Meet Kashish, a doer.

What is your story, Kashish? What got you here?

I was a stubborn kid with can-do attitude. And I thought there’s a place and audience for every artist and you just have to find what you love and then monetize it. That simple! I wanted to be a Pilot back then, but I didn’t want it bad enough. I didn’t know what else to be. I wasn’t the brightest kid in my class, my scores were not consistent, and sometimes I will do too well other times I will flunk. No one knew what was going on.

Later after high school, I chose commerce because I knew I wasn’t Engineering material, I graduated business management because my father owns a clothing store and I thought could use my education to help him scale his business. But that’s not what happened.

During my final year, my brother was working for a small start-up IT company in Pune as a business development executive, that’s how he kick started his career.  He once asked me to handle a petty data-entry project for his company and I did it. It was my final year of college and I would spend most of my time watching movies. Doing any work for my brother made me feel worthwhile. A few projects later, I did not wanted to do anything else. It was challenging but easy work. It didn’t take me very long to understand the whole business model behind their company. It was a small company so they outsourced small and time consuming jobs. My brother was responsible for handling such projects for the company and he let me do these jobs because he wanted me to do something that will get me interested in jobs. And it was a good pocket money. Working with my Dad meant doing things his way. With these small jobs, I could work late at nights and spend the day watching movies.

How did the nature of work evolve?

When the projects stopped coming in, I got relentless and I signed up on freelance portals to find some work. (I needed work. Doing these small projects really made me feel good about myself. I received decent pocket money so money wasn’t a factor) Thus, I started off with business in writing. Well I had to choose one between Programming, Writing and Admin work. Writing was relatively easier so I chose writing. After a few jobs, I realized most of my writing goes on SMB website as blogs. I made a few hundred dollars doing this and I saved all of it. The competition grew each day and scoring a writing job was getting difficult. After a brief consultation with my brother, I chose to put all what I earned back into the business and create a website.  My brother helped me set up a small website called writingline.com (still active) where you can outsource your blogs to us and we’ll update your website daily, weekly or monthly. I wasn’t sure if it’s going to work and it never made sense to anyone who I shared this idea with. It was a funny decision really but I knew the job hunt over freelance website has to stop someday. After I managed to set up a convincing landing page, I simply reached out to a lot of businesses over emails to see if they’ll be interested.

Look good, sound professional,
and be local was the idea for my website.

It was subscribe-only payment module via PayPal and you could order a blog sample for $10 paid in advance. No refund if you don’t like it.  We did made a few exceptions for some businesses but it worked well. I automated the website since Day One.  I compared my website with that of an established business. I changed everything everyday on it. After a little satisfaction, I put rest of the money on PPC (pay per click). Visitors come in, they choose the plan, they pay and I get back to them within 12 hours. I had an unhealthy bounce rate and, as a result, the conversion rate was terrible. I was losing money on PPC. Email marketing worked well and I could get some to buy the plans from website. After a little marketing, it was a decent $1000-2000 each month on subscriber mode in 2 months from the website. I’d ask anyone with good writing skills to write for me (even you Sushrut, remember doing an article?) Clients did not like the grammatical mistakes and I could never really get good writers to work for me. I charged $10 for a blog and I paid very little forward.

Gradually I lost all the business in next 3 months.
It was good; I like what happened.

Because I was left with a few clients, a good experience and a failed attempt. I tried something and it worked, I wasn’t smart enough to handle it.  It was a big deal for me to earn some money, decent good money at that time. My brother earned 40k a month and I did 85k rough with this idea. I was happy, so was my brother.

Did you move to another city for service improvements?
Was there a turnaround?

I wanted to take this more seriously so I went to Pune, where my brother worked. I needed to find really good writers to keep this thing going for me and help revive the site. Meanwhile my brother left the company and started freelancing. We lived together, he used to guide me and I used to work hard to make it happen.  We both were excited to see this whole thing work, he started markup services and I did writing.

But the whole revival plan didn’t last very long for me and down the line; I lost most of my clients since the write-ups weren’t good compared to native writers. I was losing the whole thing, I knew it but I didn’t wanted to do anything about it anymore. I earned some good money in this and I wanted to start over. Once I tried getting native people to write for me but I couldn’t scale very much with them either.  The few clients I had, who were okay with what we could offer soon left.

I believe good customer service can change the business.

I was always readily and happily available for my clients. I was available 16 hours a day; I made sure I was there most of the time. I repeatedly asked my clients if there’s anything I could do for them.  I did their small jobs, which later became big ones. I had this give-me-whatever-you-can business where the work was simply outsourced to the right kind of people. If I could do it myself, I’d save some money and do it. Soon I hired 3 guys and the work was good.

