My parents served in government institutions until retirement. That meant their only expectation of me was to have a stable, safe, and secure full-time job. My first job was in a UK-based HR technology company. We were implementing HR systems for Fortune 500 companies in the UK, the US, and Europe. I was part of the implementation team and my job required me to talk to customers, typically HR folks and top management. I learned a bit about software, managing a team, HR processes within companies, and more importantly, implementing software in large companies. 5 years had gone and I realized it was time to move. Not knowing what I was going to do, I quit.
It was early 2012, and venture funds were starting to explore new investment areas in India. Startup events were happening in Bengaluru. I was networking. Networking everywhere that had startup written on it. At startup events, Coffee shops, birthday parties, and investor meetups. I started meeting people in the startup world. I was enjoying this new kind of learning from the startup community. Listening to the experiences of founders and investors about their startup journey.
- 2012 - Quit my corporate job. Built a mobile app for ADP's HR software. Killed after 6 months
- 2013 - Built a skills marketplace that didn't see the market
- 2013/14 - Marketplace for commercial real estate. A housing.com but for offices. A few profitable deals and we shut shop
- 2014 - Joined Startup Leadership Program
- 2014 - BigFday was born. 2 years after quitting my corporate job I had a startup of my own.
We were helping people book event venues. Banquet halls, conference rooms, birthday party halls...etc. A marketplace for event venues. The first 4 years of the company were the toughest. We were barely surviving. Passing each month was hard. Adding new customers, and collecting delayed payments from hotels and venues were getting harder as our growth plateaued.
It was 2018, and we decided to give the business a spin. We got back to the drawing board. What is the real problem and how can we be more valuable to our customers? We realized the actual problem was not booking a venue but planning the event itself. We did the unthinkable. We became event planners and decided to focus only on one event type, birthdays.
Our numbers started to improve and cash flow was getting better. At our peak, we were hosting over 75 birthday parties a month in Chennai. At an average occupancy of 120 people per event and most of it happening in 3-star hotels+, my team and I were busy. Yet, we came to a standstill during the first lockdown of the pandemic in 2020 March. Putting your heart, time, money, and effort into building a startup for 6 years does take a toll, I realized. My loved ones advised me to take up a job since the event industry wasn't going to recover for a couple of years. Also, use this time to improve my financial stability and at the same time, keep up my routine. But I didn't align with it. Something within me had other plans. I decided to quit everything. We shut shop.
For the next 3 years, I shifted my base to Kanyakumari, my hometown, and also traveled across India. Moving from city life after 17 years and being jobless in a remote village only meant I had too much time on my hands. Every day was as simple as walking the beach for sunrise and sunset, hiking a hill nearby, attending meditation and yoga workshops, taking a bath in the pristine waters flowing from the western ghats, and more importantly getting fed by Mom every day is all I could have asked for. I started to eat better, feel better, and live better. It gave me the confidence to do a solo road trip across the length breadth of India covering over 12000kms, starting from Kanyakumari to Kedarnath to Kohima. More about this road trip here.
In May 2021, I was fortunate to land on the idea of helping ex-founders find a job, Founders.careers. The idea came up during my evening walks at a nearby hill and I got two other startup friends to build it along. We were live within the next 48 hours and in the next 48 hours, we had our first paying customer. Started with the intention of helping ex-founders, it eventually became a business. It helped me over the next couple of years to pay the debt from my previous startup and also the expenses of my travel. More importantly, we helped over 40+ ex-founders find a job in fast-scaling startups.
In this journey of life, entrepreneurship has become a way of my life. While it feeds and lets me take care of my everyday needs, it gifted me a life skill. Skill to create value for myself, and for everyone around me. I realized being an entrepreneur is a superpower. You make a better life for everyone and everything around you. But I have my conditions. Like any superhero would 😉More about my next startup and conditions here 🦸.