In 2004, Manish Bhalla founded FATbit to make it easy for businesses to build their digital identity and online reputation.
What’s your story?
I was never a brilliant student but I always loved reading books and I have read 100s of them so far. I strongly feel books framed my personality and my career path.
Would like to give credit of my success to the book reading habit which my father inculcated in me. I founded FATbit https://www.fatbit.com/ in 2004, always focused on serving with smile, integrity and transparency – now FATbit is a team of 115+ professionals specialising in designing User Friendly eCommerce/mobile Solutions. FATbit has built many out of the box eCommerce Solutions that various Startups and Billion Dollar Enterprises have adopted to solve their pain points; Yo-Kart is one of our leading Multi-Vendor Marketplace Building Platforms, used by 500+ businesses in 50+ countries worldwide. Our team is working towards helping another 1000+ entrepreneurs in next 2 years.
What excites you most about your industry?
Its agility and wide arms which has a lot of space for millions of innovative players for healthy competition.
What’s your connection to Asia?
Born in Asia, I am a person who is truly Asian and high on values like honesty, integrity and doing something which gives your life a fulfilling purpose.
Favourite city in Asia for business and why?
For me Chandigarh is the best city for IT Startups as it has the right balance of Skills, Energy and Passion along with deep ingrained values. This combination allows you to trust your team members and let them take good care of your clients and business in general.
What’s the best piece of advice you ever received?
My father was very particular about doing well in academics and reading books. I did not do very well in academics but I was regularly reading newspapers, business magazines, and books related to personality development sales and marketing. I jumped into IT and learnt programming from books gifted by my brother.
Who inspires you?
Honestly, till I was 30, I did not like my father much because he was too strict. But as I grew up, I realized that my honesty, hunger and perseverance are because of my father. Honesty I inherited from him, the hunger he tattooed on my soul and became perseverant to satisfy the hunger.
What have you just learnt recently that blew you away?
I learnt about Conscious Mind Vs Subconscious Mind. We are ruled by our subconscious mind, not the conscious mind, this was shocking for me. I started working on my bad habits and could manage to control a few of them in past 6 months. Am still practicing to control the subconscious behaviour, Interesting thing is – we can create a new and refined version of ourselves by retraining our subconscious brain.
If you had your time again, what would you do differently?
If I had an opportunity to start again, I would concentrate on building User Friendly SAAS based solutions which can be used by larger audience.
How do you unwind?
I love watching movies and listening to music.
Favourite Asian destination for relaxation? Why?
Bali-Indonesia, is a place I would love to visit again and again for its friendly people and rich Asian culture. Next time I visit Bali, I would love to explore some other parts of Indonesia as well.
Everyone in business should read this book:
Execution: The discipline of getting things done by Larry Bossidi.
Shameless plug for your business:
We are here: To make it easy for businesses to build their digital identity and online reputation. We want to serve the world with affordable and efficient digital solutions designed to attract, engage and convert. We love working with Startups and Young Entrepreneurs for their Energy and Passion. In turn, Startups love us for our Affordable & User Friendly Solutions. Our solutions are customizable & scalable as per the needs of different business models, global trends and growing business needs.
How can people connect with you?
https://www.linkedin.com/in/manishbhallasic
Twitter handle?
https://twitter.com/CEO_FATbit
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This interview is part of the ‘Callum Connect’ series of more than 500 interviews
Callum Laing is an entrepreneur and investor based in Singapore. He has previously started,
built and sold half a dozen businesses and is now a Partner at Unity-Group Private Equity and Co-Founder of The Marketing Group PLC. He is the author two best selling books ‘Progressive Partnerships’ and ‘Agglomerate’.
Connect with Callum here:
twitter.com/laingcallum
linkedin.com/in/callumlaing
Download free copies of his books here: www.callumlaing.com
