Alok Kejriwal’s Entrepreneurial Journey in his own words

Alok Kejriwal: 1999 was a very eerie time. People didn’t know what the internet was, you know, and therefor it was an arbitrary because all entrepreneurs thrive when people don’t know what they’re doing. And that’s the first learning curve, right? That when you start doing things that nobody can understand or appreciate almost be sure they’re going to be onto a strong thing and that was how I started. 

“Could you tell us a little bit about you? Who you are? How it all started?”

AK: So, I’m an original entrepreneur. I’ve been around for fifteen years, a dinosaur of all the dinosaurs that’s still walking and crawling. It started for me way back in ’98 / ’99 called Contest2Win, did a bunch of stuff from there. Sold a couple of companies called Mobile2Win to Disney, one to Novice, and I run Games2Win right now, I’m the CEO and co-founder of a casual “snacky” games business called Games2Win.

“What is a start-up?”

AK: A startup is a aggregation of a person’s time, energy, passion and mind share to try and do something that he or she likes to do to solve a problem. That’s it. If you’ve not failed in class or maybe you scraped through class, start up and fail. But it’s the sweetest failure you’ll ever, ever experience so it comes with the sweetness of failing because it’s not a failing in the academic sense of failing, it’s a failing of trying to figure out how to do that thing better. And, I think the last thing is that starting up is completely abandoning the templatized format of careers. This is what I will be, the most stupid question I’ve heard in my life is “What will you be ten years down the line?” You know, if you ask that question, I think you’re really stupid and these are the kinds of guys who never pick up on dreams.

“What is the first step?” 

AK: Find a problem that you think is really bothersome and, really big “and” in font size 22, and that same problem bothers other people. So, if your girlfriend doesn’t talk to you, is not a business problem. Or, if you don’t like to eat khichdi , that’s not a business problem. But if the canteen mess, or if the college’s canteen is perpetually serving bad food and you have an idea to give good food to everybody who thinks it’s bad food at an affordable price, then you have a startup idea. So, find a problem that matters, affects other people, and can be solvable. I want to go to Mars, I wish there was a problem, that’s a good problem to have, I can’t go to Mars. Yeah, I wish we could, but that’s not a problem right now you can solve.

“Can entrepreneurship be learnt?”

AK: You know, everything can be learned and unlearned, as life is. Can life be learned? Sure. By living it. Same thing with entrepreneurship. You can’t sit in class and learn entrepreneurship. You have to go and do something. And uh, but then you do it. You learn.

“Can anyone be an entrepreneur?”

AK: Absolutely right. You know, when you study – I’ve been trying to explain this to a lot of people – each one of us has our own pattern and own idea of studying. Some people like acronyms, some people remember chapters by the way they look, you know when they used to mock up’ chapters you could make out, just that visual could come into mind, right? That’s all signs of enterprise, you know? So, I think we all have an entrepreneurial gene in us, it’s just that we don’t either say we have it because we don’t know what that is or we don’t explore it beyond any immediate use, but when people start to use that gear and begin to start churning it around, they become entrepreneurs.

“Hardships along the way?”

AK: You know, a few of them which are really hard, you don’t get paid. You can’t pay yourself, so you know. It’s very nice to crib and cry when the boss and you’re in a job and you know shouting and screaming, but who are you going to blame? So blaming yourself is very tough. You know, there are many, many forces that you can’t understand at play when you start up something. Whether in a job or in an academic career, you can say to anybody “I didn’t study…”, “The teacher is very bad person” blah blah, but here, you don’t know why it’s not working. That’s the tough part. And when you don’t know why it’s not working, it’s very frustrating. And the third is that the world has a very nice allergy to start ups. They just don’t get them. So, if you can live with that allergy, then you are gold, but otherwise, when you start up, be sure that, you know, you’ll be like a sore that nobody wants to be around.

“Family v/s. Entrepreneurship”

AK: Most of the guys who are start up entrepreneurs anyway are rebels, by the time you stop listening to your parents and doing what they want you to do, you’ve already started up. So then family even, whether they like quote it in class or school with your girlfriend, boyfriend, it’s the same thing. But, you know, the question is, “Do you drive an eleven year old motorcycle with the same passion you did for the first month?” That is entrepreneurship.

“The highlight of your journey?” 

