4. First venture :
At the age of 14, sourced and sold software CDs to my school friends while
other kids were busy saving Super Mario’s girlfriend
Made money to buy magazines & computer hardware's. – 100 % Success
5. • Building businesses, since 2002
2002: freelancing/ outsourcing company
2004: e-commerce /deal site - #fail
Business opportunities are like buses, there's always another one coming.-Richard Branson
7. <2005>
Computer Science
LBS College of Engineering
{Kasaragod, Kerala}
8. <2008>
innoz: a rare breed of young minds
addicted to innovation
"My model for business is The Beatles: They were four guys that kept each other’s
negative tendencies in check; they balanced each other. And the total was greater than
the sum of the parts. Great things in business are not done by one person, they are done
by a team of people." `Steve Jobs
27. Most difficult lesson you have
learned as an entrepreneur?
It takes a tremendous amount of patience.
28. "10,000-Hour Rule"
the key to success in any field is, to a
large extent, a matter of practicing a
specific task for a total of around
10,000 hours.
Practice makes perfect
30. • You can fail so very often.
#FAIL
But you are not a failure
until you give up.
• Dealing with failure is easy:
Work hard to improve.
Success is also easy to
handle: You've solved the
wrong problem. Work hard
to improve.
• I fail everyday!
38. Lessons Learned
•Starting up young have enough advantages – chasing dreams with no other commitments and people
care more.
•Finding a great team is really crucial, Team should be complimentary in skills, same in attitude.
Also gelling the team together is a challenge but the core strength lies in the team.
•Chase a market which is bigger and brighter. Keep the technology minimum so that people can easily
understand. Solve a problem.
•Mentorship is extremely important even more than funding for young startups. Lack of experience can
only be matched with advises and inspiration from the veterans.
•Practice story telling. Entrepreneurs should be a good story teller. Because when there is a story to the
media and people, they will follow you.
•Take external sources of funds only when necessary. Your clients are your biggest investors.
•Partner with the best, partner with big clients- the advantage of partnering with big clients is that we
can learn more from them in terms of corporate culture and bring them inside.
•Entrepreneurship cannot be taught. The best way is to experiment. No one stops you in doing it. Be it a
success or a failure, the learning curve is worth more than anything.
•End of the day, it’s your dream – your biggest inspiration.
39. Always remember:
EDUCATION IS
WHAT YOU
LEARN
OUTSIDE COLLEGE
--DEEPAK RAVINDRAN
Hi everyone, I am here to talk about the advantages of starting young in business which also share my story.
I am a Malayalee (People living in Kerala,India). I have lived in Thrissur,Kerala all my life. I have grown up here, studied there. As a kid, I always loved to hear stories.
I was fortunate to hear about entrepreneurs and success stories right from home town. The power of these slide is to explain the importance of ‘listen’ & ‘inspire’.
Why did you become an entrepreneur?I’ve always been one. My fascination with computers and internet began on a Pentium III & 56 kbps modem. The internet opened me a whole new world, i was hooked.I’ve always enjoyed wide-open pursuits where I can create and be unconstrained.
From the confidence of my first venture i moved to bigger and bigger ideas, realized that chasing bigger dreams give you more bigger space to think. I Never felt bad in failing , and never stopped experimenting stuff either.
Never thought that I would become the person I am right now, but I never stopped in doing what I love. And I keep on doing it. My Greatest achievement is building a company that has integrity and a culture I’m proud of.
I joined L.B.S Engineering College For B.Tech in Computer Engineering. Most People don't know the fact that I actually gave up M.B.B.S admission for Studying Computer Science. I did it because I always listened to my inner voice.
2008:A group of 20 something youth motivated by the success stories in silicon valley and more importantly bored up by the rat races of jobs, decided to do something their own. They had nothing in hand: no job, no bank balance and no idea if they are actually going to succeed. We were all Complimentary in skills, but from the same cloth in attitude and culture. None of them came from a business family and all were from middle class. A total of 2500 $ were raised from the family.They were our first investors!
THERE WAS A BEAUTIFUL GIRL WALKING THROUGH OUR COLLEGE CAMPUS AND I ASKED MY FRIEND, ‘DUDE; HOW TO IMPRESS HER? AND MY FRIEND SAID, WELL I DON’T KNOW, YOU DO A GOOGLE. I SAID, I DON’T HAVE A GOOGLE NOW, SO WHAT I WILL DO? AND HERE THE EUREKA MOMENT CAME IN. ‘WELL GUYS, HOW ABOUT AN ANSWER ENGINE ON MOBILE THAT WILL GIVE YOU ANSWER ABOUT ANY TOPIC UNDER THE SUN.’ !
AND IT ALL STARTED FROM HERE, IN A TINY SMALL OFFICE SPACE THAT WE SET UP INSIDE OUR COMPUTER LAB AT COLLEGE.
Asked in GYAN where can I do business in telco. Gurgaon ! - Went behind all the telco’s – no body was interested because we were really small. Knocking on every door. Frustrated.
One tired evening, at a coffee shop met the head of Airtel, who invited to the office the next day.
There are around 700 million mobile phones in india while there is less than 100 million PC + Mobile internet customers. So there is a huge gap for people who don't have the access to Internet.
In 2008,while doing computer science engineering, me and my group of friends popped up with this idea of giving instant information through SMS by fetching it from online. We dropped out of college the next day to start the company to fully focus this idea.
This is what we run at the office. Real-time - This is what 10 seconds of activity will looks like. And this is where we spend most of our time doing to make sure that we can keep up with this kind of traffic load.
This is what we run at the office. Real-time - This is what 10 seconds of activity will looks like. And this is where we spend most of our time doing to make sure that we can keep up with this kind of traffic load.
AND NOW OVER THE COURSE OF 3 YEARS WE WERE ABLE TO ANSWER ROUGHLY ABOUT 250 MILLION QUERIES, DELIVERED APPROXIMATELY 50 GIGABYTES OF INFORMATION THROUGH SMS TO EMPOWER OVER 10MM DISTICNT USERS IN INDIA. So you are now listening to the story of the so far largest offline search engine which ever made on mobile. AND WHAT THIS DATA REPRESENT US IS THE IMPACT OF USING MOBILE AS A LEARNING TOOL TO EMPOWER PEOPLE.MOST PEOPLE IN INDIA DON’T HAVE ACCESS TO THE INTERNET BUT… THEY ALL HAVE PHONES. THIS IS WHERE SMSGYAN REALLY WORKS.
Launching a company during your student years is the best time in your life to do so because there is no downside. You can only learn, meet people and sharpen your skills. You can't lose...
"Don't worry about what anybody else is going to do… The best way to predict the future is to invent it. Smart people can do just about anything that doesn't violate too many of Newton's Laws!"
Our approach to this has been straightforward – we have to continue with our business as usual, and work as if we’re going to solve this problem.
Our approach to this has been straightforward – we have to continue with our business as usual, and work as if we’re going to solve this problem.
The most powerful slide is next !
Someone who dares to dream the dreams and is foolish enough to try to make those dreams come true.
It’s harder than you think, less predictable than you think and many times you have less control than you think and it takes longer than you think.
Intuition is simply knowing something without knowing exactly how you know it. Connect back to a time that you had a "gut feeling" about something - the job that you knew you shouldn't take, even though it looked good on the surface or the relationship that just felt right for you. That's your intuition talking to you.Remember, your intuition is never wrong, although your interpretation of it may be incorrect. When your intuition calls to you, trust it. Practice makes perfect when it comes to using your intuition effectively.
