Love for Sports is the seed for the origination of Sporthood. It is a startup that provides a platform for sports enthusiasts to discover and train themselves. It is a medium that allows you to come together with other sports enthusiasts who are interested in playing a particular game at the areas of their operation. Quite intriguing, right? But not only this, the venue, equipment, people to play with etc, will be taken care of by Sporthood, all we have to do is subscribe! It also provides specialized training and coaching for those who require assistance for various activities.

“Sometimes you are only one decision away from a totally different life” , that is what happened in the case of Rahul, the founder of Sporthood. The turning point that made Rahul realise the worth of sports in his life was when he went for work and explored Germany for two years without knowing the language or the people but the only source of happiness for him was to engage in sports. He was a sports fanatic and loved involving himself in sports and organizing games. All through his childhood he grew up alongside sports. He came up with the idea of Sporthood four years ago when he recognized that in the working life, the quality of life reduces immensely as most of the people don’t get their convenient times to play or indulge in sports activities because of their schedules. Therefore he identified the need through his own life of wanting to play with a community.

“The secret of getting ahead is getting started”

How it all started?

As they entered this idea ahead of its time, the first one and a half year were spent on iterating different ideas. The entire first year was funded by themselves and was based only in Trivandrum. They experimented by organising events so as to get a feel of how the industry and customers would react to such an idea. By doing this they obtained a small customer base so that when they migrated to app and website subscription they could use those loyal customers to try it out and obtain more feedback.

In the second year they moved to Bangalore in order to scale up their venture. They employed 10 core members and they experimented their model. They were having a difficulty to raise funds initially as most of the investors were sceptical about the idea since they didn’t think this idea could scale up. Few angel investors who aligned to their vision agreed to invest in their idea. College alumni community helped them to get started financially which shows us how networking is a very important tool for any business venture. The initial amount of money they raised through Angel investors and alumni were used to showcase scalibility in the market.

Operational Challenges

Since it’s a very operation intensive venture, Rahul says that the key is to standardize and quantify the operation process so as to minimize variation and provide seamless sporting experience to all irrespective of age and in all areas. They incorporate various curriculums and regimens according to the needs of the sportsperson. They have training programs for trainers so as to increase their quality. They also included internal rating systems inorder to give their customers feedback and how to improve on them. They focuses on the customer experience and thrives on making sports as a vital part their day-to-day life.

The Business Model had been changed quite a few times during the course of the growth of Sporthood keeping a constant vision. Its a notion that changes in a business plan changes the perception of investors about the reliability of the original idea but in the contrary, for Sporthood, change in Business Models increased confidence of the Investors on the founders.

Sporthood in the coming days..

In India, the pain point in this arena is the lack of recreational activities and good quality aveneus for people to engage in sports. Although Sporthood is operating in two cities currently but it aims to expand and want people to pick up a more active and healthy lifestyle. They would get into the operational process in other cities after they get enough funds for their venture. Since Rahul was from Trivandrum and he worked in Bangalore, he already knew the venue and understood the customers of that area. But since they are having a vision to scale upto 15–20 Tier 1 cities all across India in the coming years, they would not have the same advantage as they had in Trivandrum and Bangalore. Therefore, they are fine tuning their business model so as to scale into these cities as soon as possible without facing much challenges. The main challenge would be to gather resources, capital and a dedicated team with core competencies. As of now they are partnering with local sport centres and clubs, where these sportcentres provide equipments, trainers and venues.

Incorporating a healthy living habit is the main motto of Sporthood and it is still undergoing the scaling & transformation process and various funding stages so as to get the necessary capital to scale their venture.

Key takeaways:

The interaction with Rahul gave us an insight upon the fact that there will be a lot more downs than ups in a startup and the basic premise of a startup is to test the idea and keep iterating it. The recipe to starting a startup according to him is:

· Resilience,

· Belief that your idea will work.

The only way to go through with your startup is to be patient and learn from the mistakes that you make.

