কৃতিক আন্দোলন শেষ হয়েছে। বিশ্ববিদ্যালয়ে ভর্তির জন্য যে পরীক্ষা দিতে হয়, আমি সেখানে তিনবার ফেল করেছিলাম। আমি আরও অনেকবারই ফেল করেছি। প্রাইমারি স্কুলে পরীক্ষার সময় দুবার ফেল করেছিলাম। মাধ্যমিক স্কুলেও তিনবার ফেল করেছি। আমার শহর হাংজুতে মাত্র একটি মাধ্যমিক স্কুল ছিল। বেশ খারাপ ছাত্র ছিলাম দেখে আমাদের প্রাথমিক স্কুল থেকে পড়া কাউকে মাধ্যমিক স্কুলে ভর্তি করতে চাইত না কেউ। বারবার ভর্তিতে প্রত্যাখ্যাত হয়ে বেশ উপকারই হয়েছিল আমার!
এখনো আমাকে মানুষ প্রত্যাখ্যান করে। বিশ্ববিদ্যালয়ে ভর্তির আগে আমি চাকরির জন্য চেষ্টা করেছিলাম। সেখানেও আমাকে ৩০ বারের মতো প্রত্যাখ্যাত হতে হয়। যখন চীনে কেএফসি আসে, তখন ২৪ জন লোক চাকরির জন্য আবেদন করেন। সেখানে ২৩ জন মানুষ চাকরির সুযোগ পান। শুধু একজনই বাদ পড়েন, সেই মানুষটি আমি। এমনও দেখা গেছে, পাঁচজন মানুষের মধ্যে চারজনের চাকরি হয়েছে, আর বাকি একজন আমি নেই। প্রত্যাখ্যানের পর প্রত্যাখ্যানই দেখেছি আমি। হার্ভার্ড বিশ্ববিদ্যালয়ে ভর্তির জন্যও আবেদন করেছিলাম, সেখানে আমাকে প্রত্যাখ্যান করা হয়। ১০ বার লিখেছিলাম, ‘আমি ভর্তি হতে চাই।’ ১০ বার আবেদন করেছি, আর প্রতিবারেই প্রত্যাখ্যাত হয়েছি।
আমি ১২–১৩ বয়স থেকে ইংরেজি শেখা শুরু করি। চীনে তখন ইংরেজি শেখার সুযোগ ছিল না। কোনো ইংরেজি বইও পাওয়া যেত না। আমি যে হোটেলে বিদেশি পর্যটক আসত, সেখানে গিয়ে বিনে পয়সায় পর্যটকদের গাইডের কাজ করতাম। এরপর নয় বছর এই কাজ করে গেছি। তাতেই আমি পশ্চিমা ঢঙে ইংরেজি বলা শিখেছি। বিদেশি পর্যটকদের সঙ্গে ঘোরাফেরা আমার মনকে অনেক বড় করে দিয়েছে। স্কুল আর মা-বাবার কাছ থেকে যা শিখতাম, আর পর্যটকদের কাছ থেকে যা জানতাম, তা ছিল ভিন্ন। সে জন্যই আমি নিজের জন্য ভিন্ন এক অভ্যাস গড়ে তুলি নিজের মধ্যে। আমি যা দেখি, যা পড়ি, তা মন দিয়ে পড়ি-চিন্তা করি।
১৯৯৫ সালে যুক্তরাষ্ট্রে আসার পরে সিয়াটলে আমি প্রথম ইন্টারনেট ব্যবহারের সুযোগ পাই। ইন্টারনেটের গতি ছিল তখন ভীষণ ধীর। আমার বন্ধু আমাকে কম্পিউটারে ইন্টারনেট ব্যবহারের সুযোগ দেয়। ভয়ে কম্পিউটার স্পর্শ করিনি সেদিন। চীনে কম্পিউটারের দাম ছিল অনেক, নষ্ট হয়ে গেলে তখন দাম দিতে পারতাম না। বন্ধুর উৎসাহে ইন্টারনেটে সার্চ করি। সেবারই প্রথম ই-মেইল শব্দটি শুনি।
আমি ইন্টারনেটভিত্তিক কিছু করার চেষ্টা শুরু করি। সেই সময়টায় বেশ জনপ্রিয় একটি নাম ছিল ইয়াহু। আমাদের কোম্পানির নাম আলিবাবা দিতে চেয়েছিলাম। ১০ থেকে ২০ জনের বেশি মানুষকে জিজ্ঞেস করি, আলিবাবাকে তারা চিনে নাকি? সবাই বলেছিল ‘হ্যাঁ’। ‘আলিবাবা ও ৪০ চোর’ গল্পের কারণে সবাই আলিবাবাকে চিনে। তাই আমি এই নামই গ্রহণ করি।
শুরু থেকেই আমরা অনলাইনে বিশ্বাসের একটি জায়গা তৈরির চেষ্টা করে যাচ্ছি। মানুষ একে অন্যকে কম বিশ্বাস করে। এমন একটা পরিস্থিতিতে আমরা প্রতিদিন ৬০ মিলিয়ন বার লেনদেন করি। অনলাইনে মানুষ একজন আরেকজনকে চেনে না। আমি আপনাকে চিনি না, কিন্তু আমি আপনাকে পণ্য পাঠাই। আপনি আমাকে চিনেন না, কিন্তু আপনি আমাকে টাকা ঠিকই পাঠান। বিশ্বাসের জায়গাটা বড় করার চেষ্টা করে যাচ্ছি।
আলিবাবার সাফল্যের অন্যতম লুকানো সূত্র হচ্ছে আমাদের এখানে অনেক নারী কাজ করেন। শুধু আলিবাবায় ৪৭ শতাংশ কর্মী হচ্ছেন নারী। আমাদের সব অফিস মিলিয়ে ৫৩ শতাংশ কর্মী নারী। আমাদের ম্যানেজমেন্টে ৩৩ শতাংশ হচ্ছেন নারী, আরও উচ্চপর্যায়ে আছেন ২৪ শতাংশ। একুশ শতকে আপনাকে জিততে হলে অন্যকে স্বাবলম্বী করতে হবে। নারী-পুরুষ সবাইকে নিয়ে আপনাকে এগিয়ে যেতে হবে। আপনি অন্যের অবস্থা উন্নতি করতে পারলেই আপনি সফল। চীনের ৮০ শতাংশ তরুণ সফল হয়েছেন শুধু কাজের গুণে। তাঁদের বড়লোক বাবা নেই বা ব্যাংকের লোন নেই; শুধু কাজ করেই তাঁরা সফল। জীবনে সফল হতে গেলে সুযোগের সদ্ব্যবহার করতে হবে। নিজের ওপর বিশ্বাস রেখে এগিয়ে যেতে হয়।

