Chirag Gupta - It’s Important to Find and Hire the Right Person for a Job That You Do Not Have the Expertise (Forbes Under 30, CEO & Co - Founder, Deyor Adventures Pvt. Limited, India)

Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia, 2019

1. Tell us more about your company and your journey.

I started working (hustling) at the age of 19. I live in Gurgaon and it is relatively easy to make money in the real estate space. Whenever I got time off college, I would try my hands at felicitating deals where I could make commissions. This made me more than any kid that age should have access to.

Moving forward, I decided to try my hands on pursuing further education. I successfully got into a top MBA college and quit 3 weeks thereafter as the entrepreneur in me wanted to get back to hustling.

Luckily, soon thereafter, I was presented with an opportunity to join Redcliffe Capital where my role was to source deals, analyse them and see the investments through if the fund saw the opportunity and potential. This also gave me an opportunity to work with the founders we invested in across multiple industries as we were a sector-agnostic fund.

Over 22 investments were made while I was with them and I'm proud of the returns we're seeing today. I also got the opportunity to be an EIR with a couple of startups and their failure taught me more than I could learn in an MBA.

Having learnt a lot about the startup space, I decided to finally take the plunge and begin my (official) entrepreneurial journey. This gave birth to our venture which we today call Deyor. This journey of being an entrepreneur in the travel space has been a roller coaster.

We've seen pivots, failures, tremendous success and even a pandemic. We've weathered each and every storm and will continue to do so together as a team and family at Deyor.

2. How did you come up with this idea and go about executing it?

Initially while starting out in 2016, the idea was very different as compared to what we do today. I am a firm believer in pivoting when needed and we've been able to successfully do so multiple times here at Deyor. Essentially, what we are now is an 'Online Travel Booking Platform'.

We understand that travel planning can be extremely time consuming and frustrating for people. They need a personalised touch and a one-stop-shop where they can have all their travel needs taken care of.

As a passionate traveller myself with a team of passionate travellers, we feel we are in a pole position to understand our customer's needs while also largely understanding our various customer archetypes.

It was in January 2018, when we finally when we found the right working model going for us at Deyor. We've been able to scale in a smart, steady manner understanding each customer and building for them accordingly. We started off by just launching Leh Ladakh. From there we launched multiple destinations within India and then over 10 countries across South East Asia and the Middle East.

3. What has been your biggest challenge that you faced and how did you overcome that?

Coming from a space where I had been in the industry for a while before taking my entrepreneurial plunge, there was a lot of mistakes that I had seen founders make and I was very careful while going about my own venture. I was very particular about the growth curve that we were looking to achieve at Deyor and ensured that we tick all the boxes as we go about it.

Having said that, challenges are an entrepreneur's unavoidable friend along their journey and we must find ways to manoeuvre around them. For us, we've had to pivot our business model multiple times along our journey. It's not easy to go all out on a business model and not see it give the results you strongly anticipated.

We've had a team that has believed in us, our investors and mentors who have backed us and picked us up every time we've fallen, my co-founders and core team that has stuck by us through thick and thin.

Even today, when we have been struck by a pandemic, our team and stakeholders have stuck together and we're dynamically adapting to the needs of our customers and community to launch new experiences that are the need of the hour.

These relationships are priceless and they are core to the success of any venture.

4. What do you think are the most important qualities of a successful entrepreneur?

Communication and delegation. Very often, I've seen the, 'I can do it all' founders and that drives them extremely down the cliff as they lack focus. It's important to find and hire the right person for a job that you do not have the expertise.

I also believe that the ability to communicate with your team, investors, partners and vendors is absolutely critical to the growth of any venture as well as the entrepreneur.

Not every day is going to be a dream come true day. We all have our ups and downs and communicating successfully at that time can bring you answers to problems and even better create trust amongst all stakeholders.

5. What are some of the most important factors for running a successful business?

Hiring the right team. Look for smart workers and not hard workers. You need people who can get the job done in the most efficient manner. Pay that extra salary to the right person and he/she will drive the results without your deep involvement.

As a founder you must be passionate about the venture you are building, you must not be afraid of making mistakes and taking risks as long as you are learning from these experiences. Take things one step at a time, validate your offering, ensure you have the right product-market fit and then scale the venture.

Constantly monitor your NPS at employee, partner, customer levels and keep working on and improving them along the way.

Last but not the least, build a sustainable venture. When/if a rainy day comes and you have nobody to back you and invest in you, your business should be able to sustain itself at the least.

6. What are your tips for first time and aspiring entrepreneurs?

Identify the problem you're going to solve. Ask yourself why you are solving it. Figure out a plan as to how you're going to solve it and ask yourself why are you the best person to solve it.

After you have all this figured out, invest in yourself. There are plenty of online courses nowadays at extremely affordable prices, find the right one pertaining to the industry you are getting into and learn from them.

Do not miss out on events/webinars pertaining to your industry, look up to the successful founders who have achieved and built something successful in this domain and learn from them.

Also, pen everything down. A pen and paper is your best friend. Whether you have tasks, action points, goals etc. Pen everything down!

7. How can one overcome a hurdle of lack of funds when starting up?

I've come across founders who are impatient and want to build a 100 member team overnight. This is not how your startup even if you have all the funding available. One must start small, scale the business until the requirement arises for each additional team member and grow accordingly.

If you successfully build the foundation for a sustainable and profitable business, scaling up will never be a challenge and you will attract the attention of larger funds instead of you having to aggressively reach out to them.