Check this out to know Sporthood’s story from the founder’s words:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9GTO2aI1SwbeVBnT01JM0Q0S0k/view?ts=59dd33d1

Play your way to fitness and fun — The story of Sporthood was originally published in ENT101 on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The vision that drives SurveySparrow is to build an online survey platform that creates conversational surveys which, they believe, is the most effective and natural way to collect unbiased insights.

IDEA GENERATION

Shihab was struck with the idea of SurveySparrow while he was in the U.S. last year on a client visit for Freshdesk, his previous company. It was a norm in the company for employees to fill employee satisfaction surveys every month. However, the survey response rates were low despite several reminders and notifications from the HR because the surveys were time-consuming but not engaging or mobile-friendly. Shihab himself received a reminder email asking him to take the survey when he realized that the unfriendly user interface of the surveys was a major reason for the low response rates. He recounts the interesting story of how SurveySparrow was born in his blog.

Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger together handle close to 60 billion messages a day. Also, 6 out of 10 apps out there are already messaging apps. Shihab believes that the popularity of messaging apps is largely due to their personal and engaging experience, which he seeks to bring in through conversational surveys.

ABOUT SURVEY SPARROW

SurveySparrow was born out of their founder’s frustration with boring survey experience. He identified the problem, realized how common it was among corporates and started working on a solution for it.

One of the unique features that sets apart SurveySparrow from other survey platforms is their automation feature, wherein you can automate surveys to be sent to respondents regularly and thus eliminate HR hours spend to send them manually each month.

An extensive research was carried out before the start-up launch by studying the customer feedback and survey experience of other survey companies, identifying the market size and opportunities and also by gaining insights from the reports published by the likes of Gartner and Forrester Research.

The survey market is shifting to new innovative products focusing on real conversations and a friendly Conversational User Interface (CUI). Shihab observes that there has been a logical evolution in interfaces.

In the 1960’s and 1970’s, the widely used interface was Command Line Interface (CLI) which took months to learn and use. Later, Apple and Microsoft made Graphical User Interface (GUI) which grew to the most popular interface there ever was. However, in recent times, we witnessed a smartphone revolution, and everyone scrambled to make desktop-friendly applications to mobile-friendly applications. CUI exploits the scope of the smartphones the most they have used this possibility to design the survey experience. SurveySparrow resembles a messaging app so much so that the survey taking process transforms into a chat-like experience with SurveySparrow.

COMPANY CULTURE

Teamwork makes a dream work, they say. It’s imperative that you put in great effort and give attention to detail to build and maintain a great team.

Shihab had to shift his base from Chennai where he lived for the past dozen or so years because his cofounder was based in Cochin and they had decided to set up the company there. Shihab recounted the lengths he went to hire and put together the best team that we could find. Shihab traveled all the way to Calicut just to discuss and decide the terms with his Customer Success person. Because the said candidate was born and brought up in Mumbai and lived across the globe, he wasn’t at home with the traditional Kerala cuisine. Shihab addressed this discomfort by hiring an expert cook. The team is provided with free food and accommodation, and that is just one of the many perks they enjoy.

Shihab explained that he adopted this manner from the government practice of offering free accommodation and facilities at subsidized rates to the government officials.

It is just one of the many incidents which depict how they move away from the traditional way of treating their employees to make them feel good about being part of a good team. Also, SurveySparrow makes it a point to hire the people who possess experience across the world to bring in more insights.

HOW DOES SURVEYSPARROW WORK?

Even after we did our initial research of the company and learned of its distinctive features, we were all puzzled by how it actually works. Shihab invited us to use the private beta of the product so that we may have a firsthand understanding and feel of the product. We were delighted to see for ourselves how great SurveySparrow is.

Users are asked to create their SurveySparrow accounts wherein they can choose a template or build their own survey from scratch. One can add or edit questions, choose the answer types and also use the many options such as Display Logic, Automation, Drag & Drop, etc. Once the survey is created, the survey is shared with the audience. SurveySparrow lets the user share it across channels. Be it market research or a regular employee survey, SurveySparrow easily lets the users create and share the survey with their respective audience.

We were struck by how easy and fun it was to create conversational surveys. And the best part was how it could be previewed so we could see the survey questions popping up one after the other, similar to a real-life conversation using a messaging app.

