How to turtle your way around: a story of 7 failures
Ashish Agrawal, Civil Engineer@KIET(2009–13), Structural Engineer@NIT-A(2013–15), Entrepreneur@2010–17
Yes, You read it right. NO Hypothetical story of Success. NO PR campaign for how poor and underprivileged that Industrialist was when he started. Definitely NOT, how your father came to this brutal world with Rs 10 and how he used to cross seven kingdoms to get to school.
No Farzi gyan.
Chronological Order of Failure
- 1st Sem- Joined to become an engineer. Felt like in school. Had no clue what’s going on. Failed as an engineer and as a student.
- 2nd Sem- Tried to explore the possibilities. Build an online base for soft copies of all the study material available in KIET. Didn’t get the server space, couldn’t rally folks with IT knowhow to build for me for chai.
- 3rd Sem- Tried my hands on Robotics. Did an internship for embedded Robotics in IIT-K. Started working on a PhD project — “Distinguishing organic and inorganic hospital waste”. worked for three months. Submitted the report. Failed to take the discussion further into a meaningful production project.
Tried working with AIRS(robotics society), used to take robotics projects from HBTI just to earn some extra bucks to keep working. Didn’t workout for long. Failed to monetise the project.
- 4th Sem- By now failure was an ally. Started working on new projects. and incorporated my 1st company: SportsTurtle Technologies.
- 5th Sem- On the verge of closing the company due to lack of funds. Founded 2nd Company, SportsTurtle Merchandise just to support the first company by selling tshirts.
- 6th Sem- the 2nd company was doing much better than the 1st. A facepalm moment. I did not fail but was going to. The venture was not a product and could be easily copied.
- 7th & 8th Sem- Middle-class Peer pressure was at its peak. Paused the company and concentrated on my studies. Cracked GATE with good rank. The biggest failure of my life.
- Joined NIT-A as a structure engineer in the beginning of 2013. Divided my time/energy in my education and passion. By the middle of 2015, I had a prototype in my hand and proposed my idea to nearly 150 investors and got rejected by each of them. Meanwhile, I used to teach in MadeEasy to earn a couple of extra bucks so that I could run from home. In the end of 2015, I graduated from NIT. I packed my bag and came to Bangalore (it was not that dramatic, I informed my parents and cut the line before they could react). I had 3 offers at that time but chose to go with none. Failed as a Structure Engineer.
July of 2016 was spent in Bangalore. Founded my 3rd Company: FiTurtle, and keep bugging VCs and investors. On the 45th day in Bangalore, we got our first investment.
Overnight Success is a Myth
September 2016 .Everyone in startup ecosystem was talking about the overnight success of FiTurtle.
It took us 6 years to be an overnight success.
When I was starting my first startup, I had passion and idea on which I was going to work. I started working without doing proper research. I did not know about the registration, copy-write, labour laws, company formation laws, legal aspects and other formalities which were needed in order to go ahead to call your “idea”, a company.
I went ahead and formed a company without working and gaining ground reality in the respective industry. I failed a lot of times. Most of which could be prevented if I worked in the industry for some time at any level.
I was naive and passionate, which is a deadly combination without proper direction. If I get a chance to go back 5 years back, I would go for an internship (trust me, even unpaid) in the industry I am right now and work for a couple of years before starting my own.
For all the juniors over there, I want to say two things:
First : You are going to learn things anyways in your life, it’s your choice what way you choose. You can go ahead- try, fail and learn OR you can get in touch with the right people who went through the similar phase and learn from their mistakes and experiences.
Second: Keep reading. At least, a book a month. Read anything and everything. Read beyond your work-interest, Read about the
things you like, things you do not. Read poetry, politics, economics, geography, anything and everything you get hands on (except TOI, that’s just crap).
Is it the End or Beginning ?
Yes and Yes.
This is the end of the post and beginning of C-Club in your lives. This is the platform where you folks can connect with me and other seniors who can share their experiences and knowledge with you guys so that we can create a better, oriented and focused ecosystem of an industry ready homo sapiens (instead of Zombies).
Join us on slack or on whatsapp.
Meet you guys very soon. Stay tuned. Peace out!
