From working for startups to starting a startup
I built my interest in Entrepreneurship soon after joining MereExams — an Edtech startup as a Graphic Design Intern. I was in my first semester of college and I always lured in owning something like them. Being in their initial stage, I got to learn a lot outside my domain as well. I used to keep an eye on the operations, management and even a bit of tech. I am still connected with them and believe that they’ll become a unicorn someday soon.
The second thing, that helped me, I did was to join E-Cell of my College. It helped me enter various Conferences, Startup Expos, Workshops and Competitions which helped me to learn the principles of entrepreneurship in depth. I have written a full post on how my E-Cell helped me, here -https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6497875799998328832 .
My curiosity to experience everything made me join several organizations in the last two years. I started doing internships in every field which tempted me. Those were always with very less stipend or sometimes even unpaid. I worked in fields like Insurances and Banking, Travel, Education, FMCG, Event Management, Cryptocurrencies and a lot of freelancing. This made me a jack of all trades and it was up to me to be the master of any one or more. I even designed and curated pitch-decks for more than a couple of startups and learned about the insights which no startup ever tells you.
Online courses like the Startup India Learning Program helped to understand the legal compliances as well. On the other hand, offline courses like Global Entrepreneurship by Wadhwani Foundation taught me topics like Design Thinking, Market Placement, Idea Validation and the most important one — How to make a business plan. Amity University gave me this opportunity to go for this course by choosing ACED (Amity Center for Entrepreneurship Development) over my Engineering Department (ASET).
I was actively working with the VC office at Amity University in our Annual Entrepreneurship Conference — ICEIL. I was aware of the B-Plan Competition — Lakshya and attended it in 2017. By the time our faculty coordinator approached us to be in the Organising Committee for its 2018 Edition, I decided to give it a shot and participate in the B-Plan Competition.
At the competition, I along with my teammate had to pitch to the Jury which consisted of experts from various fields like — MSME (Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, India), Entrepreneurs, VC Firms, Incubators, Intellectual Property — India and other such to evaluate us. The duration which was supposed to be 20 minutes extended to 40 and the cross-questioning hit us hard. They were all right at their points and helped us to refine our business plan.
“Connecting The Dots Theory” proved to be true for me as well.
We were announced as winners of the Lakshya National Business Plan Competition, 2018 and were awarded Incubation under Amity Innovation Incubator and membership by TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs), Delhi-NCR.
Choosing Engineering for my bachelor’s also proved to be a nice decision because it isn’t only about academics, Engineering made me someone who is well connected with the world which is going through the Tech Revolution. Now, when I look back, It automatically makes me feel how right I was to choose what I wanted though it cost me very minimal attendance and not so high grades. Going for what you desire makes half of the thing easier but I won’t ask you to do the same. Think more about yourself and then decide what you want and what you can do, if you the common answers, then GO FOR IT!