AK: A few, but I think when Disney said, “We’re going to buyout Mobile2Win” in China, which is a company started by an Indian, German, and Chinese entrepreneur, it was very exotic. In India, when we did the Indian Idol voting franchise and Sony said, “Let’s give it to a startup’ rather than any larger forces or whatever.” That was a great moment. When my, you know, my Parking Frenzy, my mobile game, became the number one game in the world, in the US, of free app and free game, I don’t think I’ve ever felt something like that before because that is quintessentially starting up and proving to the world that Indians can do the world’s best.

“And the worst?”

AK: And why not the worst parts, right? I mean, in the conference room that you’re shooting me in, this was the conference room in which memory doesn’t have to be sweet. Memory can be nasty. This is the conference room in which my co-founder and I, about ten years ago, had said, “Let’s close the whole thing down.” And, you know, we couldn’t afford the lights on, the A/Cs were not on. And I said, “Let’s try for six more months before we give up.” And this is where it all, this was the last motivation, this is the room where the Last Supper was had, you know, and we survived. So, some memories are very nasty, but they’re very pleasant.

“How early should one start?”

AK: Why should there be any experience when starting up or why should there be any age? Dhirubhai (Ambani) started Reliance when he was fifty-two. That’s the answer. Until then, he was doing everything, including he used to work in an oil, petrol station in Aden. So, who told him to start up at fifty-two? Nobody. Just instinct. You know, people do all kinds of stuff at all kinds of ages, right? People climb Everest at 80. That’s starting up!

“Is it a good time for start ups?”

AK: You know, hard times are always better to start. Easier times are the worst to start up because then you have too many options. Not that people don’t have jobs today, but any economic struggle, I mean look at the mess India’s in, right? You can’t drive in the street without bumping your car. That’s a great time to start up. The more the problems, the better the start up success rate.

“If I have an idea, how do I go about it?”

AK: The first thing is bash the idea up in public forums. Don’t preserve the idea like it’s your heirloom that your great granny gave you and someone will rob and sell in the market. Please, share it, talk about it, put it up on all kinds of discussion boards and trash it. Make sure it is really a problem, not an idea. The second thing is that it’s not an idea looking for a solution, or it is, it’s a solution looking for an idea. A lot of people come and say, “I know how to do this now let me find and idea, a problem for that.” That’s a recipe for disaster. And third is, you know, just live through it for a while. Sleep on it, eat it, drink it. Don’t just suddenly start talking about it and doing it.

“Your experience on leaving your job to start your own company…”

AK: It’s painful. I was married, I had two kids. So, I really am a dinosaur, I laid two eggs. And I still walked away. And it was very tough, you know, classical family business backgrounds like laugh at you when you do silly things and it was like my wife was like not to sure whether I was doing the right thing and that’s the pressure when you can’t even go home, but in the job, you know, doing things that have never been done before, very tough. So, essentially, this belief is the pain that you see everywhere.

“What is the most important piece of advice that you’d give to an aspiring entrepreneur?”

AK: You know, really do something because you think it will solve a problem and change someone’s life. Don’t do it because it’s an entrepreneurial idea. Don’t do it because in a party you say, “I’m an entrepreneur.” Suppose someone said that you’re not allow to speak about what you do anywhere you go. Test yourself. Are you doing it for the right reasons? I think that nowadays, a lot of young people do start ups or entrepreneurial ventures for the wrong reasons. Don’t do start ups for getting funding. Don’t do start ups because you want to be your own boss. You know, you can be your own boss, but you’ll shoot yourself in the head one day if you can’t manage it. So, be real. Be natural. Do things that are fun and come naturally to you.

“…Flat.to’s college entrepreneurship programme”

AK: I think Flat.to’s college entrepreneurship programme is awesome. It really puts a framework for want-to-be entrepreneurs in the student community to really understand this rather complex subject which is really very simple and I think by getting experts, opinions, failures, please bring failures to camera because that really matters. They’re the gods of entrepreneurship. Student won’t have to go through that pain. They can see, hear, think, read, and get a flavour of what it is. And, you know, anything that exposes young minds to the challenges of starting up is great entrepreneurship in itself. So this is an entrepreneurship, you know, that initiative in its own right.

“Coolest thing about Entrepreneurship…”

AK: That you can fail and laugh about it.

Know more about the Flat.to College Entrepreneurship Program, visit https://flat.to/entrepreneur