Creating and sharing the surveys is not all that is to be done. SurveySparrow provide analytic reports and insights to the users so that they can understand the data collected and make informed decisions. SurveySparrow does the slicing and dicing of data and makes the deal simpler for the user. We found it a very user-friendly tool to create engaging surveys.

SurveySparrow is a curious name for an online survey platform. When asked about it, Shihab said that he wanted to name the product with the word parrot in it. The popular Indian depiction of intelligent parrots that talk to humans is what gave him the idea. However, the names he wanted weren’t available, so he chose Sparrow, widely associated as the wisest and most social of birds. SurveySparrow has a nice ring to it, and the name stuck.

CHALLENGES FACED

SurveySparrow, like every other startup, had its own share of hurdles to cross. Finding an appropriate office space was one among them. Thankfully, Shihab was assisted by government and the business ecosystem that help our startups. Within the short span of 4–5 months, SurveySparrow has a decent office in Infopark that fits its nine-member team. Government agencies like KSIDC were instrumental in aiding SurveySparrow, especially in the early days.

Another key challenge was acquiring great talent. Shihab believes that to keep innovating and surviving in a highly competitive world, you should have a great team that is capable of doing that. He was very particular about hiring only highly talented people with innovating ideas to join his team. He favors a competent workforce over the average team any day.

In a related context, Shihab spoke how the conventional job roles have evolved to new ones. Gone are the days of hardcore sales. Customers are smarter than before, and for them to stay loyal to you, you need to add value to their lives. Direct sales have shifted its focus to offering assistance and facilitating value exchange. Likewise, a lion share of the SurveySparrow market is expected to be in North America and coming up with unique content that will read native to the people of that region was a challenge SurveySparrow had to address.

The investment wasn’t really a struggle for SurveySparrow in the initial days. Shihab invested around $100k of his own personal savings into the company so that the sparrow have enough room to move around while it grows its wings. While he is actively talking with potential investors, Shihab said that he is putting off the funding until the product is launched. It is his belief that funds be used only for market scaling if one could afford to have it that way.

SurveySparrow acknowledges that what is groundbreaking today might risk being reduced to conventional tomorrow. But shrugging off the conventional mold is possible only through constant innovation. Inspired by the Google culture, Shihab hires smart people to keep the company smart and growing.

CATEGORIZATION OF CUSTOMERS

Explaining the categorization of his customers, Shihab used the metaphors of elephants, rabbits, and mice. The big enterprises and the likes of Fortune 500 companies constitute the elephants in the industry. The medium and small enterprises can be considered rabbits and the even smaller businesses are the mice in industry. The initial market for SurveySparrow, Shihab explained, would be the mice. They aim to target the rabbits and elephants later on, only once they establish themselves firmly among the smaller enterprises.

SurveySparrow has rich features that can track performance across devices. SurveySparrow believes that a conversational and engaging experience can improve survey completion rates by 40%.

SUCCESS MOMENTS

SurveySparrow believes in the moments that make up the journey rather than a single goal at the end of the road, Shihab said. It is good to know that they don’t consider a specific target and define their success as achieving it. Instead, they consider every fruitful moment to be a success. It is after all an eventful, continuous journey with new challenges popping up every other day. As long as they create fond memories and stay true to their vision, SurveySparrow is a success.

SURVEY SPARROW: AN UNCONVENTIONAL SURVEY EXPERIENCE was originally published in ENT101 on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

There has been a lot of stigma around working in a start up and the risks associated with it. The start up culture is known for the freshness associated with it. Not just the freshness is what makes the start up culture stand out. Its also the energy, innovation and the relaxed environment that does the trick.Yes, it does have its negative sides, but i feel that its high time that we choose to see beyond these myths of working in a start up and actually try to see that silver lining that makes this culture unique and a rewarding experience.

The most important boon in working with a start up is that you get to be unique. You would not be just another person in the crowd, or just another meat piece in front of a computer system. You are valued for that specific skill you have, or that particular quality that you can bring to the table to solve a problem. So if you are a person who likes to row against the glow and be recognized for what you can do best, then start up is exactly the place for you!

