Pati, Patni aur Startup
They fell in love, tied the knot and began their
honeymoon with entrepreneurship
In the good old days, if they fell in love in
B-school, got married and kicked off a career, the choices were predictable -if
it was an MBA in marketing, it had to be a role in a consumer goods
multinational (think Hindustan Unilever or Procter & Gamble or Nestle); if
it was finance, the husband-wife duo in evitably found themselves at rival
investment banks on Dalal Street.
These days, it's a bit different. Many couples
who met in school or college -not just B-schools -are taking the long and
invigorating walk down the aisle of entrepreneurship. And, they reckon, if we
can live together we can work together too -at our own, carefully-nurtured
fledglings.
So goodbye Job Street, hello startups. “The more
ambitious among the youth, who also are endowed with confidence in their
abilities, choose the path of entrepreneurship rather than high paying jobs,“
says professor Prabal K Sen, chairperson of the Entrepreneurship Development
Centre at XLRI, Jamshedpur.
If they're starting up together, it's also
because the wife is an equal partner in the business, not just a sleeping one
(at a few of the startups profiled here, the wife is the CEO, calling the
shots). “There were ventures earlier too with the wife as a partner, but she
would be a sleeping partner as wives traditionally are in family businesses,“
says professor MS Rao, chairperson of Center for Entrepreneurship at Mumbai's
SP Jain Institute of Management and Research.
If couples see virtue in venturing together,
it's because they know each other inside out. As Michael Lazerow wrote in Inc:
“You should start a company with someone whose strengths are your weaknesses,
and whose weaknesses are your strengths.“
He should know. Michael and Kass Lazerow are a
serial entrepreneur couple who've blazed a trail of sorts in the US -first they
started up Golf.com and sold it to Time Inc; next came social media marketing
platform Buddy Media which was bought by Salesforce.
Then there are those couples who are kicked
about starting up but who value their own space. The solution: venture out in
separate directions. But that's another story; turn to page 20 for that. First
we bring you the couples who are in it together. Read on:
When Head and Heart Meet
Anand Chandrasekaran, a neuroscientist, doesn't
like to be pushed around. Ashwini Asokan, a product designer who worked in
Intel for 10 years, is all about deadlines. While she hates being methodical,
Anand is a perfectionist. Such contradictions haven't come in the way of a
16-year-old relationship -five years of courtship and 11 years of marriage.
They met for the first time when they were
undergrads -she was doing her BSc in visual communication and he was pursuing
his BTech from IIT-Madras. They got married in 2005, and all of nine years
later started Mad Street Den (MSD), an artificial intelligence based company.
The startup raised `9 crore ($1.5 million) from Reservoir Investments' Exfinity
Fund and GrowX ventures in January this year. MSD's flagship product helps in
visual search for online portals. A user, for instance, can upload a photograph
of his favourite outfit and find similar recommendations on the portal. The
product caters to several industries, including gaming, ad tech, analytics, and
market research.
So far, what has worked brilliantly for the
couple is a clear demarcation of roles. Anand looks after the technology and
Ashwini handles design. “I am the heart and he is the brain of MSD,“ says
Ashwini.
She also has some strong views. Tell her that
married couple can't do business together and she retorts: “It's bullshit“. And
if you dare say that geeks can't fall in love be prepared for a similar answer.
“Intelligent people don't believe in bullshit.“ Now, there's nothing artificial
about this brand of intelligence.
Venture Made in Heaven
Perhaps the biggest wedding-day nightmare for a
to-be bride is to find herself in an alien city without a makeup artist. Mehak
Sagar Shahani, who was set to tie the knot with a Hyderabadi boy, worked the
phones and did frantic online searches but didn’t meet with much success. Finally
she opted for a beautician recommended by a friend. The results weren’t pretty.
“My wedding day makeup made me look like a
joker,” recalls Mehak. Thankfully for her, it didn’t matter to Anand Shahani,
her to-be husband. “Love is blind,” says Anand, bursting into laughter.
