Double Check Your Risk Appetite
Success mantra Perseverance helps me the most. Startups need to believe that something that has never been done before can be done. At NoBroker.com, we help home owners, tenants and buyers save full amount of brokerage and avoid brokers. This is a C2C business and it has never been done on this scale before. The journey has been full of ups and downs but the attitude of believing, adapting, and, above all, endless trying, has helped the most.
The driving force behind your journey We started with my two friends, stumbled many times and kept on building. My co-founders and teammates are a group of highly committed bunch of people. Being able to debate, discuss, experiment and keep moving forward every day is a continuous source of inspiration.
Business advice Listen to your customer. Is it so difficult? I could never understand this till I started on my own. The reality is that expectations of customers keep on changing and as Amazon.com’s Jeff Bezos said once, “Customers are always beautifully, wonderfully dissatisfied.”
Tips for budding entrepreneurs Check your passion. Startup is a difficult journey full of doubts and uncertainties. Double check your risk appetite and your reason for starting up. Try something, learn, course correct, then try.
Government support As a startup founder, we don’t want to increase our paper work through policies, which are meant for manufacturing firms and not tech-startups. Allow us to grow our business from a seed to a baby plant. Once we are there, we will have time and strength to chase myriad government departments and explain to them what is DCF (discounted cash flow) method of valuation!
The team It is a critical ‘get right or die’ element. Right team members follow you, challenge you and obsess about business more than you. It is like having wind of tens of co-founders beneath your wings. After a point, the team quality decides the heights that the venture will reach.
The inspiration I look up to people who are passionate, dedicated, optimistic and competitive with a never-quit attitude. Sports persons fit the bill. I am quite inspired by Maria Sharapova.
The next step NoBroker.com has seen decent success till now with 10 lakh android app downloads, 1.5 lakh new customer additions monthly, 30 lakh customer base and VC funding of Rs 135 crore and operations in five cities. The next milestone is to raise our revenues and start cracking profitability on city levels. In India, consumer Internet firms have struggled with profitability. We want to break this. Enhanced revenue and city-wise profitability are our near term goals.
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