Business
Small-town entrepreneurial dreams have just got bigger
By
By Gajal Gupta New Delhi, April 14
There are stories of
people hailing from the country's hinterland who made it big in cities
and even abroad. With changing times, these dreams have got even bigger
with a handful of new-age entrepreneurs proving that inspiration,
passion and hard work can translate into great success stories.
Take,
for instance, Smartprix.com, which was co-founded in 2011 by
20-year-old Abhinav Chaudhary from the dusty Uchain town in Rajasthan's
Bharatpur district. Today, it is considered one of the best online
websites for comparison shopping.
"Starting with a few users, we
are now dealing with over six million users a month. When they tell us
that we are the best online site in India for comparison shopping, we
feel proud of the fact that it was sheer hard work which brought us the
accolades," Chaudhary told IANS.
Or, take the case of PepperTap.com co-founder Navneet Singh, who hails from Bijnor in Uttar Pradesh.
"I
always wanted to be an entrepreneur but the comfort zone of being in a
secure job and social commitments stopped me from taking the plunge. I
mulled over the decision for seven years before I started out on my
own," Navneet Singh told IANS.
Residents of the Gurgaon IT hub on
the national capital's outskirts can order groceries, fruit, vegetables
and other items from PepperTap.com via an app.
Then, there is
Diwakar Chittora who, though he is from Jaipur faced immense
infrastructure issues, in spite of being in the Rajasthan capital, in
launching Intellipaat an e-learning website that trains candidates to
excel in IT-based programmes.
"Launching Intellipaat is aimed at
training people to acquire skill sets that match the requirements of the
growing IT industry," Chittora told IANS.
As with Rome, their dreams were also not built in a day.
Starting off their own businesses was not easy, particularly because of no financial back-up and lack of initial infrastructure.
"There
are several start-ups that fail horribly. So you have got to be
prepared to do a lot of hard work. Prepare a detailed plan, chart out
your revenue model and work on it honestly to become successful,"
Chaudhary advised when asked about the risks involved in starting your
own firm.
Before launching Smartprix, in which online giant
Snapdeal has a stake, Chaudhary first took his family and relatives into
confidence.
But they never lost hope. They took inspiration from other's success stories and remained fixed on their path to success.
"I
read about how companies like Flipkart and SnapDeal became leading
Indian online e-retailers. The idea that anyone with undivided
dedication and determination can be successful motivated me the most,"
Navneet Singh emphasised.
"The execution of an idea with grit and determination is the key to success," he added.
"The
major hurdles that I had to face were infrastructure and resources. It
sometimes becomes difficult to find high speed dedicated lines in some
areas and in areas where it was available, I had to wait for one-to-two
months for the connection to activate," Chittora said.
"For an
e-learning business, infrastructure is very important. This includes a
high bandwidth network and dedicated servers. Putting this in place was
nothing less than a series of hurdles.
"Then, getting skilled manpower was tough," Chittora added.
The
long but fruitful journey that these people undertook is now paying
great dividends. For all of them, small-town dreams have only got bigger
and better.
(Gajal Gupta can be contacted at [email protected])