Anand and Mehak met during their internship at
GlaxoSmithKline Consumer in Gurgaon in 2008. They tied the knot in 2012 after
four years of romance. An alumnus of XLRI, Anand was working as marketing
manager for Abbott Nutrition in Delhi; Mehak, who did her post-graduation from
the Delhi School of Economics, was working as a risk manager at American
Express in Gurgaon. One fine day they decided to bid adieu to corporate life
and work out something together. Result? Wedmegood was born in February 2014. A
wedding portal, Wedmegood has a pre-screened curated vendor listing to help
couples find the best professionals — photographers, makeup artists, décor
guys, jewellery brands and catering firms. Rather than charging a commission,
the startup works on a fixed fee model.
The one-year old startup, which had one round of
angel funding last year, has started making a profit, say the Shahanis.
Now that’s a shotgun startup, if ever there was
one.
Long and Sweet
After getting married in 2011, when Abhinav and
Radhika Khandelwal went to Switzerland for a two-month vacation, they started
missing something. It was not homesickness which was making them feel terrible.
It was the absence of Indian sweets! That's when the idea of Sweets Inbox
germinated. However, it took them three years to roll out their startup. Sweets
Inbox, which they claim is India's first portal for sweets, doesn't have a
manufacturing unit. It sources traditional sweets and namkeens from different
parts of the country by tying up with vendors in over 10 cities. The plan is to
expand to another 50 cities this year.
Abhinav's parents were not happy when he decided
to leave a lucrative job in Pune. After all, he had a BTech in computer science
and had worked for eight years. It was not easy for Radhika too as the
architect and interior designer was getting into something very different from
her vocational calling. However, their passion to start something of their own
helped in pacifying their parents.
Work is hard, as is arriving at a consensus at
work. “Abhinav prevails in most of the instances as somehow he has a better
reasoning at the workplace. But at home things change and I have the last
word,“ says Radhika. Irrespective of the pros and cons of couples working
together, the husband-wife duo feel it's the best model, for business and for a
relationship. “It brings you further closer to each other,“ says Radhika.
Party Hearty
Atit Jain and Madhulika Pandey first met in
October 2012, when they were working together at tech firm Applied Mobile Labs.
Food (Madhulika is a foodie) and movies (Atit is a movie buff ) brought them
together.
In January 2014, they decided to leave their job
and start Gigstart, a marketplace that brings entertainers — anchors, stand-up
comedians, singers, dancers, makeup artists — and party planners together. The
revenue stream is primarily commissions and the startup gets roughly 20 orders
a day.
Early this year, Gigstart raised $255k (`1. 6
crore) from Rohit Bansal and Kunal Bahl (of Snapdeal) and GSF.
The startup may be onto something but, for their
part, the couple is still in courtship and plan to get married this year. Will
wedding bells raise alarm bells amongst the investors? “We are professionals
and it’s not a family show,” says Atit. The investors too realize that both the
partners are adding value to the business and are not there for the heck of it,
he adds. To be sure, they are biggest votaries of a couple-run business model.
“It’s made for each other and mad for each other
that’s the biggest plus of this model,” says Atit.
Apart from business, what keeps them together is
frequent ‘skirmishes’. “We never fight. It’s just a little argument,” says
Atit, as Madhulika gives him a stern look.
And They Live Appily...
Mrigaen Kapadia didn't go down on his knees to
propose to Nupur Kapadia, who he married in 2008. In fact, he never proposed to
her. “I am still awaiting for an official proposal,“ laughs Nupur, who first
met Mrigaen when they were colleagues at Datamatics in Mumbai. While the
courtship lasted for one year, romance is still on and has survived the
tumultuous entrepreneurial journey. “Love has cemented our business,“ she says.
It was not easy for the husband-wife duo when they
took the plunge in April last year to co-found Mobifolio, a startup that makes
mobile apps. Both were working at Capgemini, had high-paying jobs and all was
hunky dory. Except that the routine corporate job was not giving them
satisfaction. So both pooled their financial reserves to start Mobifolio.
