Venue: NM college of Commerce 

This one is about the journey of a person from selling college fest passes to being selected as one of the Top 8 startups in India during Nasscom Techstock 2013, up and close with Cofounder of Mycuteoffice: Abhishek Barari.

Abhishek’s entrepreneurial journey started with UMANG, Annual Fest of Narsee Monjee College of Commerce and Economics, where he used to sell passes for the fest standing at the gate in the last minute, he says it is being at the right place at the right time. He says it is a small concept, there was a need and he could figure out target audience and his same approach towards things made him cofounder of 2 startups and put him as an advisor for couple more.

Abhishek’s first entrepreneurial stint was Qpeka, a digital publishing website which also acts as medium for authors to directly reach out to their readers. While doing this Qpeka also ensures that the works are secured from copying. A unique royalty structure for authors who cross a certain readership ensures that the commercial aspect is also covered. He says Qpeka did not have any revenue model when it started but it fell in line with his three prong approach.

Abhishek opines that it is not the product but the advantages of the product that sells, so always be clear on Who is going to pay? Where major expense is going to be? He also feels that no Investor would be interested unless you can bootstrap yourself from family, friends and start the venture. He says that scalability will be a big thing that investors look at while investing. He also feels that running a small food stall or running an empire the issues are common the way of dealing with them will be different so just start, start small.

Abhishek also stresses on the importance of the pilot before launching a venture, he surveyed 250 avid readers understood the user behavior and launched Qpeka, starting of Mycuteoffice falls in the category of Accidental Entrepreneurship, where he helped few of his friends to find customers for their free office space, in a way pilot was done and found need with scalability, he happened to pitch this to investor outside the gate at TiE, where he was invited for presenting Qpeka.

Abhishek explains that startups in production business should try to have as many revenue cycles as possible and he says the industry average currently is 2-3 cycles. For this to happen it again pushes us into the cycle of Business Plan, Product, Market and Want. Leaving corporate life everything planned for Mycuteoffice but his key investor/partner backed off leaving him stuck in the last moment, this shows that he had his own bite of typical entrepreneurial journey. From there, he went on to raise Angel Investment from Lead Angels Group, now on the way to Series A to chart his own story.