Secondly, you are your own boss !! As long as you can deliver what is expected out of you, at the time when you are expected to do so, then no one is going to police over you to get your work done.You have your complete autonomy and flexibility to do your work.

And third, you work in a continuously evolving system, where, as the firm grows, you get to be a part of the growing up phase, rather than just being one among the crowd that watches the company grows. And the higher your company reaches, so does your value add up !

So yes, its actually time that we start considering working in startups as an opportunity to learn, rather than be scared about it !!

Working in a start up — Scared or Sacred ?? was originally published in ENT101 on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Before going into the main arena which will discuss on what are some of the challenges a female entrepreneur faces, let’s dive into the concept of “Entrepreneur” and “female entrepreneurs”. Now let us first understand “Who is an Entrepreneur?” I went through various definitions and meanings which describes an entrepreneur but the one which caught my sight is- “Entrepreneurs are individuals who recognize opportunities where others see chaos or confusion.” This is one of those definitions which describes a real entrepreneur.

Now when we have known the real meaning of an Entrepreneur, let’s understand who are female entrepreneurs? Also known as “mumpreneurs” or “lipstickpreneurs” or “fempreneurs”, they either individually or in a group are a set of women who innovate or adopt a business, organize and run a business enterprise.

As it can be noticed that the above definition describes a “female entrepreneur” but why do stereotypes like “mumpreneurs, lipstickpreneurs, fempreneurs” linked with a woman entrepreneur?

Has anyone ever heard of words like “dadpreneurs” or “manpreneurs”? — No. Then why only a women have to face phrases or words like these. The existence and use of such feminized phrases and words gives more weightage to the perception that entrepreneurship is largely a male-oriented sector. I believe that each of us has the right to call ourselves whatever we feel and want to.

There are some more challenges which a women entrepreneur has to face apart from the above discussed stereotypes. I would like to highlight some major ones, number one being the “financial problem”- Leaving out a few almost every women entrepreneur comes across this problem. The banks won’t motivate them thinking they are less worthy and very less of them have an individual property of their own. Therefore, women entrepreneurs usually fail at the very first step.

Second challenge which they face is the “stiff competition” prevailing in the market. Due to less finance, they suffer from scarcity of raw materials. As a result some women enterprises dilute because of the tough competition from the other organized sectors as well as from the male-oriented sector.

Third challenge which a women entrepreneur has to face comes from her own family. The very sole reason why a women entrepreneur is denoted as “mumpreneur” is because of her emotional ties with her family and children. She has to face all the criticism of her loved ones and also bear the burden or pressure of handling both family and business at the same time. This is a major challenge for a woman entrepreneur and many women enterprises dilute or doesn’t even start cause of this.

There are many other challenges which a women entrepreneur has to go through but I believe the ones I’d listed are the root ones. Apart from this, the titles which they have been embedded with will not matter if they are focused and determined. What matters is the willingness or urge to keep moving forward. :)

“If you push through that feeling of being scared, that feeling of taking risk, really amazing things can happen.”-Marissa Mayer (CEO, Yahoo! Inc.)

Fempreneurs!! was originally published in ENT101 on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Studying about the business plan in theory and doing an actual presenation was completely different. We started our Bplan by explaining about our Startup like what exactly it is and what its logo meant and stood for.

The Main thing which we have to analyse and undertsand in detail is the Need of the Market. So did a lot of research on that part beacuse for any business to be successful, it has to undertsand the need of the market.

There are about 4.5K+ MBA colleges, 10K+ Engineering colleges and 800+ universities in India, Conducting 100K+ events in a year. It is difficult both for the Institute and for the students to provide and get Information about these events across cities and states. So there was a need for an efficient way of providing information and our startups aim was to provide that common platform for Information.

When it came to Business Model we adopted the Osterwalder Business model Canvas where we were able to see things what we needed to achieve, how to achieve it etc.

The Canvas was Structured in a way that all the featues like Value proposition, Key Activities, Customer Segmentation, Customer Relation, Channels, Key Resources, Cost structure and Revenue Streams were covered.

