IIM K recently organized a "startup fair" and we were one of the few startups invited. This is definitely a great initiative, the idea is to give students a chance to work with a high energy startup.
We reached Kozhikode at 6 in the morning and decided to walk around the lovely campus. The entire campus is situated on twin hills and the view is just breathtaking. This is probably the only campus among all the IIMs and IITs which looks more like a resort than an educational institute.
At around 10:30am we were ready with our stall and spent most of our time chatting with students and faculty members. It was great to meet and connect with some really enthusiastic people. The highlight of the visit however turned out to be a very unexpected meeting with Prof Sunil Handa. To tell the truth I had no clue who he was until our buddy at IIM K gave us his brief intro. He is a champion of entrepreneurship and advocates one and all to leave up the cushy jobs and to walk on the path of entrepreneurship. He asked us some pretty tough questions and was rather very blunt at our responses ( in other words, according to him we had done all wrong by starting up hungryzone, raising funds for hungryzone was another gruesome error and he was literally shocked to hear that we had 12 members in the hungryzone family). He said, this idea cannot be made into a business of 500 crores, well its true, even I know that hungrzone cannot become a 500 crore business in its current form, but with all due respect Sir, you can only see 1/10th of an ice berg from above, similarly the core of our business is still invisible/ unexplored/ unimplemented. Stay put and we will surely change the way India eats!!
While success is important, in entrepreneurship the experience is more important. People usually learn the most when they fail. I do not intend to strike gold with my first venture (well if I do strike gold, I won’t mind at all) and I am not afraid of failing. Failure would definitely be painful but the learnings I am getting everyday is priceless and cannot be matched or taught even by the IIMs.
Coming back to the chance encounter with Prof Sunil Handa, it wasn’t really an eye opener, as we are already doing what he urges others to do but it indeed was an honor to meet a seasoned entrepreneur and champion advocate of entrepreneurship. I do hope that more and more people follow his advice and become employers instead of employees. The rest of the day was spent meeting few old buddies from my IIT days and some enthusiastic candidates. I am already looking forward to such festivals in other top B Schools.
