Background:
If you look at my family history and if you go generations back, you will hardly find any generation that was into entrepreneurship. Leave entrepreneurship aside, not even education. I was the first person to complete 10th grade. I was born in the slums of Mumbai to a very beautiful couple, mom being a housewife and father, a carpenter. We used to live in a tiny house, 10 feet by 9 feet to be precise that included our bedroom, kitchen, hall, bathroom whatever you say, that was our everything.
During rainy days, when most of the people would enjoy and welcome the rains, we used to feel scared because our roofs used to leak like anything and we used to spend sleepless nights collecting the leaking water and cleaning. Not to forget the long queues at the common public toilets every day in the morning. Parents had to go to and fro 1 km just to fetch 1 handa (utensil) of drinking water. I hope you are able to relate where I come from.
In the next few minutes I would like to present to you my personal Journey with a hope that it helps you evolve in your life.
Childhood:
My childhood was very normal. The only aspiration that we used to have in our childhood was to somehow complete 10th standard and then start supporting the family financially by doing odd jobs. Driving an auto rickshaw or selling vegetables or at the most getting a job at a call center. That was the only aspiration that we all had during that time. We didn’t have access to information as the internet wasn’t prevalent back then nor was there anyone who could inspire us to dream big.
All I knew was, we are small people, you need loads of money to do big things and since we don't have money, we can’t dream big. Not even in my wildest of dreams I had thought that I’d build multiple companies from scratch completely bootstrapped, sell 1 company for 2 million dollars, make it to Forbes 30 under 30 Asia, I had never ever imagined all these. I am sure you guys must be very curious to know how did this happen? Let me share my story!
Inspiration:
Back in 2006 I think when I was in eighth standard we had a subject called ‘personality development’ that is where the first time I heard about the word entrepreneur. Before that, I had never ever heard about the word ‘entrepreneur’ or ‘entrepreneurship’ and I still struggle to write the correct spelling. Our teacher narrated a very beautiful story about an entrepreneur building a business from scratch and that's something that intrigued me. I was like ‘wow’, it's a different joy to build something from zero. Building something out of nothing has a different joy altogether. Remember in our childhood, we all used to say I will become a doctor, engineer, pilot, etc, after that incident I used to say I will become an entrepreneur.
The very second incidence I remember is while i was in engineering second year, the setup was very similar I was sitting in one corner of the auditorium and I was attending a talk by Mr Faisal Farooqi who is the CEO of mouthshut.com and he was sharing his life story as to how he started his company, what challenges he faced, how he dealt with it, what problem they are solving and what impact it had on the people’s lives.
I was so inspired that I felt goosebumps. I wanted to become like him, build a company like him. But my inner self laughed making fun of me and said “Hey Javed, stop dreaming, you don't have what it takes to build a business and become an entrepreneur”. I always had this inferiority complex. But that day something happened, I had a fight with my inner self and told him I will do it and you will watch that!
The situation was not favorable financially at home because I always used to think that you need deep pockets, you need heavy investment to build a business and as and when I started my journey I started realizing no I was wrong, the fact is where there's a will there's a way.
Somehow, after a lot of struggle, I managed to get myself access to the internet and that changed my entire life. I was introduced to a whole new world altogether. Back then in 2011, the internet was a total luxury for me, I didn't have a smartphone or the internet pack on the smartphone, the way it's common today. I used to spend like 15-16 hours every single day navigating through the building block of the web.
I started teaching myself multiple skills, one of them being web development. I built and launched my very first website which is still live today even after more than 10 years. People around me started noticing my work, the same people who used to mock me, started coming to me and used to ask ‘hey we saw your website, it's super cool, would you mind teaching us how to build a website’. I was like, yeah of course, why not?
I saw the progress, more and more people now wanted to hangout with me, learn from me, do projects with me. I formed a group, where we used to work on projects, build things and learn from each other. I had started all alone without anything with me but just self belief and now I had 10-15 people with me working on multiple projects together. All this changed in a span of 6 months.
