HOW I LOST MY 20s TO COMPULSIVE ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Reading time: Nearly 2 hours

(close to 3,200 words)
Meant for:
- Budding entrepreneurs
- All people in their 20s/early 30s
- Fresh graduates

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Contents
FOREWORD ............................................................................................................... 4

WHERE IT ALL STARTED .........................................................................................5

THE LOST OPPORTUNITIES .................................................................................. 6

A SLEW OF COMPULSIVE VENTURES ..................................................................7

E-DUKAAN.................................................................................................................................7

BOOKGENIE ..............................................................................................................................8

COGENT SOLUTIONS ..........................................................................................................8

COVEMAN .................................................................................................................................9

BITEQUEST .............................................................................................................................10

EDUTRING.................................................................................................................................11

GRH CHAIRS ........................................................................................................................... 12

SPAHUNT ................................................................................................................................. 12

BEVERAGEWALA ................................................................................................................. 13

PAINTADS ................................................................................................................................ 14

WHY DID I FAIL ........................................................................................................ 16

AT 32, WHAT NEXT ................................................................................................. 17

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FOREWORD

C
ompulsive Entrepreneurship is a term which refers to an
addictive behavior when a person decides to startup without
giving it adequate thought. The decision to startup precedes
the identification of an opportunity by the entrepreneur. The
need to startup is so intense that a person keeps looking for gaps in
different markets and more often than not may end up pin-pointing a
gap which may actually not exist. However the urge makes the
person jump at the opportunity.
I have been guilty of the above on several occasions, for a prolonged
period of time. This booklet deals with my experiences, the
compulsive startups I did and how I ended up wasting time and
money on them. In this book, I look back at all these ventures which I
did in my 20s and I reflect on the single mistake I made in all of them,
starting up eagerly without thinking it through. I am not a writer,
nevertheless I really want to share the experiences I have had so that
young people looking to launch their careers should not make the
same mistakes I did.

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WHERE IT ALL STARTED

I was born into a Marwari family, which is traditionally a business
community in India. My grandfather as well as my father were always
involved in running their own ventures. Besides, my grandfather was
a classic rags-to-riches story who went from being educated in a
village to being honored with the Padma Shri, one of the highest
honors a civilian can get in India, by the Government of India for his
contribution to Industry. He was a true visionary and had a major
impact on my way of thinking when I was growing up.
All the above factors created a desire within me to start a business
from a very early age. I have always craved to build a company, and
a sizable one at that (for me, size meant to be present in multiple
countries and employing more than 5,000 people ).
My grandfather passed away in 2005 and my father started running
the family business, which is in the education sector. I was completing
my under-graduate degree from the University of Delhi then. The
family business was in a healthy condition and this meant that the
monthly expenses of our family were well covered.
Having the urge to start my own business coupled with the fact that
my basic expenses were covered meant that I could experiment
freely. This, in my view, is what made me drift towards “Compulsive
Entrepreneurship” and got me addicted to it. I started my first venture
right out of University and it took me nearly a decade to realize the
mistake I was making.
I write this book to share my experiences of rushing into ventures
without thinking them through and the learnings I take back from
them.

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THE LOST OPPORTUNITIES

I have had several opportunities to be “stable” in life. I define “stability”
as a situation where I can easily earn a living for myself and my
immediate family. My addiction to starting up ensured that I do not
take up any such opportunities I had earned.
I passed out from the University of Delhi finishing my B.Sc in Physics
in 2005. My close friends got placed in IT companies like Wipro.
Although the profile offered at the time was entry-level, they are all
doing very well today and are stable as I define above. I decided to
not take up a job and decided to start my first venture then.
Thereafter, I completed my MBA from Management Development
Institute (MDI), Gurgaon in 2007. This is one of the most prestigious
management colleges in India. Every student was able to get a very
promising job after graduating, with a very handsome salary and a
great start to a career, especially for freshers like myself. Being bitten
by the entrepreneurship bug, I decided to drop out of placements
even before knowing what I will be doing after college.
In 2007, I also managed to get admission in the M.S in Finance
program at the prestigious University of Oxford. Graduating in 2008,
this probably was the biggest opportunity which I missed out on.
During the course itself, I had started a venture and right after
graduating, I moved back to India to pursue the venture. This decision
had the highest opportunity cost, which I now understand better
seeing my batch-mates well-settled today. At that time, taking up a
job just did not seem like an option to me.