How was the transition and business growth from here?

After some trial and error, I was maintaining social accounts of a few businesses, handling server and website maintenance for some and consulted some websites on user-engagement. Down the year, I grew my business from $12000 a year to $30000 a year.  This is not combined, my brother had some of his employees and I had mine. He was way ahead of me, earning more than what I did.

We later moved to Aurangabad, since we (me and my brother) wanted to live with our family.  We had trouble hiring people here, we lost big business in transition, later we built things on our own. My brother works with WordPress and is a big time Domain Investor. He flipped tempt.com and some notable 3 letter dot-coms while making decently good money on them.  Though I work on WordPress, I mainly offer social media automation and work assistance.

Today, we manage more than 290 social accounts along with their advertising campaign with a total monthly spend over $5x,xxx, we maintain websites with daily hits of more than 50,000 visitors and we have developed more than 700 websites in WordPress in last 3 years. We’ve also acquired some 3 letter dot coms as investments and we continue to add more in our portfolio.

The growing-out-of-office phase? 🙂

My brother is my mentor, without him I couldn’t do what I did.  It all seems like a stroke of luck. Despite the challenges we face here in Aurangabad, we have nearly doubled our sales from last 1 year, a 100% growth rate. Last month, we started another office here in Aurangabad itself. I think it was much needed since we were using the first office to its limit. It’s a 2BHK apartment, and I use to work from kitchen, later I shared space with my brother. New staff came in, we had to ask older ones to move to Kitchen, It was embarrassing but my brother is a good convincing skills. We had trouble finding good employees but the economy is so bad in the small city; that people will want to work with us here, even after asking them to sit in a kitchen.

After my brother suggested adjusting one person in the bathroom,
I knew we needed an office.

So we now we rented a 1000sqft commercial space with a seating capacity of over 25. We are hiring again, we are a team of 15 now. We should be a team of 25 this January and next November, we will be 50. I know we will be, because we got something cooking fresh and it looks great as of now. We don’t have a website yet, I am working on it now. But we have new business channels, partners who work for us offshore and a big team who now works relentlessly for our success. I have little problem setting them up, but I am sure I will get over it soon.

You were earning good money. Did you consider investments & purchases?

Right when we shifted to Aurangabad, we were in touch over funding issues. I was very much interested in what you (you = Sushrut) do. Since you seemed like a man with a map. It felt assuring to put money in your business than to try something of my own. But the whole transition from Pune to Aurangabad was tiring and our business took hits. Hence, I didn’t really put many thoughts to any investments back then.

When I was doing well, I took time off buying things I always wanted to buy, a sports bike. I always wanted one, since a kid. I bought a Honda CBR600RR as starters, later a Suzuki Hayabusa!

Is riding a good vehicle similar to running a good business? Lessons you learnt?

I crashed my Hayabusa into a truck at 120kmph. Had a third degree rupture on left calf and others were minor injuries. Bike was good as dead. But I learned a lot from that incident. Just like writingline.com, I touched to 220kmph on this bike over roads, which weren’t really suitable for it. I was shivering yet I had kept going. I crashed the same day, reminds me much of my first business. Although to over come my fear of riding, I got a Harley, sold within 1 week and a GSXR1000, sold within 3 months. I am not afraid now but that crashed bike taught me the best lessons in life.

In all these years, I never took my business for granted or for the sake of it. I wanted it, is why I made all this happen. There were times when I wanted to give up and take the easy way (my dad’s business). It was hard, there were times when there was no success at all, and there were roadblocks.

There were nights when I couldn’t sleep.
Times when I had no idea what I am doing with my life.

My friends were the one who were studying in MBA colleges, having time of their life in clubs.  My parents doubted me, and sometimes I did too. I didn’t know what will work and how long I can do this.

Do share your college experiences, hobbies and what keeps you occupied other than work.

I graduated from Swami Vivekanda College. My teachers hated me as a student, I always asked them questions and I knew the curriculum was out of practice. We were being taught of Microsoft 98 when we had Win7 ourselves. I use to fix computers in IT class while we were taught DOS Commands. I was expelled from classes a lot because I use to ask questions that were out of the textbooks.

My college HOD barred me from placement and told me I won’t do anything in life.

2 years later, I was invited to have lunch with him right after I hired 6 guys from their placement drive. During lunch, HOD asked me what college I graduated from, I didn’t answer his question. 3 of 6 are still working with us.

