Act 1
I moved back to India in April 2011 to ‘start up’. My first idea was to start a chain of hyperlocal affordable gyms (places where folks could walk to instead of driving to). Spent a couple of months working on it till I figured out that there weren’t any big enough legal commercial spaces in residential areas. My only option was residential home basements but it was illegal so the idea gradually died down.
Was wondering what to do when a friend introduced to me to someone who wanted a website done along with the associated digital marketing. I had always been interested in the online space and starting an ‘online ad agency’ was Plan B.
Luckily for me, I got the deal. It was worth about Rs 15+ lakhs. ( 1st stroke of #bloodygoodluck)
I didn’t have a team, an office or people who could implement. I just liked the idea and was confident that I could deliver (I also very liberally took a leaf out of the Indian IT industry’s secret to success book – “Get the deal first. We will figure out how to deliver it “)
It went pretty well and Experia Media was formally incorporated as a company on 11th of October, 2011.
We got our first office space in 2012 and since we had some extra room, we converted it into a co working space for early stage entrepreneurs.
For some funny reason, we started showing up as the first result on Google whenever someone searched “Co Working space in Gurgaon” – Not sure if it was good luck but it worked.
Thanks to that, we got our first ‘entrepreneur’ tenant , a guy called Ankur Kapur who had just left his job to start out on his own.
Since then, it’s been an interesting ride upwards, thanks to a lot of work, good friends, references and #bloodygoodluck 🙂
Act 2
In November 2013, a fellow rodinhooder (Sunaina Shenoy) approached me to help market her startup – It was called GreynGreen and was in the space of financial planning.
I liked the concept but she had a very basic website and I could see that it needed a lot of work – and it would cost much much more than what she could afford to pay at that time.
I offered her a partnership deal and we became 50-50 partners – 2 greenhorns out to change the state of financial literacy in India and get people to plan their finances better.
Pretty soon, we realized that we needed someone with domain expertise to write the Financial Plans for our clients and content (as we didn’t have enough revenues at that time to hire a full time planner)
While brainstorming one day, I decided to call Ankur for some feedback (yeah, the same guy who was our first co working tenant) – He is a CFA, CFP and had worked at Ameriprise.
Turns out, he also loved the idea of Finqa and wanted to get involved. Sunaina and I agreed and we went from 2 to 3 equal partners.
NOW here is the interesting bit – Ankur was the first and only co working tenant we have had at Experia Media. (why we didn’t have others is a different story altogether)
It’s not everyday you find folks you can get along well enough with, to become co founders, and I think I was bloody lucky to have started the ‘co working’ space.
Finqa has just completed 1 year and its been a great learning experiences – Yeah, we learnt after a year of trial and error just how value conscious Indians are and how much they love ‘free’ stuff 😉
If it wasn’t for good luck, I don’t think I would be writing this today 🙂
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You can also WIN Ashwin Sanghi’s book ’13 Steps to Bloody Good Luck’
by posting your #goodluck story on trhs!
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