Aditi Chaurasia is a small town girl from a village near Khajuraho and is widely known as the Co-founder of EngineerBabu and Indore Startups Community. Aditi has always been ambitious since her childhood; she has always wanted to touch great heights, but initially was never aware of how to do it. Earlier, she wanted to be astronaut, but it became a very difficult dream to pursue, due to the fact that she was from such a small and quaint place where the girls there hardly ever go to school. She then made 3 unsuccessful attempts to be a doctor, because she lost her brother due to medical complications. She knew she was destined to do something, so she ultimately decided to go for a MBA. When her friend Mayank Singh came back to Indore, they decided to start EngineerBabu together.
In your own words what is EngineerBabu?
EngineerBabu is full of life startups, we are canvassing dream of others. We develop mobile application and website, which are the products of various startups. Right, from the starting we both were very sure about two things, one is to have a very employee friendly organization and second we will provide high class services. We decided that we will not make employee suffer what we suffered during our employment, and will not cheat our client’s as most of the service based companies are doing these days. Since, then we are having the best working culture in Indore, full of life, work life balance and happy employee with decent packages and 100% client satisfaction is behind the growth that we have achieved in just a year. We become the team 40+ in just 1 year, from the the team of 2.
And recently we pivoted our model, and started investing in the technology of startups as and technology investment, so that more and more startups will come forward with the best of the product ready in the initial phase. Right now we are backing up more than 7 startups from all over the country as Technology Investor.
How did you come up with the idea of EngineerBabu?
When Mayank was working in a MNC in Bangalore, he noticed that lot of youth is getting cheated by the name of fake placement drives and coaching institutes. And at the end they end up losing money and confidence. So, he decided to guide the youth with the genuine information by the name of EngineerBabu by a Facebook ,out of the time he got after his work. And by his efforts most of the people got saved from the fake information and later started getting good job because of his information and other things he is doing to make them get good jobs. That Facebook group now has more than 2 lakhs users.
Then he got assurance from one of the investor that he will invest in his idea, but we he actually started working on it, he refused due to the reason that he started in Indore and he cannot fund a startup belongs to tier 2 city.
Then, how a jobless person can survive with just an idea, so we both of us decided to fund our own idea, since then we are bootstrapping by providing services and helping in building others dream project. And now we are coming up with our new model of “Technology Investment Firm”. Soon, we will be organising lot of events regarding this.
Could you walk us through the process of starting up EngineerBabu?
When Mayank came back to Indore, he was sure that he will not work again as a employee, The willing to startup took over and he refused to join the dream company of millions.
Then to survive he started teaching technical stuff to the job seekers here, meanwhile these students get cheated with the respective organisation. Then one day all the students came to him and requested him to teach them, because they don’t left with enough money, whatever they had paid to that flew organisation. Then Mayank decided to help them and started giving them training, Among all , 2 students left and rejected from everywhere and didn’t get job. Then he decided to have them as their first employees of EngineerBabu, and since then no looking back. That beautiful journey of EngineerBabu is still continuing.
Did you encounter any particular difficulties during startup?
Like every other entrepreneur. Our parents were not agreed with this thing. Continuously forcing us to go for job and quit. Earlier when this situation arises we quit, but this time we decided to go with it. Earlier I was hiding from my parents about my startup, and this thing was so much painful that it leads me to cry almost every night. In our country being a working women and that too entrepreneur is like next to impossible thing when a girl belongs to a small town. I gave up my earlier two startups and joined jobs to please my parents. But it didn’t happen. Whenever someone praises us, we miss these words from our parents. Later on hope took over and we moved ahead with the confidence of proving ourselves. And yes we did it. Now they are happy and supporting us at every step.
When it comes to finances, we have some really good friends, who believed in us and helped me every time whenever we need them. And our dedication to do it by ourselves helped us in fighting every situation.
How have you been developing EngineerBabu since startup?
We always focused in having best life for us and our employees, so we believe in “Work with Fun”.
Whenever we encounter a need for particular position, we hire. One by one we hired people and build our team. We always believed in the human side of an employee, that helped us in gathering good people around instead of few months old startup. And now we have the best team in city.
What kind of feedback did you get for EngineerBabu so far?
Amazing, everyone loved it. Everyone loves our name and work culture. People from far off places are willing to join us. Clients are giving wonderful feedbacks. It helped us in getting more work and more independence. Soon , we are going to open one of our branch in Bangalore, right after making small declaration about it, people started applying for various position.