শুরুর দিকে আমাকে সবাই পাগল বলত। টাইম ম্যাগাজিনে আমাকে পাগল জ্যাক বলা হয়েছিল। আমার মনে হয় পাগল হওয়া ভালো। আমরা পাগল, কিন্তু আমরা নির্বোধ নই। কোনো একদিন আমি স্কুলের শিশুদের আমার কথা বলতে যাব। আমি তাদের বলতে চাই, নিজের মনকে বড় করো, নিজের সংস্কৃতিকে বড় করো। নিজের মূল্যবোধকে শক্ত করো, নিজের বুদ্ধির বিকাশ ঘটাও। তুমি যদি কিছু করতে চাও, তাহলে প্রত্যাশা করা শিখতে হবে।
সূত্র: ইন্টারনেট

Belonging to the Marwari community, taking up a job was never on the cards for me. In fact, I was the first one from my family to ever take up a job. By sheer accident, I landed up in IT industry, but was never happy in a job and wanted to move out.

I was looking out for an idea to start an online business. In 2011, I started selling apparels online. On the side, I used to run a ‘deal aggregation’ business which was making money; but I wanted to do something different. It was in September, 2012, that a family friend committed to invest Rs. 11 lakh in the online grocery business I was planning to launch. We launched www.punexpress.com on 26th October, 2012, in Pune: delivering groceries to seven different neighborhoods.

Around this time I was also about to get engaged [in September, 2012]. A few relatives of my fiancée visited my place to finalize things, and were surprised to learn that I was serving the notice period at my job. I was asked to continue my corporate job; but I knew if I decided to back out, it would be difficult to start all over again. Instead I declined to continue with job, and the relatives left, disappointed. My family, too, was unhappy with the outcome and no one talked to me for a few months. My family was not at all happy with my selling groceries online; and continued to pester me to get married and continue the job. Finally, they relented, after much convincing from my side.