“There was never a plan B for us. It had to be
this or nothing,“ says Mrigaen. Mobifolio has started making a profit, they
claim, thanks in large measure to their latest blockbuster BreakFree, an
Android app for smartphone addicts. The app makes users aware of how addicted
they are to their phones and helps reduce the same.
BreakFree has had over 1.4 lakh downloads and
the duo plans to monetize it with advertising and a premium version. An iOS
version is on the cards. So, can iOS and Android coexist? “Why not?“ asks
Mrigaen, who handles iOS development and support while Mrigaen focuses on
Android development. Clearly, the couple's coexistence is not in doubt.
Fake Jewellery, Real Couple
When Jyotveer and Gurshagun Chadha were studying
at British School in Delhi, they never spoke to each other. She looked at
Jyotveer as rowdy and he found Gurshagun to be a snob.
Something changed on the last day of their
schooling in 2011 and they exchanged mobile numbers. Gurshagun went on to debut
in a Telugu movie Life is Beautiful in 2012 and Jyotveer went to London to
pursue a course in business management.
They stayed in touch, fell in (longdistance)
love and got married in 2013.In March 2014, they started Eristona, an artificial
jewellery portal. The idea was exciting, but the response of the family was
cold. It took a while for Jyotveer to make people realize that a man can be in
a jewellery business. Finally, the family gave in-and also gave seed capital of
`1 crore.
Eristona offers necklaces, earrings, bangles,
bracelets and rings starting from `150 going up to `4,000. Currently the couple
is doing shipments of 20 orders per day, and claim to be in the black. What
keeps them together is one mantra: have roles that don't overlap.So, the
commercial, financial and marketing aspects are taken care of by Jyotveer and
the designing decisions are made by Gurshagun.
“A business is not only about money.My business
is because of Gurshagun,“ he says. The compliment is reciprocated in equal
measure: “He is Eristona's brain and my life.“
Encashing Love
They were friends for three years, then became
good friends for a couple of months and are now best friends. Meet Rohan and
Swati Bhargava, husband-wife duo and co-founders of Cashkaro, a cashback and
coupons startup.
When they met for the first time in London
School of Economics, love was the last thing on their minds. But it happened
and they got married in 2009.
Two years later, the duo quit their jobs in the
world of high finance -Swati at Goldman Sachs for over five years and Rohan
with a hedge fund for eight years -to flag off Pouring Pounds in the UK, a
cashback website which the couple now operate from India.
By 2013, they reckoned that India was ripe with
opportunity and took the flight back home; by April they had started Cashkaro.
For sales driven from the site to e-commerce firms, it gets a commission, a
part of which ispassed on as extra cash to customers.
By August, the couple raised `5 crore ($750,000)
from angel investors in the UK.
“Nobody told us don't work together because you
are married,“ says Swati. Even investors evidently wanted them together in
the business.
“They [investors] would be lot worried if one of
us exit,“ says Rohan.
Any regrets? “We end up talking about our work a
lot,“ rues Swati. But, she also adds: “What keeps us going is love.“ “And that
will stay irrespective of business,“ concludes Rohan.
Motion & Emotion
Perhaps getting together via an entrepreneurial
venture -matrimonial site Shaadi.com -may have had something to do with Gautam
and Prerna Singh being bitten by the startup bug. Two years after tying the
knot in 2011, the duo kicked off Get Kinnected, an interactive digital
advertising platform based on augmented reality and motion sensing. The startup
is yet to make a profit but is steadily gaining traction as it boasts of ITC
and Max Lifestyle among its clients.
Get Kinnected's flagship product Adzipod
provides motion sensing driven advertising. The startup also provides services
for mobile app development on Android, iOS and Windows.The duo is scouting for
funding and has had several rounds of meeting with investors.
