Anand Nataraj

Posts Tagged ‘recession’

I started my entrepreneurship ride during the year 2000 in the month of September. It was the starting days of so called dotcom bubble. The buzz, happenings and the glamour have all come to a halt. It was one of the worst times to even think of starting a company and that too offering Web based services. We were criticized left right and center for becoming an entrepreneur. My parents asked me to take up higher studies and my friends asked me to take up a job till things revert back.

 

In spite of all those obstacles I started my company with the help of my mentor and well wisher Mr.Shunmugavel Yogan, founder TheITDepot.com. Initial struggles were enormous… When ever I failed there was more criticism than getting moral support… We had no mentors and also the startup ecosystem was not mature… Everything was starting to take shape unlike today;

 

• Opensource and frameworks were starting to emerge and were not usable. So, we had to develop everything from the scratch.
• There were not many market places like elance or scriptlance. We had to depend on forums and on top listing on search engines (SEO).
• Startup ecosystem like proto.in, barcamps, open coffee clubs etc were not there.
• Also the concept of bootstrapping was new. There was an illusion that to start a business one needs huge capital.

 

In spite of all those odds we were able to strike it big and I personally feel we can see persons best only when his character is put on a test. Why I keep repeating these kind of post is because I see many enthusiastic people who want to become entrepreneurs keep telling me reasons like it is recession, market is inflated, family commitments, emotional commitments etc.

 

Unless we have control on us we can’t strike the gold. So instead of getting inspired by successful people try to know their path to success which can teach you lots of lessons.

This is how I bootstrapped my first venture which was started during the starting days of Dotcom bubble.

 

• Shared office space from a Gingelly oil company where they gave us 100 sq ft space, 5 systems, internet connection and a telephone line for $200 a month.
• Provided out of our business model services which helped us sustain till we got a groove into our core business. Services we offered were;
  • Linux installation
  • System Assembling & Trouble shooting
  • Java Training
  • Offering real time projects for college students
  • Sub sourcing resumes to manpower companies

Since we were out of college we had big network of friends who were college pass outs or students which helped in spreading our services and we got decent response to recover our monthly expense.

• Since it was recession there was acute shortage of jobs. We offered jobs for deposit and we got tremendous response for this. We made $2000 from two people which were our six months liquidity with which we stopped all non core activities and concentrated on core business.
• Apart from those two paid resource. We hired talented people who joined us for no pay. This changed our fortunes.

Having generated 6 months cash flow and a team of talented people we were able to win projects with the HELP of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and market places like scriptlance.com and elance.com.