Comeback Kid That Perfect Second Take
These startup
entrepreneurs have shown the way to persevere and thrive, while building on
their early ventures
Comeback Kid
Jitendra Jagadev, Amarendra Sahu, Smruti Ranjan Parida NestAway
“We never went away to come back,“ said Amarendra Sahu, 35, one
of the three cofounders at NestAway who were chosen the winners in the Comeback
Kid category in the Economic Times Startup Awards 2017. Back in 2009, Sahu and
NestAway cofounder Jitendra Jagadev, who were colleagues at American technology
company Cisco, set up BrizzTV , a cloud-based content-delivery platform.
In 2015, given the lack of market opportunity at the time for
BrizzTV, Sahu and Jagadev teamed up with their classmate from NIT Surathkal,
Smruti Ranjan Parida , to set up online home rental company NestAway in 2015.
Parida had set up Sens6, an art marketplace, in 2010 but it did not take off.
Taking an academic break in 2009 helped Sahu conceptualise and
work on the idea, besides attending classes during his MBA at IIM Bangalore. “I
would attend classes during the day while Jeetu (Jagadev) would be at office.
At 6 pm we would both start coding on the product, me logging in from my hostel
and him from home,“ recall ed Sahu.
Over the past year, Nestaway also introduced home rentals for
families. The company started with the objective of providing safe homes for
single men and women who moved to the city to pursue careers and academic
pursuits. The company, backed by Tiger Global, IDG and Yuri Milner, has a
repertoire of 25,000 managed homes across eight cities in India. It has also
acquired home management company Zenify recently and plans to grow its play in
the family-rentals space and added security features for its customers in the
coming year.
A professor of Sahu at IIM and ET Startup Awards jury member
Rishikesha T Krishnan said that what stood out was Sahu's commitment to
entrepreneurship.“Coming from a rural background and his early commitment to
entrepreneurship and his perseverance to succeed as an entrepreneur, these were
things which impressed us,“ said Krishnan, adding that Sahu did not come in
with an objective of finding employment but starting something of his own after
his MBA.
The background was a big advantage when it came to picking
themselves up and starting anew. “Kids from cities have a lot of pressure to
succeed, we were okay with losing. We never played to win though it feels good
to have won the award,“ said Sahu.
The company has so far raised $43.2 million from multiple
investors and provides ease of transaction for home owners and tenants on a
technology enabled platform. The company also plans to tap into the base of NRI
home owners who would like to rent out their properties in India without the
hassle of engaging with brokers.
Jul 24 2017 : The Economic Times (Mumbai)
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