How do investors perceive the husband-wife brand
of entrepreneurship? “It's not an issue for them,“ says Gautam.
While scaling up has proved challenging, the
couple have managed to stay positive. “Achhe din aane waale hain (good days are
about to come),“ declares Prerna.
Striking Gold With Silver
Nine-eleven changed their lives.
Aparna and Navin Bhargava were forced to
shutter their home décor exporting firm because demand from the US took a
massive hit. One of their biggest clients filed for bankruptcy in the US and
everything that could go wrong went wrong.
Navin went back to the corporate world. They had
a baby, and Aparna took a sabbatical for four years after which she joined a
travel management company, worked there for four years and then
started working for a London-based publishing house. She again took a break
when their second baby was born.
The third baby was born in November 2013 -the
couple's startup called Yaasna that deals in handcrafted silver and fusion
jewellery.
“If you are working for somebody, then you are
working to fulfil somebody's dream, not yours,“ says Navin, who in his two
decades as a working professional always dreamt of starting his own venture.
Yaasna's range starts from `500 going up to
`15,000. With shipments of 500 orders per month and an average ticket size of
`2,000, the couple says they are comfortably in the black.
What keeps them together is their contrasting
natures. “We are like Modi and Kejriwal. His strength is to find my
weaknesses,“ she says. While Navin is quite grounded, stays calm and focuses on
the bigger picture, Aparna is persuasive, mercurial and impatient.
“It's X and Y that makes Z. If both have the
same qualities, we won't be able to work together,“ says Navin. Perhaps that's
the reason this couple has been able to strike gold with silver.
Magnetic Appeal
It's the oldest startup on this list, all off
five years, and co-founders Shubhra Chadda and Vivek Prabhakar, after a rough
start, are now firmly on the growth path.
A home and accessories venture, Chumbak raised
$2 million in Series A funding from Seedfund in 2012, had another round of
Series B funding from Matrix Partners last year and will soon tread on the
profit track.
Shubhra and Vivek, who got married in 2004,
found the early days of entrepreneurship rocky. The first six months were lost
in squabbling. “We survived the turmoil... If you get past that initial period,
it's an amazing thing to work together,“ says Shubhra, who missed her personal
space during initial years but no longer yearns for it.
Vivek, on his part, has always tried to stick to
the principle of `let it go' to make Chumbak a success. “Shout at each other,
fight but let things go.“ “If husband-wife startups falter, it's only because
of ego and nothing else,“ adds Shubhra.
They're showing little signs of faltering, as
Chumbak goes about selling its distinctive `India-inspired' merchandise ranging
from tech accessories, bags and wallets to souvenirs and luggage tags through
kiosks and stores in Mumbai, Delhi NCR, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hy derabad and
Pune. Its merchandise is also available on Flipkart, Myntra and Snap deal.
AARON AND KARINE HIRSCHHORN
co-founded DogVacay, a network of local dog
sitters that's now available in over 3,000 cities. Dubbed “Airbnb for dogs,“ it
allows customers to go away without worrying about the well-being of their
pooches. It has raised $47 million from investors
KEVIN AND JULIA HARTZ,
who now run online ticketing startup Eventbrite,
met at a friend's wedding. Nine years and 10 rounds of funding later,
Eventbrite has raised nearly $200 million and has processed more than 140
million tickets
ERIC AND SUSAN
GREGG KOGER
launched ModCloth together while still in
college at Carnegie Mellon.ModCloth has raised over $63 million from investors,
including Accel, Norwest, and First Round.Eric is stepping down as ModCloth's
CEO, but Susan will remain on as chief creative officer
PAUL GRAHAM AND JESSICA LIVINGSTON
co-founded Y Combinator, the startup school
seed-funding venture that has invested in hundreds of companies, including
Dropbox and Airbnb. The two discussed the initial idea for Y Combinator on a
walk home from dinner where they decided Graham would put $100,000 into the
project
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Rajiv Singh
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ETM22FEB15
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