Ashneer Grover's partner and co-founder of Third Unicorn Aseem Ghavri has opened up about his journey as an entrepreneur which began in 2009 with an investment of Rs 8,000.
"I started my first entrepreneurial stint back in 2009 while I was in my college," Gharvi wrote on LinkedIn. "Since my early childhood days, I was sure that I want to become a businessman, I think being from a service-class family and seeing cost-cutting all my life made me think that job will not help me to break this ceiling. But the million-dollar question was how to start. I had only Rs, 8,000 saved from my pocket money and the money I got from relatives at various festivals."
Then inspiration hit Ghavri one day when he spotted a cart. "One day looking at the Kwality Walls ice cream cart, an idea came to me to create a hot food cart. I designed and worked on fabrication, tested a few food products and zeroed down on hotdogs and hence the first cart was ready," he wrote. That was how Hungry Ville's Hot Dogs was founded.
Starting off as a businessman, however, came with its own set of challenges. He was hackled by the police, intimidated by "municipal cooperation goons" and then there were the neighbours.
"I remember my neighbour aunty walking up to me onto my cart asking if everything is fine at home, or do I or my family need any monetary assistance," Ghavri recollected. "Initially, I could not afford employees so I had to make hot dogs and serve them to my customers in their cars. Engineering students serving food in cars was not conventional. Even my parents were embarrassed in front of friends and family."
But despite the challenges, Aseem Ghavri held on because of how successful the business was. He sold out on the first two days.
"The response was crazy!" he said. "We were scaling month on month. With whatever money I was making, I opened a few more carts in Chandigarh."
The co-founder of Third Unicorn then advised other entrepreneurs to keep their egos aside. "I did not shy away from serving food to the customers. My neighbours and relatives judged me for it but that did not stop me."
"You always start small. And that’s totally fine. What’s more important is that you take the plunge to move out of your comfort zone and put your best foot forward."
Ghavri has since then gone on to experiment with various tech ideas, opened an ecommerce company and had also helped fintech company BharatPe scale up, according to his LinkedIn bio.
BharatPe also happens to be co-founded by Ashneer Grover until last year when he and his wife were ousted amid allegation of misappropriation of funds.
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