Excerpts from Startup Grind’s July Event with Manish Vij

Are entrepreneurs geniuses? NO, that’s what Manish said. In July, Startup Grind Delhi had its first event where we hosted Manish Vij, Smile Vun Group and talked about his entrepreneurial journey (Chat Recording). Manish, average in studies started his first venture when he was doing his MBA. With ‘kuch to karna hai’ attitude he founded Kabadibazaaar (modern day Quickr, Olx) in 1999. At its peak, Kabadibazaar was one of the top ten sites in the country. He had almost secured his first funding when the dot com burst happened and all the funding dried up. (His first term sheet was a collection of A4 size sheets cello taped together!)

But through Kabadibazaar, Manish had tasted entrepreneurship. He joined Rediff, one of the few survivors from the dot com burst. Being an early starter in its field, Rediff provided immense opportunity to learn. Manish took full advantage of this and led number of teams.

Twenty days for before marriage, Manish quit his job at Rediff. He first started out with a digital advertising agency called Quasar. But Manish’s resignation from Rediff was not in a mad rush, it was a carefully planned move after having secured his first client – Makemytrip. Quasar was a pure services business. In a very short time quasar had grown exponentially and boasted of clientele such as Microsoft, Motorola, Monster, Makemytrip, Visa, LG etc. It gave solid competition to WPP in India and was acquired by WPP (75% stake). Quasar is now jointly owned and operated by WPP and SVG (Smile Vun Group).

Google had two Os, Yahoo had two Os, so did Manish’s next venture – Tyroo. Tyroo initially started out as a service and soon developed into a product. It now works on a part services, part product model. It is one of the largest ad-network in India with over 1200 publishers competing directly with Google’s add display network.

Manish along with his founding partner, Harish Bahl aggregated all their businesses under SVG (Smile Vun Group). Manish reckons media is about dominance and scale and plans to make SVG into the largest media company. It is currently the third largest media company in India.

With all these great products, why incubate new startups? Manish isn’t shy of investing in new startups. He believes that young entrepreneurs can really challenge the market and think ahead of time. He had incubated seventynine, fastest growing digital mobile ad-network and invested in Letsbuy.com.

So is E-commerce here to stay? Yes, Manish believes that fundamentally E-commerce is the way forward and it is going to be big. It’s the way we will all shop! Although Letsbuy.com was sold off to Flipkart, it was done in the interest of the stakeholders and was not a planned move. Manish strongly believes in building businesses that one believes in and not building businesses for investors.

Entrepreneurship is not about money. It’s a lifestyle decision, you have to be a maniac to some extent to be one! Manish believes that there are equally sized monetary opportunities in this world and if one wants to become an entrepreneur she or he should really introspect. But once you know that you want to be an entrepreneur then just jump into it – sooner the better. So start your entrepreneurial journey now!

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What is Startup Grind?

Startup Grind is a global startup community designed to educate, inspire, and connect entrepreneurs. We host monthly events in more than 50 cities and 20 countries featuring successful local founders, innovators, educators and investors who share personal stories and lessons learned on the road to building great companies. Our monthly fireside chat interviews, startup mixers and annual conferences provide ample opportunities to connect with amazing startups and the people behind them, tap into a strong support network, form meaningful connections and gain inspiration for the startup journey ahead. For more information visit StartupGrind.com or follow us on twitter @StartupGrind.