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A SLEW OF COMPULSIVE VENTURES

From an early age, my mind has been wired towards finding
opportunities to startup. I feel this inclination may have led to me
believing in opportunities which may have actually not existed. One
common link in all my ventures is the fact I was always very eager to
pursue an idea without thinking about all aspects which may come
up during the life-cycle of the business.

E-dukaan:
This was my first venture in 2005, where I started up with a friend of
mine. We felt that internet penetration and usage will really catch up
in India and people would want to purchase online as it was
convenient. We wanted to create an online shop for all kinds of
products (like an Amazon ). We were just the two of us and started
approaching vendors in Delhi. After 4 months of running around,
though we did manage to tie-up with a few shops that were willing
to sell through us, we realized that the business required sizeable
investment in manpower and advertisement money. This made us
eventually give up the venture.

Why it failed: This was a classic case of compulsive entrepreneurship. I

saw an opportunity, which I felt would develop over time. I decided to
pursue the opportunity and roped in a close friend of mine. This meant
that our team had no experience or skills required to build such a
business. Also we had not worked out an implementation plan, and hence
realized in due course that the business required more resources than
what we could provide it with.

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Bookgenie:
I started this venture with my room-mate at MDI in 2006. I was an
online freak while my room-mate was into reading. We decided to
create an online book library, starting with Gurgaon. Learning from
the previous experience, the first thing I did was creating a business
plan for the idea. We pitched the idea to the college incubator and
also to other incubators in Delhi/NCR. Since the idea required an
initial investment in books, an ecommerce platform and logistics and
we could not raise the funding required, we ended giving it up. The
venture succumbed to becoming a project report.

Why it failed: The implementation plan was the weak link again. We
wanted to start the venture with a comprehensive product (large
collection of books, in-house delivery system). This required a sizeable
investment and once we could not raise the same, we decided to give it
up. We could have bootstrapped the business and delayed the
fundraising if we had planned it better. However we decided to close
down the venture as fast as we had decided to start it.

Cogent Solutions:
In my second year at MDI in 2007, I started a small consulting firm
with 2 of my batch-mates (my room-mate included). We saw an
opportunity to provide strategy & marketing consulting to local
businesses. We formed a business entity and started approaching
local shops in Gurgaon which we felt were not doing well. After 3-4
months of approaching different potential customers, we realized
that businesses are not willing to pay us for our consulting. Hence we
decided to close the business.

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Why it failed: We realized that customers are not willing to pay for
consulting to a firm with founders having no background in
management/consulting. This was a classic case of compulsive
entrepreneurship where we saw a perceived opportunity, launched the
venture without having an implementation plan in mind. There was a
clear gap in the research we had done in creating the value proposition
for our startup.

Coveman:
After having opted out of placements in MDI, I saw a lot of my batch-
mates struggling with their CVs formats on placement day. To help
them, I wanted to create an online CV creation tool where users could
choose from multiple templates and create/store resumes on the
platform. I started Coveman right after graduating. Though the
website generated early traction (nearly 600 resumes were created
in the first 4 months), the web platform constantly had bugs and user
engagement was a big concern. Also we launched a premium plan
(offering attractive CVs and higher storage space) and found that
users were not using the paid service. After 7-8 months of starting up,
I decided to close down the venture.

Why it failed: Although the opportunity identified was not very clear, the
potential of such a venture pivoting into a bigger business was there.
However the lack of a bigger vision, technology skills to execute and a
clear revenue model led to the demise of the venture.

