Start-up: My own roller coaster ride
I had been meaning to write this for a long, but never really got a chance. Let me start with a brief introduction of myself. My name is Debashis Nayak, I am basically from Bhubaneswar, Odisha. I Graduated B. Tech. in 2016. Started my first startup in 2010 while I was still in school.
Things were great, I was in school and I was earning way more than my pocket money and it was exciting. This pushed me more to be an entrepreneur, but it was just the beginning of the ride just like the image above shows. I portrayed myself wearing a black suit and white shirt with a Tie just like MIB Agent. But life had other plans.
I got a 7.4 CGPA in 10th as I was more focused on business, for which I couldn’t get into a good school and I almost failed in all subjects including C Programming. I was never down before, anyways I got re-admitted to another school and continued my studies and again got 2 backlogs (Maths and Chemistry). I gave the maths exam again and then got admitted to a State University with my certificate. This is where things started changing. I got really great grades no backlogs and I even landed 6 Jobs in the campus placement.
I was not happy as I had started one more startup while I was still in college where I sold Handlooms and Handicrafts online, I wanted to continue that. But my parents wanted me to join the job and I did. As I was not happy I left the job after 3 months and started building products for my new startup. I build a 3D lamp capable of Wireless Charging, a smart dustbin, A Smart Mirror but all of the products were way ahead of their time and I couldn’t sell a single piece.
Sad me joined my friends on a road trip where the rented car broke down mid-road and the help arrived after 6 hours. This gave me the idea to start a startup in the Automobile Repair domain. After all, I was a startup guy, coming up with an idea is just like my routine.
I started my startup and we did great in the first few months, we were profitable. I assembled a great team and started pushing it even harder. Skipping meals, uneven sleeping patterns, going the extra mile to provide better service quality. But it was not enough, we were not generating big revenues to accommodate the whole team. We needed to do something much bigger and we did. We collaborated with Ola, Uber, Zoomcar and started B2B engagements. We started generating great revenues.
Though I come from a middle-class family and am the first Gen Businessman there was lots of support but no guidance. I couldn’t manage my finances despite generating around 1.5Cr Revenues. We concluded that we were at loss. By that time, I was running my Automobile Repair startup, I was also running a Co-Working Space (one of the first and biggest in Odisha), a self-drive rental business (with 22+ Cars). We were in loss, heavy loss, and I was trapped.
It was not all wrong decisions, it was the wrong target audience selection that I made. Anyways I wrapped up everything and moved to Bangalore with 1500 INR in my pocket. The moment I reached I grabbed one of the cheapest whiskey and started scribbling my next move. Surprisingly I was clueless, I said let’s start looking for a job and do freelancing just to survive.
Let’s face it, no one prefers a failed entrepreneur, I faced a hard time getting a job but I did land one with a very low pay scale as compared to what I used to earn. But anyways I did continue there for 3 months again and got myself out because I was not enjoying what I was doing. I started working in EV and the National Budget hit us hard and we had to stop that too.
Being bitten by the startup bug I had to start one more startup and I did in Ed-Tech where we build a platform to curate free tutorials into a single platform and study the behavioral pattern of the students to suggest their custom learning path based on their stats. We were doing great being backed by Amazon, Intel, and Google. This time we got incubates in NASSCOM, KStart, IIMB, IIT Kharagpur and we were about to close our first funding round of 800K USD as a seed fund but the Pandemic hit us hard. We couldn’t move to Isreal and the funding got canceled. Back to square one again.
I returned back home and freelanced for like 1 year straight, dad got retired and everyone suddenly started looking up to me and it was scary. I had a nervous breakdown. I was scared about pulling everything up so fast but I didn’t have time. But anyways I managed to push it for 6–8 months and another Lockdown hit me hard. This time I was only filling GST and Paying taxes for raised invoices, missed 4–5 EMIs ruined my credit score, burned all of my savings, and literally started borrowing a lot of money from friends, Banks, and all.
In the middle of this one new idea came to my mind and I started working on it in stealth mode, no biggies planned yet but I am still curious and fighting for my dream. At the end of the day, I ask myself always, “Why I am fighting? what for am I living? Is it only my family or myself?
The only answer I get is, If I don’t try at all I won’t be anywhere. I believe in God and myself I made it this far and I have decided not to look back at this point in time.
I couldn’t write much of my great adventures here because of time constraints but I am really excited to say that entrepreneurfail.com almost summed up what I wanted to write.
If you like this article, do clap and share it with your peers. It motivates me to write more about these.
If you have not read my previous Articles, you can find them here. https://debashisnayak.medium.com/