The main thing when it comes to a business plan is how you are different from your competitors (the Differentiation Factor).

• None of the competitors have launched a mobile phone application, but we planned on launching an app, which will make it more convenient for the audience.
• With the App, the students will get a reminders saying “Pack your Bags” you have a competition tomorrow at this college, at this time stating the price money also.
• The competitors generally provided details about the college events only. But Students Center will also provide information about the private certification courses like CA, CFA etc.
• So students can have a cross comparison of the courses in terms of Faculties, institutions, fees, location, timings, placements etc.

Our Revenue model was: Commercial Advertisements where we will charge a fee from local business like KFC, Dominos, Herohonda, Homosapiens etc who which to put stalls in various colleges during events for their product demonstration, promotion, marketing etc.

Then there is a Subscription pack where the institutes can subscribe to an Annual pack where they can list any number of events they conduct in that year on our site. Then there is Event pricing also where we will be charging a fee on a per event basis.

Coming to the financial part we Forecasted the P&L account for next three financial year giving all the break ins in details like for example:

Expenses

Salary:

•Small team of 7 people, the founders won’t be taking any salary till the start up breaks even. The remaining five employees will receive an average salary of Rs.22,000 per month. The employees will mostly be Interns or freelancers.

System:

•We will purchase three laptops in the first year which will cost Rs.50,000 each.

Rent:

•A small office space with a rent of Rs.10,000 per month assuming it increases every year by 10%.

Vehicle:

•We will purchase 2 second hand bikes with fuel expenses being Rs5,000 per month.

Recreation:

•A Recreation Expense of Rs.1,250 per week.

Misc. Expenses:

• 10% of all the expenses has been take as Misc. Expenses for all the three FY.

•In the first FY our only source of revenue will be Commercial Advertisements which includes charging a fee from Businesses for providing information about events.

•In the Second FY we will be targeting to achieve 500 institutes of which assume 100 institutes subscribe our yearly package costing Rs.2,000 and the remaining 400 institutes will pay Rs.250 per event considering 10 events per institute.

•In the Third FY we will increase our Target institutes to 750 with the same charges as per the second FY.

•By third year we Expect to break even as per the Estimation.

And depending on our Expenses we asked for an Investment of Rs.60 lakhs to achieve our targets and break even.

For that we were ready to give 20% equity to investors also ;)

This is how we made our Business Plan. It was a great experience for both of us. Presenting the Business Plan of your startup in front of others and having them like it, there is no better feeling other than that. Finally we launched our MVP Minimum Viable Product:

•Link: https://sites.google.com/view/studentscenter/home?authuser=0

And thats how we did our Business Plan.

Business Plan was originally published in ENT101 on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The hospitality industry has undergone various changes in the last five years. India’s travel and tourism industry has huge growth potential. The tourism industry is also looking forward to the expansion of E-visa scheme which is expected to double the tourist inflow to India. JW Marriott plans to have 175–200 hotels in India over the next four years. Accor Hotels India has adopted a ‘born in France, made in India’ approach to increase its properties in India, which has reached a total of 45 hotels and is expected to increase to 55 hotels by 2017.
Competitive pressures, shifting consumer preferences and consumption patterns, technological advances, consolidation, price discounting, and new distribution channels are but a few of the changes in the business landscape. Innovation has been derived in such a way to cope with these and other changes in the industry. But what exactly is innovation, how has it functioned in the hospitality industry and what are the key ideas to help foster innovation?

The ‘Lighthouse Model’

