How to Startup right and succeed fast!

Hi and welcome to another episode of the Ask Navi Arya show. As we said, we get interesting people on the show and there are some people that I've been trying to get on the show for a very long time. I've been busy, they've been busy. But finally it's good to have Shivam on the show. Shivam is doing something which is very interesting. He is actually traveling across Delhi startup scene, meeting hundreds of people and then through his community he's letting everybody know who's good, who's not so good, what are the events that are happening. So for me to get out personally and be part of the Delhi ecosystem and be there for the Saturday IIT party and to go for the Sunday event or the Indian Internet page, it's not possible every time. All I do is I follow Shivam and because of following, because I'm following him, I'm getting to know what the startup ecosystem in Delhi is all about. So Shiva, what is this Delhi community that you have all about?

First of all, thank you so much to, you know, inviting me on this your show. So Delhi startup ecosystem is pretty mature now, right? So like two years back it was not like as today. So unlike other ecosystems, Delhi is very mature now. And every week we have so many startup events there. Right. And the startup now actually is solving some problems here in Delhi and it's very exciting time for startups in Delhi as well. So I just want to say this.

Now but tell me there are. We were talking earlier, a lot of people only talk about one Shah Rukh Khan who reaches Bombay, right? What about the others who failed?

Yes, the failed entrepreneurs, right. They are many actually. Right. Because we always look back to success only, right? We always look for good people who have reached the top, the oyo of their industries, Uber industries. Right? But it's not like that. So we have couple of, couple of very, very good entrepreneurs who failed recently but they failed to learn. Actually right now they are building something new. So this is the spirit of entrepreneur. If you fail you should learn, get back to your team and build something new. So this is all about fail entrepreneurship.

But tell me this, so what, what's the success ratio? 1%, 10%?

Not exactly we have any data for such. But as for my perspective, only 1 out of 10 startups survive. 11 out of 10 startups. So nobody cares of 9 startups who fail because we only follow the success ones.

Tell me how easy because see India seems to be India booming. I see a lot of European and North American nations which are not doing well, on the verge of bankruptcy, India bankruptcy. So thus a lot of people have a lot of money. So so do you find and you also have an investor group. You think investments are easy to come by?

No, investment aren't easy, right? But as of image of our nation is very investment ready, right? The image we, our government has portrayed among other nations. So we are kind of investment friendly nation now. So major, you know, group Sequoia and other VC firms now looking for how to invest in India particularly. But if you talk about the angel investment firm, they are totally dependent on these VC firms. Nobody wants to support the entrepreneurs, right? Everybody wants to make money. Everyone know how to make money. And this is good and this is bad also. But if we talk about the investment scenes, it not really easy for a new entrepreneur. But yes, the ecosystem is helping. If you have an idea, you want to execute it, just go to this platform, show your idea, build your team and then respond. So. But crazy in front from the first point of view, it's not easy. You have to build your team, you have to build your prototype. You should have early traction as well. So you should follow this path. Not just the first path is your investment. Your investment should be on step three. Your first path should be your product, then your team, then investment.

You know this show, actually we show this show to a lot of people in North America, in Europe as well also. So a lot of foreigners are wanting to come to India only because they feel that there's a lot of, a lot of people in India, right? We'll get 1 lakh downloads or whatever. Is that true.

Startups, right? Maybe your biggies quicker, right? They're playing on this model only because India is a huge nation. You can just play on the data itself, right? There's an acquisition matter, but I believe to build a business, the sustainable model of business is actually, you know, the unit economics will be very clear from the day one. Not like we have already seen, VCs are backing out, right? They are backing out many, many startups. So if you're building a startup, you should be very focused about the unit economics from the day one. How are you making profits, which it makes sense.

But I meet so many startups, we meet so many startups coming here to our office. Many people don't know how they're going to make money, how they're going to monetize unity. I mean the CEO doesn't know. Sometimes they don't have a cfo who knows.

So are they, you know, so this is bad. If they are not aware how they're going to make money. I seriously can say that they are going to, you know, face a bad time in upcoming times.

Because the free money is over now.

Yes. If it's not over, it will be over in next couple of years, that's for sure.

