A PEAK INTO MY JOURNEY

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

(The Road Less Taken by Robert Frost)

The above lines definitely reflect the core aspect of my life – taking different paths, experimenting with the journeys, getting my scars and continuing to next path hoping to carry the lessons of the last!

I’m yet to become a multi billionaire entrepreneur and having thousands rush to hear me over (I’m at it, though) – but in my limited world and experiences, I’ve had my share of fun and ups & down – and am really keen to share all that I’ve learnt & observed during these last two decades of my professional life (and that exactly is why I’ve built an immersive entrepreneurial coaching program at www.buildyourownpaths.com) – to help you all build your own path and make stories that you will be proud to tell others. After all, there’s no story if all of us decide to take the road world wants us to take!

My tryst with taking my own path began after I completed my School. Being the only son born to a middle class family in Delhi, the world wanted me to take up engineering or medicine. But life had other plans for me and so following its gesture – I ended up in a business studies college – a graduation course which was still very new! Post my graduation, I again jumped differently by taking up my Management studies from SCMHRD (Pune) – where the whole pedagogy was very different from remaining MBA institutes (imagine doing the 10-day Vipassana as being essential part of the curriculum!). And then, when it came to those glorious placements – I decided to get placed in a public relations firm, despite the fact that it offered perhaps the lowest joining salary at that time.

Learning: Follow your heart, it knows where you need to go!

And then, after spending almost 8 years into establishing myself in corporate communications and building my expertise – I again decided to jump the ship and ended up in Venture Capital industry – a totally new area for me! A part destiny and a lot of hard work again supported me – as I excelled and worked with two leading VC Funds – with domains as diverse as real estate and movies (yes, I was part of India’s first fund investing into movies!).

Learning: Keep learning and don’t settle!

But then, who likes to just settle, right? By 2009-10, I started taking active interest in startups and entrepreneurs (remember in those days Flipkart was still largely a book seller and had just raised few early rounds) – especially in Fund raising strategies (Having raised almost INR 700 Crores for the real estate fund that I’d worked for and then raising around INR 100 Crores for the Film Fund – fund raising kind of attracted me). I also got keenly interested in upcoming funding methodology of Crowdfunding – which is where a startup, instead of depending on few investors, could raise funds from a larger community through collecting smaller individual amounts.

I really felt that crowdfunding holds the potential of truly democratising fund raising – as it gives power to the common man to empower startups and it also leads to even masses become stakeholders in growing the entrepreneurial ecosystem. I also felt that such a methodology could really bring significant change in emerging startup destination like India – where at that time there were hardly few angel networks and just about 400-500 angel investors. My tryst with crowdfunding began with me writing an article on it in DARE – which was India’s first entrepreneurial magazine (which unfortunately is shut down). Who’d knew that some years down the line, I will even be editing this magazine!

But just an article wasn’t even to satiate me. As I explored more, I became more confident that I need to launch this medium in India. Fully knowing that there’s no one who’s thinking about it in India – I started searching and reaching out to some global players with whom I could partner. As they say, if your thoughts are aligned with a true intention of bringing positive change, the whole world and the destiny colludes together to make it happen!

In July 2010 – I launched Grow VC India – India’s first ever equity based crowdfunding platform for startups in partnership with European based Grow VC – and thus started my entrepreneurial journey!

It was an exciting roller coaster to be sure – as every day I was trying to push the envelope – creating more media awareness on crowdfunding per se (which got facilitated thanks to white-skinned founders of Grow VC and media’s tendency to lap up anything such people say), approaching startups who would like to get crowdfunded and eventually getting right investors on board. It also lead to a pandora’s box of personal challenges – both in terms of financial restrictions and me not spending quality time with my family. But the joy of creating something bigger than me, building a newer path for entrepreneurs – overtook all challenges and kept me going.

My first so-called failure hit me just 16 months after the launch. While on one hand I was able to attract India’s leading angel investors onto the platform – the masses were still keeping away – which was my initial objective anyways. A big reason for so was startups – as an investment asset class – was still very niche and new in India. I hit upon the realisation that crowdfunding was perhaps too early in India – and so we decided to shut operations.

Learning: Market Timing is as critical as any other factor for a successful enterprise

Towards end of 2011, I then joined Cybermedia – publishers of DARE magazine – as its consulting editor and mentor to startup investments of Pradeep Gupta, who is Founder, Cybermedia. We redesigned the publication and also tried our hand at setting in what could have been Gurgaon’s first start accelerator.

But as they say, sometimes it’s the journey which decides your path. I and crowdfunding were to come back.

My love and inherent believe in the medium then inspired me to relaunch crowdfunding through my second venture – Catapooolt – in mid-2013. This time, I kept away from equity crowdfunding (which, despite becoming legal in almost all countries and SEBI even issuing a white paper in 2014 – is still not allowed in India because of regulatory empathy) and launched as reward-based platform. Initially focused on creative ventures – eventually it became India’s only reward-based crowdfunding platform for startups and entrepreneurial ventures!

What followed over next five years were perhaps the best learning years for me. While on one hand, the journey gave me some solid punches – like the incident of my first co-founder dropping the towel just when we were about to get our first angel investment (I still managed to still get the funding, a big thanks to all those investors who retained their trust in me) – it also gave me some of the sweetest rewards – like being able to play a crucial role in lives of 100+ entrepreneurs that we supported to raise their first equity-free funding rounds. It was an exhilarating journey – full of tears, trials and triumphs – leaving me with several key lessons on people management; how technology can crash your biggest dreams if not done right; the importance of having investors who should be aligned with your broader objectives and not just returns and how even tiny uphill tasks can humble you as an entrepreneur. We attracted some of the best known investors & mentors and created some of India’s largest crowdfunding based event formats – just as Changemakers Challenge – which saw participation from 2500+ entrepreneurs across the nation and also produced one of the most interesting advertisement campaign in The Economic Times.

In 2017, after almost 7 years into launching crowdfunding in India and building this path – I thought it was again time to move on a bit and find my next calling. A large media group then decided to acquihire the platform and gave me time to spend more quality time with some early stage entrepreneurs and be a part of their journeys. I worked as Entrepreneur in Residence with one of the largest Accelerators in India and currently am working with an uprising angel fund.

I guess a large part of my journey now is my passion to build more path breakers. Each one of us, within us, have the spark to fire a new revolution and bring immense positive change – and if I can ignite these sparks – my journey and all the learnings of past 20 years – would definitely be worth it.

So hop along if you wish to meet the super hero within you – and lets create more legacies and build our own paths!