The Lighthouse Model above provides a powerful metaphor to visualize the role and positioning of the Professorship Innovation in Hospitality within its ‘real (hospitality) world research context’. Modern lighthouses have changed in role from their historical predecessors. Modern lighthouses here, refer to the modern methods adopted by the industries worldwide. Although their function has changed, lighthouses or these approaches continue to play an important role in navigation around the world. Lighthouses have been used for thousands of years as navigational aids, and they have supplied a means for outside guidance. Over time, people have begun to use the lighthouses to orient themselves, recognizing particular lighthouses and using them as a frame of reference to figure out where they are and where they need to go. The signal of the lighthouse is marked on charts, allowing sailors to use the light patterns in their finding of direction. The professorship will establish a clearly visible position within the hospitality industry and signal its research intentions and research findings. Connecting to the hospitality industry by beaming a light (enlightenment) of research will be an important aim for the professorship. The professorship intends to provide a beacon to the professional hospitality world, a light that will be considered as ‘giving direction’ in issues that challenge practitioners. By taking the lighthouse function, the professorship will be clearly visible for practitioners in the industry and simultaneously it will be crucial for hospitality management students to know where the contemporary challenges are within the industry.
Several developments are predicted for the coming years that will drive the future of the hospitality. Some of the key characteristics for success in the future are (Destors, 2010):
Deep understanding of an increasingly geographically, financially, generationally and attitudinally diverse and rapidly evolving customer base: an ever broader spectrum of customers with diverse needs will find the hospitality industry. Traditional segmentation models will no longer suffice to capture the needs and nature of tomorrow’s customer (connecting to the professorship theme ‘diversity’),
Continuous search for ancillary revenue streams: successful companies should consider a range of approaches to increase revenue generation (connecting to the professorship theme ‘value creation’). Firmly connecting to, and cooperating with the hospitality industry in producing meaningful research as element of innovation.
In hospitality research a wide range of quantitative and qualitative methods are used. There appears, however, to be a tendency to produce work that at face value can present itself with a scientific outlook. Although quantitative research methods are more favoured, qualitative research in hospitality management is performed and gets published. The innovative direction for research in hospitality management can be found in adopting methods that are not so common in that field. Naturalistic research approaches involving grounded methods provide innovative opportunities for hospitality research. Naturalistic research, or inquiry, studies people in everyday circumstances by using observation or engaging in talking to them (Beuving & de Vries, 2015). A form of naturalistic research, grounded theory, has received a lot of attention in education and health studies but is only very limited applied in hospitality studies. An example of using real world grounded research methods is provided by Gehrels (2014a) in which hospitality entrepreneurship is investigated in-depth. In this study the contextual characteristics of a specific group of entrepreneurs were explored and explained by using grounded theory. The study led to a social construct that explains what made the entrepreneurs successful and viable with the aim to have hospitality management education benefit from the knowledge in preparing students for employment.

Reference 1: https://www.ibef.org/industry/tourism-hospitality-india.aspx

Reference 2: http://scholarship.sha.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1605&context=articles

Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the Hospitality Industry was originally published in ENT101 on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Suggestions

1. My first suggestion after my research on the topic is to contact with seed investers because the SeedInvest team is hardworking, smart, and informed. They can help a startup to reach both non-accredited investors and accredited investors at the same time. The reach of their platform have ancillary benefits in terms of corporate development too.

2. My second suggestion would be to go for crowdfunding because it helps to connect with multiple investors and at the same time you can get benefits like raising large amount of funds if the opportunity is utilized efficiently.

3. According to my understanding venture capital is definatly a good idea for the startups as the capital is invested mainly in exchange for an equity stake in the business rather than given as a loan.

4. Incubator programs are also an option for any early stage business because these incubators not only help in funding but also helps in nurturing the business by providing support in the form of trainings and networkings.

5. I would also suggest for angel investments because as per my classroom learnings through whatever I grasped from the lectures I realised that in such investments you have a very good chance of bargain and one can make the most of the opportunity.

How to raise funds for startup was originally published in ENT101 on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

India needs more than a 100 million jobs a year and the jobs which are generated are mostly from startups and not big enterprises. Startup entrepreneurship is crucial because it also brings new innovations, new jobs and competitive dynamics into the business environment and enterprises. This also brings great opportunity to be involved in dealings with new technology which generally lies at the highest end of value addition chain. Why are startups so important for a country like India:-

· Startups are free from economic downturns and free from encumbrance and that’s what makes startups so disruptive and agile.

· Startups work in an environment of changing technology and try to maximize profits by innovation.

· This induces backward and forward linkages which stimulate the process of economic development in the country irrespective of the economic environment.