We finally launched in October, 2012, and we received our first order the moment we went live. It was difficult in the initial days with just three-five orders a day; but things changed in a couple of months. We were getting popular in town, and were getting a lot of enquiries from areas where we did not operate in. We started off with an initial capital of Rs. 3.5 lakhs and were running an inventory led model. Soon customers demanded more depth in each category; and also demanded more categories. We slowly added more products: from 500 products on day one to 2000+ in three months. We tied up with local suppliers for new products; and we used to procure the products just-in-time. We were featured on online and offline media, and started getting enquiries for investment.



I stayed at our warehouse for the first three months. I visited my parents’ home only three days before I was to get married in January, 2013. My family was still not happy with me and wanted me to quit. We got our largest order, in terms of cart size, on the day I got married. I was more excited with the order; and was thinking about how we would fulfill the order the next day, since we had no delivery boys. My co-founder and I were doing deliveries since December, 2012 as we were unable to hold on to any delivery personnel to work for us beyond eight days. That is why we ended up doing it ourselves. I skipped plans to travel after marriage; and decided to start expanding our delivery areas.

Our investor had committed to put in more funds once we achieved a certain number of orders - on a daily basis. In the mean time we refused offers from two angel investors who wanted more than 50 per cent stake for Rs. 10-15 lakhs. To our surprise our first investor refused to give us more money; rather, he asked us to return his original investment. He was investing in an offline store and was no longer interested in Punexpress. I remember one of my relatives calling my father and asking him to consult a psychiatrist for me.

Both my co-founder and I were left clueless and decided to look for more options to continue the business. We started pitching to angels and family friends; and in parallel were delivering the daily orders ourselves, since we were running out of money. At times we were unable to fulfill orders, but decided to carry on somehow. From March, 2013, we started buying goods from D-Mart and Reliance on credit cards and delivering to customers. For the next three months Citi Bank and HDFC Bank credit cards were our so called investors! Both of us lost weight (more than 10 kgs. each) but somehow we managed to deliver the ever increasing number of orders.

Let’s fast forward to May, 2013: I got a call from a VC firm for an investment. At the same time two startups [in the same space] from Mumbai called us for a strategic alliance, and another one for possible investment. We visited Mumbai and were in talks with all three of them [in parallel] for possible investment. While things began to look up and move in the right direction, my wife survived a miscarriage, and we lost our child. It was entirely my fault as I never really took care of her. Everyone at home was angry. I didn’t know what to do next. I had lost my child. It was painful.

The following week, when I was in Mumbai for a meeting with the founder of a startup, I got a call from another startup in Pune. The startup was backed by a large IT company listed on the BSE. We were excited. We met the founder and discussed possible opportunities. He said that they were looking to strengthen their product offerings, and wanted to add grocery as a category. They were doing multiple categories including ‘FnV’; they had corporate tie-ups and access to a number of large corporates. They had been in business for three years; they offered us an offer of acquisition. We were now confused with the multiple options on our plate. The other three prospective investors were taking time to complete the formalities. So we decided to join the Pune startup; also, we were left with no further credit limit on our cards now. We decided to run both websites in parallel; we added grocery as a category to their website. We closed our warehouse and moved to their office; but continued to run Punexpress. We started delivering across Pune and PCMC. We started doing close to 60-70 orders a day and had big names from Pune as our customers. Within one month of this new operation we started doing 100+ orders, and finally, we were happy with our decision.



Two months into the operation, one fine morning we were informed that our investor had written off his investment - and we were left looking for funds. Our half of the team didn’t turn up to work the next day. They didn’t even return the assets they had (laptops, phones, etc.) In two weeks we were down to five people. I, too, decided to quit as there was no hope or scope to continue the show. That’s how I lost my second child - Punexpress. I took up my old job again, and decided to wait for things to normalize.

This week we’ll be celebrating the first birthday of my son ‘Riaan’. Things have normalized now; and in the mean time I started a milk delivery business in a few areas of Pune. I scaled it from 10 liters a day to 500 liters a day. I sold this delivery business to a family friend. Now I’m considering taking risks once again by joining a startup or starting up once again!