Right.

Because your business should be very, very strong. Like how are you going to make money? It makes sense. It's a common sense. Right. So if you say common sense is not so common these days, very actual. Right. Makes sense to it.

So what is this? What are these new communities? I see a lot of communities IIT has something happening every Saturday or every second Saturday. What are the other great things happening?

Good thing is when you actually go into startup ecosystem everybody wants to help them. Maybe they have some factors to help you out, maybe some monetary issues are involved. But good thing is all together community. We have small, small centric events like we recently started DS Club. Right. So we have reach in more than 40 colleges across Delhi NCR. We have small to small small club in every college which talks about startups and entrepreneurship particularly. Know anything about it. Right. So what these clubs do is they talk about startups. If they have a startup idea they will pitch to your friends, your colleagues because they are the first, you know, look out for your idea and re adapters. So they talk about startups ecosystem particularly. And being in a committee actually helps your startup idea to raise it, that's for sure.

Tell me college graduates finishing college with no experience starting up, is that a good idea?

It's a good idea. Why not? See you are just passed out from college. Now you're thinking to go for a job or maybe for a startup or maybe at job at some startup. If you're thinking about job at some startup you should do internship, any startup. Right? But if you have already created something out of your college, I believe you should go for it. College entrepreneur is the next big thing happening in India. Entrepreneurship is going to be main subject in India. I should say that when we were.

Growing up there were no subjects.

There were no subjects, right? But if you talk about today every students want to play this guitar called stuck. So there is a buzzword called startup in every college. So it's good for many students. But I seriously recommend to students who actually want to start up in their life to go learn in a startup, they should work in a startup. How actually startup looks like startup is a very fancy glorified version of a simple SME. The startup is nothing, just innovative SME.

So if you want to learn that doesn't mean that a startup is worth hundred million lying in the bank. Yes, they said they have no money.

99% of startups are not making money actually. Right. But still you, you learned a lot of things in working in a startup.

Tell me what is this fixation with investors have iit Ka Banda, Hona, Chiya, Zuri and that whole model is a perfect bride they're looking for. Is that still true?

This is a very debatable question, right? But if you talk about investors mindset for them, they personally shared with me for the first time for them IIT matters for them because it adds some credibility to their shortlisting process. They receive 500 entries to shortlist them. Like they see this is it or this is MBA like iim. So they give little. I don't think so. I don't. I have seen couple of normal college, just normal College, a normal BCom graduates. They are just not college graduates. Right? So entrepreneurship is not about your college degree at all. We have seen many IITs imm they failed literally. You, you are already witnessing where many food tech entrepreneurs have failed badly. So it's entrepreneur is not about your degree.

So tell me ABHI Abi, a lot of people are trying to monetize, right? And it's a good idea to monetize because see monetization is not a bad thing. Monetize up Karthio. Then you're able to sustain longer and deliver longer. So there are forums like yours and.

Your forum is called devstartup.org Delhi startup.org how, how?

And a lot of people are trying to maybe have communities of their own interests. Like if I love photography, I'm currently photography, you know somebody like I love sneakers. I'm going to have a community on sneakers one day. Very short. How do you monetize your passion like that?

See, community is my passion. Right? To monetize from the community is not something which is advisable. Right? But if you want to grow with the community, you will gain lots of access, right? From the people who you are helping out. If I'm helping you, you're definitely going to help me back someday. Maybe not today, maybe tomorrow. So on first day you can't pitch to the committee. I want to make money from him. You can't. But gradually you work for the people, you help for the people. One day the community will help you. So you have a number in mind.

200,000 people or 2 million people on.

Startups we have 20,000 people with us. We have 20,000 people.

We have a number in mind.

What. What number exactly number to grow to. We are not very number centric right? We. We are not number centric organization. Whatever we doing, we're doing by her. We are connecting people. Not just a number.

Number really matters. How do you connect with them?

Offline events. We do conduct lots of events. We have event every week and we support approximately every event happening in Delhi and cr.

How do you support them?

By outreaching them. If you are doing very good startup event. If you want our outreach, we love to associate with it. No issues. We want not your money but we want your community come together.