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Bitequest:
During my Masters in the UK in 2008, I came across a restaurant
discovery platform which was very popular there. I felt that a need for
such a platform exists in India and hence started Bitequest. Bitequest
was meant to be an online restaurant discovery engine for
restaurants in India. Not being a very social person, I decided to rope
in some close friends of mine who were active in the social scene in
Delhi. Soon we were a team of 4 co-founders .
Our initial vision was to create an online platform for restaurants.
However since the internet was in a nascent stage at the time and
generating traction and revenue online was difficult, we slowly
pivoted the business to an offline model by setting up a call center.
Though this pivot was successful in generating cash inflows, scaling
the business became much harder. Soon our entire focus shifted
towards the offline model and the vision of creating a scalable
restaurant discovery platform changed into a local call-center based
restaurant booking engine. I found this model not scalable and since
the other co-founders were adamant in continuing with the offline
model, I decided to quit the company.

Why it failed: This was probably the biggest miss for me as the online
hospitality space was very nascent at that time and did eventually see
immense growth with startups like Zomato. We had established a first
mover advantage and developed a good brand amongst Delhi/NCR
restaurants. However, alignment in the vision and the way of working
between the co-founders is key in building a business. This lack of
alignment in the early stages of the venture led me to quit what could
have been the biggest success of my career.

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Edutring:
After quitting Bitequest in 2011, I felt that the internet had a strong
value proposition – wide distribution of information. The online
discovery model had a lot of potential and could disrupt other
industries as well. Being involved in the admissions/marketing
department of my father’s education venture, I felt the model could
be replicated for the education industry and this led to the birth of
Edutring in 2011. Edutring was a discovery platform for schools in
Delhi/NCR. Like in Bitequest, I tied up with schools and would take a
commission on every confirmed admission in school. The business
got good traction but what we realized that schools are not willing to
pay for the admissions we provided them with, claiming that the
admissions are attributable to other sources and not Edutring. It
became very difficult for us to prove that the admission happened as
a result of Edutring’s leads and soon I was wholly involved in running
behind schools claiming money for admissions we gave them. In
2013, I finally gave this business up.

Why it failed: This was a good idea operating in a big market. The flaw
here was the business model. The brokerage model, i.e. giving value to
customers before claiming a part of the same, especially in the schooling
sector in India, is a tough bet. I realized eventually that this model works
if you are looking to create a small/local business and not the kind of
scalable business I was looking to create. Besides the skills required to
create a tech platform was always a challenge for me.

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GRH Chairs:
In 2011, when I was starting up Edutring, I had realized that Edutring
will take some time to give back money due to the long admission
cycle in schools. To generate money, I felt I should start a business
parallelly which could generate cash and also be potentially scalable
in the future. Office furniture at the time had no established brand and
I started this venture where I wanted to create a brand for office
seating. I would source products from local vendors and supplied to
corporates. Though I was able to supply to 300+ corporates over a
period of 3 years, I realized that the business scaling was not healthy
with a low customer retention rate due to quality issues in sourcing.
Also we experienced a lot of customers defaulting on their payments.
In 2015, I felt that the business had eventually become a local
business which was generating some money and hence decided to
pass it on to my co-worker who was assisting me.

Why it failed: The business was lacking a robust and scalable business
model. It was meant to be a side business and that could clearly be seen
in the approach from the very start.

Spahunt:
After closing Edutring, I was still a big believer in the online discovery
platform model. Spending on wellness was increasing and I started
Spahunt along with a friend in 2013, who was also interested in this
segment. Spahunt was an online discovery platform for spas. Within
a time span of 6 months, we had over 600 spas signed up in
Delhi/NCR and started generating user traction.

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However, we soon realized that several spas were operating solely

on illegal activities happening in them and that this space was not a
healthy space to operate in for the long term. The market was also
not a large one and we finally closed down the venture.

Why it failed: Spahunt was a compulsive startup which required more

research upfront. We should have sized the market and done a better job
of researching it before starting up. This was particularly important as we
did not have previous experience in this domain.