Bulbul, working in the same sector, is an on-demand beauty and personal care services platform running out of Chandigarh. BulBul offers a luxurious and customized beauty experience, complete with high quality products; at one’s doorstep by hand-picked experienced beauty professionals, at that.


Sahil Bansal
Bulbul has been founded by Sahil Bansal, who earlier co-founded and worked as the CEO of Prodigy Foods. Nitish Gupta and Ramneek Kaur, who have worked as consultants before, are the other core members, together leading a 15 member team.

The idea of Bulbul came from a past project of Sahil’s, on HNI preferences in luxurious experiences and services. It was sparked by Sahil’s wife being unable to find even a single salon to avail of a beauty service in the early morning hours.


Nitish Gupta
Talking about their model, Sahil explains “We provide beauty and wellness services in the home, a secure and convenient environment, using premium products. We tie up with beauty professionals who have substantial experience in this sector. Most of them have previously worked in reputed salons, and had left because of inflexible timings and less/ no growth opportunities. We aim to empower them by offering them a major share of service costs. All our beauty professionals go through screening, training, and a background check, thus ensuring quality.”

“Minimal Turn Around Time (TAD) and availability at odd hours makes it a valuable option for working women and last-minute plans. Within three months of the launch in Chandigarh, we have seen exciting growth and high user engagement” Sahil adds.


Ramneek Kaur
The customer can avail of a service from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., and can book 2 hours prior to the service time. All the user needs to do is download the BulBul app on a smartphone and book a service by following three easy steps. The app is available on both android and iOS app stores.

About expansion plans, the BulBul team explains, “Presently, BulBul has more than 4K registered users and has served around 1K bookings with 50% repeat customers. We are about to launch our services in Gurgaon, and aim to serve 200 customers per day in Chandigarh and Gurgaon very soon”

According to a KPMG report, the beauty and wellness industry in India will be worth US $13 billion by 2017. Sahil believes that since a large segment of this arena (70-80%) is unorganized, there is a huge potential for growth.

The salon and beauty segment has gained the interest of investors over the past one year. Beauty and grooming e-commerce platform Purplle raised over $5 million in its Series A round from IvyCap Ventures in January this year, while Nykka raised $3.4 million through private investors, including HNIs and NRIs. This was to boost the brand’s expansion plans in the omni-channel retail space. Yet to be launched mobile-centric beauty and wellness platform Vyomo also secured an undisclosed amount of seed funding from cricketing icon Yuvraj Singh’s floated startup fund YouWeCan Ventures.


We can already see growing activity in the beauty and wellness segment, and it will surely be something to watch out for this year.

• IT Consultancy

• Customized Application Development
• Web Application Development (CMS, E-Commerce, Social Network etc.)
• iOS Application Development (iPhone/ iPad)
• Android Application Development
• Network Infrastructure Services

Products :

• Tracker - attendance and time tracking solution.
• Accounting - web-based Accounting and ERP solution for small and medium sized companies.
•  POS - web-based Point of Sale solution targeted for micro, small and medium businesses to manage sales and inventory.
• HRM - HR management solution for SMEs.
• Lib - library management system.
•  SIS - web-based Student Information Management System.

Contact: tanvir.ebiz@gmail.com
880-1613-111117

Foodtech startups in India have taken center-stage the last couple of months, even overtaking the spotlight from the Indian e-commerce space. From expanfsion plans of biggies like Zomato and FoodPanda, to recent funding rounds of startups like Swiggy, TinyOwl, Dazo (formerly TapCibo) and Grab.in, there seems a trend of not just customers but also VCs putting their money where their mouth is. After all just the food services industry is touted to be a $50 billion market and growing at 16-20% each year.

While you may hear of startups once they turn big or in the news for funding, at YourStory we have been able to discover promising new ones much earlier. Here’s a look at the food startups that presented during our Food Tech Crowd Pitch Challenge last month in Bangalore, held in collaboration with crowd engagement platform Catapooolt.

Feazt: The platform brings together housewives, aspiring chefs, networkers, foodies and travellers who wish to meet-up over food. Now with Feazt one may never need to eat alone.

Bueno Kitchen: A platform that let’s one order and deliver food from their own, franchise or partner spoke kitchens. So whether it’s Lebanese, Mexican, American, Indian, Asian, Italian or any other European cuisine, Bueno aims to provide something for everyone.