So your engagement rate on your Facebook page is high.

Very high. We have a reach of more than 1 million something.

Oh wow. Could you do organic or organic like.

It'S proper organic like we. We do share lots of videos which is the most trending over social media. So we do share funny content around startup ecosystem. So we do very engagement thing with the community.

Who makes that choice?

We do like I do personally. Well these kind of videos should be there. So I do.

It's good fun doing it. It's good.

I'm enjoying what I'm doing.

What's the next step?

So currently we are taking Delhi startup ecosystem to India to pan level and we are going to start with TIE two cities particularly like Chandigarh, Jaipur. Then we will go to Mumbai, then there is a big space around Bangalore. Bangalore is already going good but I believe I as a company enabler can definitely add on the value to the Bangalore startup ecosystem as well. So we are looking forward to building the companies because this is all we love to do and this is all we know to do.

Tell me, is there ever going to be international like. Like I know TIE and the other bodies but will your community ever go international?

I was, I was talking with my friend who is working from Doha so he was telling me same why not to build an international company as well. So we are in talks with them but to go international we are building a base throughout India. Let's build a base throughout India because India is huge. India is the international country in front of itself. It's a different challenges. So let's solve these challenges once. If you solve these challenges you will definitely go to international any day. That's for sure.

Great. So as an ask if you want to launch a product right? You've learned from so many entrepreneurs every day you meet them and all of that but nobody's making money. So what is the motivation of another guy to come in and say maybe flipkart also start selling products because you know you're a seller, right? Like a Flipkart is a distribution model. Then there is another model where you say I just make my own shirts. Like I met the other day, this guy who does unbutton, untuck, so he's making shirts which are made for people who don't want to tuck their shirts. So he's thinking different and they got funded and all of that. So that is a different idea versus Flipkart, Amazon, all these, these people are just channels. In your opinion, being a channel means you will only make you make money only in their volumes, right? But when there are, when you're a smaller guy who's selling a shirt or his own design or you know, you might be making more money, which is a better model or what do you think about both models?

First of all, you should not copy others, right? If you are saying I'm going to become the Flipkart, please don't do that number. Second, the unit economics comes in the picture if you're building some product, right? Makes very common sense. This is a problem and this is a problem I'm facing. If you somehow, you know, play this between two, this is a problem I'm going to solve out this, this actually makes sense. You can make money out of it because don't think to be a big, big billionaire company, right? Think of, I'll solve this problem by this means. Making money is not tough, right? Trust me, making money is not tough. But you should be clear about the target audience. Once you know target audience, which may be the, you know, problem pitching point and you give them solution, you'll make money. So making money is not a problem. But building a platform to a scalable platform is a problem for many entrepreneurs.

So right now what are the major social media channels that entrepreneurs are focusing on?

I personally use Twitter and Facebook, but I have seen Instagram is going very well. Like entrepreneur is related to motivational thing, right? You need some motivational stuff. Push in, push and push in. So lots of people are consuming motivational plus entrepreneur content and stuff startup content over the Instagram as well. So this is going well. Like Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. These are three dominators for the startup industry.

Snapchat.

Snapchat is very teenager thing, right? If you talk about Snapchat it has a like, if I am not wrong, it's 16 to 22 age group. They are targeting 16 to 22, but startups is like 20 to 25 is very substantial figure for age group for startups so Snapchat is not working for us.

What is your Instagram handle?

So we have startup in all. We have Instagram handle for startup and all. We just recently started.

And what's your personal.

I am Instagram is Dinshibha.

Okay, so what's the next step? What is the next few things which are happening?

So we are going to build community, right? We are going to build the Pan India community. We are not thinking of going international. We are going to solve real Indian problems, startup problems. But the Thai2Cities youngster is facing because there's so much, you know, problems out there if you're going to solve them. So it will take lots of time. But we are okay. We are going to build committees and this is all we do and we can do it. Good.

So great. Perfect. We had a great time with you. We have a next episode of the Askari show coming up and this interview is going to be showcased live on that. Thank you very much even for joining us live.

Thank you.

Take care.

Sam.