Learnings:
All you need is just 6 months of focus to change your life
Believe in yourself. Every dog has its day, just keep pushing
Start alone, if you are true to your mission, people will gradually join you
Launch:
So we kickstarted the project, started teaching ourselves how to write mobile apps, how to write the backend, the clock was ticking, every single day, every single hour was important to us. We used to work 16-17 hrs a day without caring about sleep or any other thing. I had never ever experienced such kind of energy before, we were on a mission. I remember standing and coding for hours during the night on my desktop computer as there was no place to keep a chair in my house because the arrangement was such that if you keep a chair, it will not be possible for other family members to sleep because of space crunch.
Not only were we able to launch before time, but the app was widely received by the student community, we got more than 5000 installs within just a week, and got covered by major media houses. This entire incident further boosted my confidence and for the first time I was able to see my true potential. What first seemed like an impossible task, was there in front of all of us. After the Dream Admission app, the team worked together, took up challenges and executed multiple projects. But that's a story for some other day.
Learnings:
Never get bogged down by constraints, instead use them as a motivation.
The work automatically expands according to the time you allocate for it. If you give it 15 days, you will be able to complete it within 15 days and if you give it 2 months, you will complete the same task in 2 months.
You never know your true potential till you actually deep dive into the problem.
Job life:
After carefully evaluating all the job offers, I decided to join a startup that was into recruitment space, they were building ‘Tinder for jobs’. Great problem, amazing people to work with. I joined them as an ‘Android Engineer’, within 2-3 months, I realized I was not enjoying it, the bigger purpose was missing, I wanted to take up bigger challenges. I quit the job in just 3 months, I think people do internships for tenure longer than that. Joined another startup with a bigger role, the same thing happened and I learned that I am not made for jobs, I need more autonomy and more responsibilities which is a bit difficult to find in the job world. I was okay to work for 18 hours a day, make less money in spite of my family solely dependent on me, but did not want to do a 9-5 job. I wanted to start something of my own.
Casually met my friends Mandar and Uday, who are my co-founders and have played a significant role in what I am today. Convinced them about the idea and we started our own venture.
The decision to quit the job and start the company wasn't easy as I had just Rs. 20000 in my bank account and I had to support my family financially. For the initial 6 months we had no business, we were on the verge of losing hopes. Infact, my co-founders had considered going back and taking up jobs again, somehow I convinced them to wait for some more time, we will see the fruits. The patience and persistence paid off, we bagged some great projects. And from there on, there was no looking back.
Had the honor and privilege to work with brands like Tata, Airtel, Bajaj Electricals, Facebook, Taj Group of Hotels just to name a few. Infact, my company Kustard built the very first version of Zepto. Business was great, the team was great, we were at the peak but we realized the bigger purpose was missing. We were in search of the next big thing. That's when we got the acquisition offer from eBikeGo. We sold Kustard for $2 Mn.
We realized every line of code we write, every pixel we design, every product feature we ship, directly impacts the environment. This compelled us to join hands with eBikeGo to fight climate change and make a difference in people’s lives. Since inception, we were able to save more than 75 lakhs kgs of CO2 emission with a fleet of Electric Vehicles. We worked on some super cool stuff at eBikeGo, right from building the OS for Electric Vehicles to gamification with carbon credits.
Last month, I bid farewell to eBikeGo to work on a new mission, that is my next venture which is stealth mode currently. This is what I have learned through all these experiences in my life.
Do what you love and love what you do. You will fall in love with problems. You will enjoy every bit of the challenge and tackle it seamlessly. Ideas are just 1%, the rest 99% is ruthless execution.
Life is too short to learn from your own mistakes, learn from others. Degrees are important but skills have an edge over degrees. We must learn to learn. And lastly, thoughts become things. Dreams do come true. Never stop dreaming. But yes, dreams without actions are just like ‘liti’ without ‘chokha’. If you truly wish, you can get and achieve any damn thing in this world.
https://klan.global/ and https://getkorrect.com/