Cheqmate: They are attempting to create a more efficient order and pay restaurant system primarily with the help of one’s phone. By using data, facilitating cashless payments and automating the process of ordering food, their goal’s to make queues a thing of the past.

Clozerr: This marketing and loyalty automation platform seeks to help businesses retain, acquire, reward, engage, analyse and reach out to their customers. Here customers can check-in at their favourite places with a single tap and get rewarded.

DudeGenie: For all food needs, grocery purchases and anything else one may need, DudeGenie will help deliver it to them. All one needs to do is to text (SMS or WhatsApp) to make one’s life much more convenient.

FalafelFactory: This startup saw a great potential in authentic Middle Eastern food in India and now offers them on-the-go to customers. Through their central kitchens, partner outlets and low cost delivery teams, access to Falafels will be made easy.

FromaHome: They are attempting to solve the challenge of home cooked food not being easily accessible by single men and women across Indian cities. This is being pursued by creating a community of homemakers and good cooks willing to list their menu online to receiving orders.

Tandurust: This startup reaches out to fitness enthusiasts, health conscious people as well as those with medical conditions and helps deliver healthy and balanced meals to their offices and homes.

Gullu’s Kitchen: This food startup makes use of college campus to set-up their kitchen, and from there reach out to people. The main target is the student community, who are believed to have frequent hunger pangs, fewer options to buy food and can make better use of technology to order food.

HomeKitch: Here’s another startup that provides a platform for home-makers, professional cooks to list their food items for bachelors, students and other people to order online. They feel households will be able make additional income as there’s a demand for homemade food in Indian cities.

HungryBells: This app seeks to make use of the hyperlocal trend to help customers discover their favourite food items and brands. Besides discovering new dishes, they seek to provide useful information to customers based on their interests and taste profiles.

Done Solutions: For the food industry they seek to address challenges ranging from lack of multiple modes of ordering, customer engagement, options to up-sell, actionable insights and more, through their cloud-based order management, CRM and analytics platform.

EatonGo: A cloud-based breakfast and brunch restaurant with door delivery, EatonGo seeks to offer all major cuisines of the world to its customers. They are keen to focus on the health conscious and those with less time to make a healthy breakfast.

MeDine: This startup aims to drive offline consumer behaviour through data sciences and technology. In their model, restaurants pay MeDine (now BountyApp) for foot traffic, while customers get rewards by checking-in places.

Pickle&Powder: This startup has worked on a specialised food shopping portal open for all authentic and homemade specialties like masala powders, pickles and sweets.

PlaceofOrigin: Another ‘back to roots’ focused startup, Place of Origin seeks to bring legendary food from different parts of India to your homes. They work with partners who help deliver these items once customers place their orders online.

TheFirstMeal: This food-tech startup also enables individuals and businesses order breakfast and brunch at any place of their convenience. Here the breakfast can be customised in terms of menu, packaging, delivery and payment options.

The event’s startups and delegates came from all over — not just from Bangalore but also from Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai and even smaller towns like Coimbatore. These startups made elevator pitches to a connected audience and an expert panel of judges that included the likes of angel investors like Ravi Gururaj and seasoned F&B entrepreneurs like MastKalandar’s Pallavi Gupta. While the panel picked ‘Bueno Kitchen’ and ‘Feazt’ as its winners, the crowd’sfavourite turned out to be ‘PlaceofOrigin’.

It needs to be reiterated that most of these startups have been set up only a few weeks ago and it will be interesting to watch their progress in the coming months. Stay tuned for more exciting stories and event updates.

Source: Yourstory

Like you, I’ve always wanted to be successful in my life. I’ve achieved success now, before my 31st birthday.

My parents wanted me to be a rich and well-known person – a“bada aadmi” – so I studied hard to get a decent job. Like many others, I also thought that a job in an MNC IT company was key to heaven. I would get money, position, respect and, one day, retire as a rich CEO.

It looks scary when I think of myself from a few years back. What the f*ck was I doing at my job?