I like computer games; I play Battlefield in my free-time or during weekends. I also enjoy biking and reading about aviation. I practically played all Airplane simulation games ever existed, if you leave me with a Bell helicopter, I can literally turn it on. I wanted to be a pilot since I was a kid. Real bad. Rest of the time, I play with my awesome little dog. My day doesn’t start if I don’t see him and I almost made it a habit to come home by 6 (and go back by 7) just to take him for an evening walk.

What is it that you do? To whom and how is it relevant?

We connect daily with 1000 customers of different brands and businesses (our client’s customers). We manage social media, website maintenance and mark-up services to businesses in US and Europe. We also run paid marketing campaigns for some of these social accounts with monthly spend of more than  $5x,xxx. They trust us with their money and we never fail to deliver results.  Since last1 year, we have an amazing client retention rate and our repeated business rate is more than 70%.  We’re kind of a mixed business agency; we’re still sorting this out.  We work with amazing freelancers to make all of this happen, everyday.

Key hurdles you tackled? Current challenges?

Deciding to quit freelancing portals and get a web presence was a difficult challenge, but I had nothing to lose. That one risk introduced me to decent good possibilities, I knew I needed to run and I did.  I was not sure at all; it was funny how I actually did it.

If I look back now,
I doubt I’ll be willing to risk what I have to get what I want.

December of 2011 and January of 2012 (during transition to Aurangabad), I made close to nothing. Writing didn’t work for me anymore and asking clients for work who no longer wanted to work with me was a challenge. Consistent availability, good customer support led them to give me a chance with small jobs and hence to new opportunities and then things kicked off.

When we impressed one agency from Europe, they asked us if we could handle 4x the work we were currently handling. Prep time? 3 days. I agreed. I needed 3x staff, 3x computers and good system in place. Pulled it off, we started 4^th day.

As we grow, my job has changed from managing sales and business development to administration and management. It’s very hard to keep up with new employees, explain them the job and get the most out of their time. So I spend more time interacting with my employees than clients. It’s hard to find good managers here, but we’re on it.  We are forced to work with employees with not so good education background. Clear communication, written instruction and being available is helping us solve the problem at the loss of business direction.

You’re a state level basketball player and an archer!

I am not an Archer, I practiced archery for 2 months in school. I focused on Basketball more after I was selected to represent my school in District level, but we lost the State level Under-17 match.  The only reason I played basketball was to avoid the class-rooms and the only reason why I was selected in one because I was taller than other kids.  

That’s you being humble. Lessons from sports that you apply at work?

Don’t do something you don’t want to do just because others think you are good at it.

Why Aurangabad? Benefits of staying in a smaller city than Mumbai or Pune?

To be honest, there are no benefits of staying in Aurangabad. We have a below average internet connection. Hiring is a challenge here; the education system doesn’t create any qualified developer that can even slightly address current market challenges.  You don’t get to meet new people who share similar business interest. The IT hub here is insanely expensive, thanks to the political system. I would love to meet like-minded people here but there is nothing in place that helps us do this. It’s very challenging sometimes.

One thing that you would do differently if you can start up all over again?

I would start an ecommerce business for Indian Market with all my first year’s earnings instead of targeting offshore.  Or I think I could do both, efficiently.

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Thanks, Kashish! I would credit you big time for the kind of persistence and dedication that you have clearly displayed. Apart from entrepreneurs, our interview series has showcased an MBA musician who represents the wild side of business and an industrious HR manager driving towards better responsibilities at work. You, my brilliant friend, are a doer.

You are a perfect muse for a business writer, with the apparent ease you have transitioned and built hardcore businesses from scratch. And you’re doing it so well. The way you write showcases precision, tells us that you mean business. Keep going and keep inspiring all of us.

Key Takeaways-

• Be customer-oriented and product-focused. That wins you battles.
• Be under dogged pursuit of what you seek to achieve, no matter what.
• Make the most of your human instincts; everything can be channeled the right way.
• People around might not always understand. Communicate when necessary, be good.
• Blaming the situation doesn’t help. Build something out of an unfavorable nothing.
• Keep your senses open and learn lessons from the little things around you.
• Treasure your hobbies & interests, they keep you amongst us.
• Do not give up.

Connect with him here!

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About the Author: @sushrutmunje

I build Hammer and Mop – specializing in marketing, service and operations. I’m a published poet and a writer. Startups excite me. Have been a part of speaker panels and given guest lectures at business schools, been a speaker at Youth to Business Forums (powered by AIESEC) and I sit on Unltd India‘s selection board once in a while. Contributing as a business writer at TheRodinhoods – creating content, interviewing inspiring entrepreneurs / intrapreneurs / professionals and covering events.