Ishaan Arora - Success Is A State Of One's Mind, Not Measured By Money, Degrees, or Any Other Countable Variable (Co-Founder Finladder From India)

Balancing social and professional life wasn't very hard honestly. When you start something of your own you pretty much never have any social life in the initial few months/years: p hence it was all about managing professional life initially.

 

1. Tell us about your startup journey?

Started as a 19-year-old, not knowing what it would go like. Coming across various stats like - 9 out of 10 startups fail - it wasn't easy. However 3 years down the line it's all worth it.

I started FinLadder in my 2nd 7year of graduation. I didn't belong to a business family so it's not easy to let go of the placements and not even prepare for your masters. But it was a road I wanted to take, I wanted to build something of my own. FinLadder was started as a YouTube channel posting videos for free. 

In the first month itself, we taught over 100 students from various universities. As we understood the potential in the model and in ourselves we started to monetize it.

There were many difficulties though - from building a team to making the courses the journey was full of ups and downs. At that time I've always believed your mindset is something that sets you apart. 

From celebrating the first student in 2019 to over 10,000+ enrolled students we are proud to say that we are ready to change the idea of people with financial literacy and make people more skillful each day.

 

2. Did you ever face peer pressure? How did you balance your social and professional life?

Yes definitely! It's not easy to see people around you getting good jobs, getting into amazing reputable colleges, etc.

I still remember being in the 3rd year of college and all people could talk was about either placements or masters. That's when not comparing your journey with your peers become important. Having faith in your abilities, giving yourself time, etc plays a vital role. 

Balancing social and professional life wasn't very hard honestly. When you start something of your own you pretty much never have any social life in the initial few months/years, hence it was all about managing professional life initially.

 

3. How do you deal with failure?

By simply accepting it. Giving excuses or cursing won't help. Just accept it, understand why you failed, and keep working towards your goal. Either you succeed or you learn.

4. What challenges did you face and how did you overcome them?

Biggest challenges -

1. Making a good team.

2. Winning the trust of the students (our customers)

3. Competing with the other edtech giants.

How did we succeed?

- Finding ways to retain talent by offering them incentives and high growth.

- Building great credentials proving that skills and intelligence matters over degrees and age.

- Going across various products (courses) and understanding it's pros and cons and building our own product better than that.

- Understanding the market and the audience and being customer friendly by offering discounts, one-to-one interaction, etc.

 

5. What is success according to you?

Success is a state of one's mind, not measured by money, degrees, or any other countable variable. 

Any person reaching a certain stage in their life happy, healthy, and satisfied with it is a successful person as per me. 

Bio -

Ishaan Arora is the co-founder of FinLadder an ed tech organisation. He is also a content creator with a presence on over 5 different social media platforms. He is also a derivatives trader, portfolio manager, and a career counselor.

Instagram

Interviewed By - Shashank Sehgal