People around the world knows EngineerBabu, they are willing to work with us. They believe in us and our team. It’s an incredible journey in last 1 year.
All this lead us to achieve a higher growth rate, we become 45 from 2 persons In January 2014.
Do you face a lot of competition in this industry?
We never focused on competition, we always focused on giving our best. Providing best solution and services. We always believed in positivity. So apply this “Be Positive” principle in every situation.
What can you tell us about the industry?
Service industry is a profitable one right from starting. But we heard lot of people blaming clients for different reasons like they don’t pay on time, they have no understanding etc. But that’s not true, making a relationship is the key. Try to understand your client and his sentiments, you will find him altogether different, he will be your friend. He will be your well wisher. His work and project is his dream, believe in his dream, feel like ours, you will never get a complaints from their side.
Were there anything that disappointed you initially?
Yes, whenever we tell anyone, that EngineerBabu is providing services, people perception changed. Usually people say service companies don’t deserve any recognition, they are just Odesk Elance Geeks. We felt bad, and started searching for ideas to come into product category. But then we realized why we change ourselves just because of the ignorance of few people.
We are canvassing dreams of lot of product based startups, and now we are proud of ourselves. We are building best products for the startups globally and having the best working culture.
And in just one year we changed their perception about us. They started believing in us, and we are still in services.
What do you think about being an entrepreneur in Asia?
Being an entrepreneur in Asia is very difficult. And the worst thing is, that most of the times parents are not supportive. And they are right at their place, because the society is like this. Very less awareness is there at the root level. Lot of restrictions are there, recently government started supporting otherwise, conditions were not at all favorable. Whenver someone decide to do something of his/her own, they bombarded by questions like what is the secured income. How much you will earn out of it, why you wanna make startup you have a good job, you have a family, how will you survive, and many more. And if by any chance is he/she fails than this world is like hell for them. Instead of support everyone started demotivating that person who wished to startup.
And, if someone started after fighting with all those questions, then comes the monster of funds. No Funds, what next? Banks are like we can’t fund you until you are 3 years old, Family is like no we won’t give you single penny go for job.
For females, a whole lot of restrictions are waiting at every step on the road of entrepreneurship.
What is your opinion on Asian entrepreneurship vs Western entrepreneurship?
We have better ideas, but more restrictions in terms of support and technology. They may have average ideas, but have freedom to implement and freedom to experiment. They are not forced to give up upon failure, and here people started blaming and forcing not to make mistakes again.
What is your definition of success?
Consistency and positive thinking, these two principle keeps us moving ahead despite of all the difficulties in the path.
Why did you decide to become an entrepreneur?
I always wanted to do something different in life, since my childhood. But until 2013 I was not aware of this thing, that I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I have habit of thinking different and wanted myself to be out of the box person. Got campus placed but I was not at all willing to go for joining. Instead joining it I started my first startup TILIYAN CREATION, a customized handmade cards selling startup. Instead of making profits right from day one, didn’t get parent’s support and gone for job.
But any of the job was never able to hold me more than a month. Then I decided, I am not made for job at all. I am for something else. Then Mayank started EngineerBabu, and I joined him just for part time. But then started gaining intrest in the day to day challenges and making company grow, that time I realized that now I found myself. Since then, it has been an incredible journey, full of challenges and fun.
What do you think are the most important things entrepreneurs should keep in mind?
The most important thing, if you are really deeply passionate about starting up, only then you should start. And once you startup forget about any of the plan B.
If you have plan B, then success is just a myth. There should be no plan B, only and only have plans to implement Plan A.
Be a strong follower or believer of something, may be any book, any leader, any saying and position. It will always help you in your battle to success and assures you success.
And, lastly, have a strong vision and why, behind your startup and idea.
Believe me, all three really works.
Any parting words of wisdom for entrepreneurs out there?
Just one thing, whenever you start,
Just believe in one thing the day is not far from now when your dream become true. And you become successful. Never ever think of giving up. Don’t forget your team, they are the one, who will actually make your dream a reality.
And wait for EngineerBabu Technology Investment Firm, to make your dream a reality.
Connect
Aditi Chaurasia
https://www.linkedin.com/home?trk=nav_responsive_tab_home
https://www.facebook.com/aditi.chaurasia.16
Mayank Pratap