Getting ready in the morning before the meeting time
Wasting time in useless meetings
Accepting work I did not like
Preparing reports nobody cared about (except my manager)
Filling up fake time-sheets (so my salary would get processed)
Doing work late hours because my company offered so-called flexible timings (company laptop for work-from-home was a curse)
Missing get-togethers and parties with friends because late evening meeting were scheduled with my American client (as they work in their morning only!)
I was a weekend worker because I had to be a responsible employee (actually, a promotion aspirant, so I had to be better than others)
Always waiting for my salary to appear in my account (single biggest reason I spent seven years there)
Thinking of starting a bigger company than my current employer

As you might have guessed, I hated my job. I could never be successful in that work environment. I never wanted to become like my manager or his boss or his boss. There was no inspiration or motivation for doing great work.

Related Read: Why you should not start a startup

Then, I started working on ideas with my friend. We were in a hurry to start a company (not a startup, but a big company). I wanted to do something in the  education field. We hired one person to develop an online platform for schools. When we gained traction, I left my job in February 2014 to build my first startup in the education domain.

We made a lot of mistakes; we wasted a lot of money; we lost direction. My startup failed in six months. It was mainly because of conflicts with the co-founder, but there were more reasons of our failure.

Most important learnings are a collection of failed experiences.

My co-founder joined a lavish job, but I was determined to startup. The whole experience of failure was an eye-opener for me. My dream was broken.

But a dream must be broken to wake you up from sleep.

I was looking to work with other startups as an employee or partner. I still had the  capacity to take risks (minimum salary + equity). It was more important to find founders with similar mindset than high profiled ones.

I met with the Founder of The Morpheus Accelerator, who connected me with his portfolio companies in Delhi. I ended up joining another startup in education. I found exactly what I was looking for – a visionary founder.

We worked hard; we experimented; we changed our marketing and product. Some things went well, some fell apart. We were progressing towards our goals, but without earning any income. We had to pivot to make money, but we could not figure out where our mission matched with VC expectations.  Soon we had to put our work on hold.

“If you’re going through hell, keep going.” — Winston Churchill

This is a period of struggle most startup founders go through. I am no exception. In this journey, I discovered myself — the real me. I am so glad that I said ‘NO’ to my well-paying job.

It was freedom from gold handcuffs.

Now, I work at my home, enjoying my successful life.

I wake up whenever I like. I don’t remember when I last used an alarm clock. Some days I work till 2:00 AM, but other times, I don’t feel like working beyond 9:00 PM.

It’s the freedom of working.

I go shopping on weekdays when there is no crowd. I don’t have to get frustrated in traffic jams; I don’t have to line up in billing queues. It saves my time and energy, which I use for creative purpose.

Also read: Top 10 reasons why startups fail

I don’t have to live by rules defined by someone (often known as the Manager or Boss).

It’s my life. I decide what’s good for me, and I decide whether I should refine my skills in technology or testing or excel sheets.

I do things that I am not qualified for.

I used to get a ‘C’ grade in English language (and I am still bad at English), but I love writing articles these days. I don’t have a marketing degree, but I’m doing digital marketing.

I always loved studying financial material, but never got the courage to explore it as a profession. I am taking that risk now. I am determined to make my profession around personal finance, like investments, payments, tax savings, banking and credit cards.

As Steve Jobs said beautifully:

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

I was average in my studies, and I always avoided reading books. I never read story books when I was in school, or fiction novels when I was in college. But now I love reading books — see what I am reading here.

It’s like my re-birth. I am living my life more sensibly. I take care of my physical and spiritual health.

I am doing work that is meaningful.

My work is to touch human lives in positive ways. My first startup was to help education institutes (teachers, parents, students), while my next startup was to help students in learning science.

I love building products; I love coding; I love learning new coding languages. So I’m doing what I love. I’m now learning Ruby on Rails to build world-class web applications.

I spend four to five hours daily with my son. I play with him, cry with him, fight with him and occasionally teach him something. There is more to learn from children than to stuff their mind with knowledge (garbage).

I always dreamed of this life. I wanted to stay close to my family, and now I’m living my dream.

Earlier, I worked for Aricent; now, I work for my family.

Oh! And I forgot to tell you- I’m not rich yet.

Rather, I am poorer than I was last year. But money does not plain success to me — it is a must to have for buying survival and luxury. Survival supports life system, and luxury gives us happiness.

I have both life and happiness.

I know I will be rich one day, but I am successful today.

Source: yourstory