ENTREPRENEUR / STARTUP SPECIAL ..................Thank God I Failed 4. PRASOON GUPTA

STARTUP SPECIAL Thank God I Failed

4. PRASOON GUPTA

Digital Baba

Prasoon Gupta wants to replicate what yoga guru Ramdev has achieved with his FMCG business -only he wants to do it on a much bigger scale, using technology. “I want to become the digital avatar of Ramdev,“ he says. The 28-year-old entrepreneur's love for Ramdev can be traced back to the failure of his first startup two years ago.

In November 2008, the IIT-Roorkee alumnus along with a few friends on campus started TechBuddy Consulting, an education technology and training startup for graduates.The venture had an ominous beginning when the cofounders began to drop out one after the other. The one considered to be the `technical mind' of the startup left after six months. Another one followed suit after a few months, leaving TechBuddy with three cofounders (from five in the beginning), including Gupta and Ankush Sharma. A depleted team meant lack of focus.

The next big problem was something they didn't anticipate: students started demanding job placement.“They were willing to pay money only for getting placed rather than learning technical skills,“ recalls Gupta. Initially, the startup did manage to get a few students placed, but gradually when they expressed their inability, the students stopped enrolling.

TechBuddy managed to plod on for four years, before shutting down in February 2013. The company had trained over 15,000 students, had a team of 17 people and was present in four locations. Gupta thinks he had the right business proposition but it floundered due to bad timing. “At times, even though the market looks hot, the industry may not be so attractive,“ he rues.

What next? “We had to move on. Entrepreneurs have to be bold and agile,“ says Gupta. He and Sharma saw an opportunity in two of their passions: yoga and food.

Sattviko, a food chain specialising in vedic and vegetarian food prepared without onion and garlic, was started in February 2014. The Delhi-based startup has four outlets in NCR, is about to open another one at IIT-Roorkee next month and has received `1.8 crore as angel investment from a group of investors led by Sumit Jain of Commonfloor, Rajat Jain of Xerox and Sanjay Bhasin of Indian Angel Network.

In May, Sattviko rolled out an online marketplace for ayurvedic and yoga products.It has roped in 150 ayurveda experts who provide consultation, displays over 1,000 products from 80 sellers and clocks over 500 transactions every day, with the average ticket size being `700. The Baba would be impressed.

ETM26JUL15