Beveragewala:
The e-retail market in India was really heating up in 2013-14. I saw
great value in this model and was looking for opportunities of
creating a business in this space.
Being a tea lover, I always used to search for different types of tea to
try out. The local grocery markets always gave me the same options
with the same 4-5 brands and little variety being offered. I felt that
there might be a strong need for customers like me for an
eCommerce store which would provide a wide variety of exotic teas
and coffees for connoisseurs and enthusiasts. Beveragewala was
started in 2014 by me. This time, I roped in a friend of mine who was
an experienced web architect and became the tech co-founder of
the venture. With a limited budget, we were able to scale the
business and had over 30,000 customers in a period of 15 months.

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With the increasing number of orders, the cash burn required to keep
the business going had increased substantially. Since the business
was largely self-funded, generating money for the business became
key to keep operating. More importantly, we also started realizing
that our growth was largely due to the big market we were operating
in and that we are not being able to create a value proposition which
would be sustainable in the longer term. We were basically a
sourcing and logistics company and felt it will be very difficult to
compete with the big horizontal marketplaces once they enter this
space. Due to both the reasons above, in August 2015, we finally
closed down the startup.

Why it failed: Beveragewala was operating in a growing market and the

startup was able to gain good initial traction. However looking back, we
clearly realized that the business lacked a clear vision and value
proposition from the beginning itself. This fact would ensure that growth
we experienced would be short-lived and would not sustain in the longer
term.

Paintads:
This was my last venture before I realized the big mistake I was
committing over the last 7-8 years. Paintads was an online discovery
platform for local advertising options and was started in December
2015. Reading about advertising and looking at the popular
advertising media, I realized that a lot was being written about the
return on advertising spends and how advertisers were criticizing
mass advertising options like television and radio.

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I believed that the key lies in the channel selected and wanted to
create a comprehensive and relevant directory of local advertising
options for local businesses like schools, salons, gyms etc. I
continued working with my tech co-founder from Beveragewala.
We started with Gurgaon and started covering local ad spaces (like
gyms, salons, paan shops, building societies etc.). Within 6 months,
we collected a database of around 3,000 spaces. We had very limited
resources and we realized then that this business was demanding a
lot of time and effort to create a comprehensive database which can
deliver value for advertisers. We decided to pitch to angel investors
to raise seed money, but the general feedback we got was that the
startup was very early stage to be able to do so. The startup was not
generating cash and did not have potential to do so in the near future
owing to the business model. Eventually we decided to stop the
venture as we ran out of money and patience.

Why it failed: Though we created a comprehensive business plan for this

startup, the implementation plan was not worked out well. We jumped
into the business without working out the resources which would be
required to execute a pilot and reach a stage where the business could
fly.

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WHY DID I FAIL

The problem with a compulsive entrepreneur is that the way he/she
is eager to start up, the same eagerness can be seen in closing down
the venture as well. This is exactly what happened with me. Though
the ventures started by me were in very different spaces and
sometimes with very different business models, the common
mistake I made was jumping into them without researching well and
thinking them through upfront. Though I was learning from previous
mistakes, I kept jumping into ventures without assessing and
planning the different aspects involved in running the business. I felt
that the learnings I got came in too late and at a stage where
implementing them in the venture became very difficult.

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AT 32, WHAT NEXT

After Paintads, I looked back and realized the mistake I had been
committing all this time. Being married for over 5 years and looking
to start a family, I realized again that I need to be “stable” in my career
and that this compulsiveness must end.
Soon I started applying for jobs. Since I did not have any function
specialization, I started applying for marketing/operations jobs in
eCommerce and tech companies. I realized soon enough that my CV
was not getting shortlisted (very few companies hire generalists). I
applied to over 100 companies and understood that
entrepreneurship experience is great to have but will not land you a
job!
So finally, I decided to do another Masters degree so that I become
eligible for a job based on the same. In September 2016, I went to
Tilburg University in the Netherlands for my second MBA.

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