Ganesh V. - The Underage CEOs: Fascinating Stories of Young Indians Who Became CEOs in their Twenties

THE UNDERAGE CEOS

Fascinating Stories of Young Indians Who
Became CEOs in Their Twenties

GANESH V.

For
all those who have tried to do something
anything original in their lives
And my family

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Hi there!

Thanks for picking up this book.

You know what, you are reading it because someone asked me a question. Actually, because several someones asked me several questions in several college campuses.

I have an idea. I now want to start-up. How can I do that? Or, I want to be become an entrepreneur. But my parents want me to join Infosys or TCS! What should I do? Or, I want to do something in the app space. Today everybody uses apps, no? So what kind can I develop? And many other questions in the same vein.

As someone who likes mentoring college students, I listen to them carefully and do my best to guide each one of them. But when I started hearing similar questions from more and more students belonging to different colleges, I took a step back and tried to look at the trend objectively. I spoke to a number of students and professors in a few cities. I realized that, fundamentally, two things were happening:

• There is tremendous interest among college students in entrepreneurship. Many, many of them want to become entrepreneurs right now. Not at the age of thirty-five or forty. Many of them dont even wait till they graduate; they get started in their hostel rooms! Some of them jump in, really wanting to address a market need and do some high-quality work. Others are in it because they have heard that the life of an entrepreneur is exciting, heady they get to be their own bosses (better still, other people report to them), do things the way they want to, come to office if and when they want to, and best of all, work in their shorts and pyjamas! If you keep at it for a few years, you will find someone to invest several million dollars in your company (or maybe, even buy you out).
• Even those who have good business ideas (ones that actually identify specific needs in the market and are aimed at solving them) are however confused about what to do next How can I commercialize my idea?, Will my idea actually work?, How can I build a solid venture around it?, Will I find an investor for my company? or How will I get my first few customers?

Which is why I decided to write this book. To dispel myths and misconceptions about entrepreneurship and, at the same time, to give youngsters a good idea about what it takes to set up a venture and then scale it up profitably.

While a few books on entrepreneurship have already been written, this one is specifically about student entrepreneurs ordinary young Indians who are doing something extraordinary. By setting up their own ventures in their twenties, they have become CEOs; something most others take years to achieve, if at all. Which I why I call these youngsters The Underage CEOs. They are pursuing their own vision and making a difference to their chosen domains. Most importantly, in spite of all the challenges and pressures, they are having the time of their lives!

This book is mainly about the journeys of eleven student entrepreneurs chosen from the big cities and small towns of India. Not one of them has studied in an IIT or IIM. All of them have graduated from lesser-known institutions. Yet they have not let this come in the way of their entrepreneurial dreams.

Towards the end of this book, there are a couple of insightful interviews one with a leading investor and another with an entrepreneur who raised funds not long ago. Also in this book are the key points your business plan should address.

I hope this book gives you a flavour of what entrepreneurship is all about. I hope it answers a lot of your asked and unasked questions and helps you realize that entrepreneurship is not just about madness, but also about method.

But more than anything else, I hope this book gets you to shed your inhibitions and fears, and get off the starting blocks immediately. It must make you blow your cheeks and say, Oh, boy! Why the hell am I not doing something like this!?

Happy reading! And happy starting up!

HOW HAVE THE ENTREPRENEURS BEEN CHOSEN FOR THIS BOOK?

As you flip through these pages, you will meet an eclectic bunch of youngsters. They are some of the best young entrepreneurs from across India. While they come from diverse backgrounds and have different personalities, all of them have a few important things in common.

So, heres why they have made it to this book:

• The youngsters featured here did not become entrepreneurs by chance or because someone forced them. On the contrary, they chose to strike out on their own.
• All of them resisted pressure from friends and family to strike out on a different path.
• They have opted to become career entrepreneurs. Which means that they took the plunge right after college with practically no corporate experience.
• All of them are running early-stage ventures. Which means that their experiences are all fairly recent and not something that happened a long time ago. That makes the situations they faced and their decisions relevant to you.
• Each of them has a big vision for his/her company.
• None of them see entrepreneurship as a means to get rich. In fact, their focus is not on amassing personal wealth, but on generating wealth for a larger group (their employees, vendors and other associates).
• Each one of them is setting up an organization. None of these youngsters wants to run a one-man show.
• Each one of them is keen on making an impact in the market/customer segments they are catering to.

A few of the ventures featured here took birth in small towns. This just highlights the fact that in these times, you can set up a venture in any kind of place. There are opportunities everywhere.

While some of these ventures have been founded by men, others have been founded by women. And finally, I have tried to choose a good mix of industries/business domains.

It is wonderful that many youngsters are seeing a profitable business opportunity in the so-called social sectors like education and environment.

WRITING THIS BOOK MY JOURNEY

Writing a book is a journey in itself. A very personal journey of exploration and discovery. In writing about these entrepreneurs, I ended up discovering a lot about myself!

I clearly recall the dark, cold night when I boarded a bus to meet the first entrepreneur I would profile for this book. As I pulled my jacket around myself, sipped a cup of scalding hot tea and watched the rain come down in fat pellets, my mind was on the long journey that lay ahead. I knew it would be tough to write this book while also holding down a full-time job. Still, I was confident that I could manage it.

Scheduling appointments with entrepreneurs living in different cities, meeting them to understand their life stories, reading up on contextual knowledge and then actually writing the book involved a lot of logistical jugglery. There were times of maddening delay when I felt that things were simply not moving ahead.

But the best part of writing this book has been meeting the entrepreneurs and chatting with them and their teams.

Two things kept me going through it all.

One was the belief that these entrepreneurs (and several others like them across India) are doing something remarkable at such a young age. I wanted to chronicle their fascinating stories and present them to a larger audience.