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1. Tell us more about your company and
your journey.
Inception Wave is a tech based startup,
currently working on developing a social media
platform to bring together like minded individuals and help them improve their
productivity by collaborating and achieving common goals and milestones.
Our flagship
product, Grapido, provides a platform where people can connect and work on
ideas and find events, seminars and workshops based on their areas of interest.
This will help them to nurture their skills and also reclaim their passion
while pursuing their degrees.
The network section
allows you to become a part of communities which engage in healthy discussions
on various subjects. The profile section can help you build a strong
professional online presence which can help you in your recruitments.
We incorporated the
company in February, 2019 and our journey so far has been astounding. We never
thought we would come this far and learn so much in just a couple of months. We
had a small team when we started but slowly we started growing.
Internally, we had a
lot of disagreements and hot discussions because of all the pressure to cope up
with the college work and the startup, but we came out stronger and grew wiser.
While a few were not able to manage and left the venture, a lot more joined in.
Currently, we have
teams in several colleges who work closely with Inception Wave and represent IW
in their premises. We have provided internships to thousands of students in
different domains such as Web Design, Marketing and Business Development, HR
Management, Graphic Design and Content Creation etc.
We have been successful
in running campaigns and have 37 communities till now with 3000+ participants
altogether. We intend to keep growing and providing this wonderful learning
experience.
2. How did you come up with this idea
and go about executing it?
When I entered the first year of my
college, I used to be surrounded by a lot of people but I never really figured
what they liked to do and what were their aspirations. Everyone was a stranger
to each other.
But being a trailblazer who couldn’t
sit idle, I wanted to find people who were more like me so that I can
brainstorm with them and think of creative solutions to the widespread
problems. The idea of Grapido hit me for the first time when I found it really
difficult to meet individuals with similar interests and aspirations.
In the second year of my college, I
tried to build this platform by myself, but due to lack of required technical
expertise, I failed miserably. Then and there, I realised the value and
necessity of such a product even more.
In third year, Yash and I became
flatmates. That was the first time when we were discussing something and he
suggested an idea very similar to what I was thinking. He was trying to build
that while I was learning other aspects of the business.
That’s when it hit us that we can
accumulate the beneficial features and remove the contradicting ones to build
an amazing product, Grapido. We started skipping lectures to streamline our
idea and put it into execution. And that was it. We never stopped after that.
3. What has been your biggest challenge
that you faced and how did you overcome that?
Either of us were students who belonged
to middle class families. But finance was never the biggest challenge for us.
Being a tech based startup, we kept the expenses minimal and invested all of
our savings in company registration, legal work and other starter expenses.
The biggest challenge for us was to
find the right people to work with and to squeeze time out of our everyday
schedule. Being a college student, we were mostly occupied with our projects,
assignments and exams. And just like us, our friends were equally preoccupied.
We had to struggle a lot in order to
find motivated individuals who can juggle well between college and the startup.
It took time but we did overcome it one way or the other. We built teams across
colleges and involved more and more people with us. While everyone was
preparing for the placements, we overlooked the pros of it and devoted our time
to Inception Wave.
4. What do you think are the most
important qualities of a successful entrepreneur?
According to me, I believe that the
most important qualities of a successful entrepreneur are patience,
perseverance and consistency. An entrepreneur should be always optimistic but
must be able to think rationally and assess the risks as well.
There are days and weeks where we made
no progress at all, or everything we did resulted in a miserably failed
attempt. But we still stand strong because my team’s never giving up attitude.
“Success is
walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” - Winston
Churchill
5. What are some of the most important
factors for running a successful business?
A successful business starts with a right business idea and a right timing to execute it. With the abundance of ideas available in the market, the idea worth selling is the one which is novel and reduces the pain of any user in one way or the other.
Once you start putting your ideas out
and build them, the next step is to continuously improve it. Your
customers/users should be constantly happy and satisfied with your
products/services. If not, you should do everything in your power to rectify
the errors.
One last important factor that I think
is the leader who guides and mentors the whole team. He/ She should be able to
instil the vision into others as well and be friendly but also be strict and
stern whenever needed.
6. What are your tips for first time
and aspiring entrepreneurs?
Being a fledgling myself, I can firmly
say that any aspiring entrepreneur should always aim at innovating and catering
to the needs of the society rather than expecting for something in return.
There should be a smart business plan to generate revenue at some point of time
but money should never be the first agenda while building something.
Secondly, even after back to back
failures, a person should never give up because failure is a part of any
process. Failure comes first in the process and then the success and all the
recognition. I firmly believe that failures make you humble and everyone should
be able to acknowledge it.
7. How can one overcome a hurdle of
lack of funds when starting up?
While starting up, bootstrapping for the
funds is the best option. One can always reach out to investors but it comes
with a lot of responsibility and accountability. You also lose ownership too
early. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, it's just not ideal for early stage
startups (is what I believe).
An entrepreneur should know how to save
money and invest in the right place. There are many other ways to generate
funds as well i.e. participating in competitions and hackathons. The prize
money comes with no strings no attached, rather it helps entrepreneurs to
connect with similar people.
“If money can fix a
problem, then it really isn't a problem” - Kim Kadarshian
8. Which is your favourite book and why?
I’ve read a couple of books from
different genres, but my personal preference is entrepreneurial books and even
more if it's a biography. The one that I liked the most is the biography of
Elon Musk (Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the
Quest for a Fantastic Future) by Ashlee Vance.
The book traces Elon
Musk's life from his childhood up to the time he spent at Zip2 and PayPal, and
then onto SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity. Reading that one single biography has
been an incredible learning experience for me.
I’ve been following him and his
ventures for a long time now and I am always a little more awestruck when I
read/hear something new about him. The guy lives his life on his own terms and
builds companies for the sake of humanity and development.
Some other amazing reads are Crushing
It!: How Great Entrepreneurs Build Their Business and Influence-and How You
Can, Too by Gary Vaynerchuk, The Lean Startup by Eric Ries, Zero
to One by Peter Thiel, Start With Why by Simon Sinek and Think and Grow
Rich by Napoleon Hill.
All these books have
been sources of immense learning for me and I highly recommend budding
entrepreneurs to go through these.
Kritarth Mittal
Interview By- Anushree Jain
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