· They even act as catalytic agent for change, which results in chain reaction. Once an enterprise is established, the process of industrialization is set in motion. This will generate demand for various types of units and will in turn, lead to overall development of an area due to increase in demand and setting up of more and more units. I.e. like OLA and Airbnd

references from www.quora.com

Impact of startups on Indian Economy was originally published in ENT101 on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

When you start a business, you have more work than you can possibly complete, so prioritizing is incredibly important. And many entrepreneurs think that any time they spend not generating revenue is a waste, but if you don’t set aside some time to properly set up your infrastructure, you’ll later find yourself forced to deal with these issues, and by then it will be such a mess that it will take you exponentially more time to straighten it all out. Finances, project management, online storage organization, processes, insurance, corporate structure, etc. These are all things that must be done well in order to succeed. Another constant challenge is of convincing would be customers that they should buy from you, before you can responsibly sign a contract with the supplier. And the supplier won’t typically agree to work with you, until they are confident that you have customers.

Starting a business that one is passionate about one will have the opportunity to solve problems or add value to the world through their business. It would give you plenty of opportunities to bring about the change that you always wanted but couldn’t. Having a learning and attitude and passion towards work are the most important factors of success. Immersing yourself in learning opportunities and keeping an eye out for something that excites you- not just for the money- you will be successful.

Even though the struggles are aplenty yet persistence, belief and confidence in ones team, product and self can make this journey of becoming a successful entrepreneur so much more easier and fruitful

Struggles of an entrepreneur was originally published in ENT101 on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Qplay Tech Private Limited was established on 22 August 2013 by Dheeraj Prasanth, Nithin George, and Jacob Mani. It is a Non-govt company and is registered with Registrar of Companies, Ernakulum. It has an authorized share capital of Rs. 1,060,000 and a paid-up capital of Rs. 540,000. It is into Software publishing, consultancy and supply. Software publishing includes production, supply and documentation of ready-made software’s, operating systems, business & other applications software’s and computer games software for all platforms. Consultancy includes providing the best solution in the form of custom software after analyzing the user’s needs and problems. Custom software also includes made-to-order software based on orders from specific users.

During the conversation with Nithin, he gave his insights based on our queries.

THE EUREKA MOMENT FOR STARTING QPLAY

Initially, there was no idea or intention to create such company and get into the field of entrepreneurship, like every other middle class Engineer in our country Nithin too had a very clear-cut objective to get into a company like Microsoft or Oracle.

Expecting to get into Microsoft, Nithin used to participate in several coding Competitions and Hackathons, One such Hackathon was the Blackberry Jam India where he and his team Stood as winners and later went on to represent India in Blackberry Jam Asia Level.

During this process, many of the students in the Student community and various participants were seen to be representing either a Corporate or a start-up in the competition. Companies like TCS and Wipro would take these students as interns and were more interested in student community, So Nithin and his team came up with an idea to create a start-up and represent it on a public platform. They were reported as Representing a start-up called Qplay this was the inception of Qplay and since then they started working on few projects under this name, mostly hobby projects and Nithin later on did his Final year project for the college and it was converted as the first official project for Qplay. Therefore, the idea of starting up a company was more of a requirement than an intention to do so, but in future Qplay succeeded in becoming one of the leading start-up in this space.

FINANCIAL ASPECTS

As we observed that, the founder had raised 1.5 to 2 Cr in the form of equity. Equity fund will be expensive when compared to loans taken from abroad like Luxembourg, Europe and Japan. The fund providers may expect approx. market average return of about 12–14%, which leads to increase the operation leverage of the firm. So is it a better way to go for funds from abroad at cheap interest rates about 1.5–2%, maybe even below that.

Nithin’s opinion about this is start-ups start at a small scale at the initial stages, later on go for raising funds at large to grow large. Generally, start-ups fetch for venture capitalists for fund raising. Raising funds from abroad is impressive but here comes the issue the currency forex volatility, inflation rates, providing credibility approval for lending bank is not easy, security deposit with the lending bank and need to follow RBI approvals for the amount restrictions upon the amount that can be raised from abroad. Vc’s follow 6–3–1 rule which means they don’t care about funding start-ups, they portfolio their investments in few firms out of which only one firm will make hefty returns others may fails. This is better way for start-ups to approach VC’s and be funded. Generally, out of 20 VC’s meeting one may be the fund provider as said by the founder and also he says that above said risks can be avoided by not taking funds from abroad and go with VC’s in the home country. However, VC’s do not expect 12–14% they expect huge returns about 40%, but they fund high if they see there is scope for the start-up in the market.

In addition, the question was thrown about the diversifying the portfolio of business to Nithin. The reply to which was that Qplay is going to diversify in the field of augmented reality in fashion services a hybrid model of product and services. The founder is curious about the scope in this field in the near future a technology that superimposes a computer-generated image on a user’s view of the real world, thus providing a composite view. This creates a new era for the fashion segment after the final augmented product is launched in the market.

ABOUT ORGANISATION STRUCTURE AND TAKING UP JOBS. WHETHER HE BELIEVES IN MULTIPLE APPLICATIONS AT A TIME PARALLEL OR ONE PROJECT AT A TIME

The organization structure is pretty simple which consisted of a group of engineers who mainly concentrated on one project at a time. With overall understanding about the company, it is evident that people get assigned to jobs depending upon the project that comes in the way and no specific person takes up the same job again and again.

They use the hybrid model of products and services and their last two Products and this product is funded mostly by service revenue and consultation revenue. When it comes to consultation products or services they have multiple products. But when it comes to a product they are concerned about each individual product and multiple projects won’t affect the quality it will affect the capacity because they use same engineering process for all the products.

WHAT ALL CHALLENGES WERE FACED

It was very heart-breaking to shut down the first project and to start a new project — Qplay he gives away 80% of 1.25 crore worth investment all of a sudden to the investors. But on another hand, it was very humbling experience for Nithin

The biggest challenge was community and ecosystem.

As it is very hard to handle friends and family because they put the entire blame on you when something goes wrong and reason can be that they have always seen success throughout the academic career. Failure makes you empathetic to other founders and it also helps you to cut down a lot of your ego. It is important that every founder should go through at least one failure in their career. Only then, one will start appreciating successful people.

TIPS GIVEN BY NITHIN FOR BUDDING ENTREPRENEURS

One has to be very careful when you choose your co-founder.

Everyone should know to ask for a help. In corporates, people generally don’t ask for help, it shouldn’t be like this, be shameless to ask help from the beginning as most of the entrepreneur is ready to help. Nithin says all the successful Entrepreneur has given him time to make him understand the reality and he is following the same by making us aware.

ASPECTS TO BE CONSIDERED TO CONVINCE A VENTURE CAPITALIST

· Before approaching a venture capitalist it is prudent to have a financial model in hand

· While pitching should a venture capitalist decline to fund your project, one should not take that as a complete failure

· Ideally asking for funds in large amounts is better than asking for a small amount as a venture capitalist won’t consider it seriously

· Venture capitalists always look for a project, which has a higher probability of success depending on the type of industry and your team’s composition. For instance, should your project be associated with block chain, which is the future of technology, it is likely that a Venture capitalist would engage and move forward with your project.

IMPORTANT POINTS TO CONSIDER FOR A STARTUP

· Having connections is important for startups, especially for raising funds

· LinkedIn is also a good platform to find Venture Capitalist firms

· Talking to multiple investors is always an added advantage. For instance, talking to at least 20 Venture Capitalist firms allows one to assess how sound their project is and how likely an investor is to approve a funding

Here’s the founder’s story in his own words:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzQJBY-9w8pxU2Rid1c0T3djdnM/view

CONCLUSION

It was an interesting session of about 40 minutes with Nithin. We had prepared few questions for him to clarify our doubts. He gave detailed insights about his firm. As the session progressed, we came up with more interesting questions and he happily replied to all of it. We had a very friendly interaction with him and we really appreciated that he gave us his time to us. We learned two interesting things from this session:-

· To become successful, it is important to learn from failures

· Do not be shy about asking for help. It does not mean that you are weak; it only means you are wise.

Learning from failures — The Qplay Story was originally published in ENT101 on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.