So, what would you call a man who dropped out from his ‘Phd?’ A psychopath? Well, not to the amazement of many, he never wanted to be known to lead an ordinary life and wanted to be known with some of his crazy stuff. “All of you might have heard of school and college drop-out, but has anyone of you ever heard of a ‘Phd dropout,’ questions Ankur Warikoo, CEO and Founder of Nearbuy.
Deeply inspired by Johannes HausHofer, a Princeton Psychology professor, who believes that keeping a visible record of your rejected applications can help others to deal with setbacks, similarly Warikoo also shared his failure resume to the world in order to stay transparent about his life. It shouldn’t come as a wonder that the CEO’s venture isn’t the first one to be talked about. Nearbuy is actually his third venture which amazing grew into 5x growth within a time period of 9 months! Similar to his personality, he too wanted his venture to be recognized with some amazement in the market. While on a trip to Bali once, Warikoo observed that Bali had lunch with a new colleague every day. Warikoo, 37, liked the concept and decided he too would introduce a similar idea at Nearbuy—he would have lunch at the office cafeteria with one employee every week. “I was in a spot where I didn’t know everyone personally because I was not hiring all of them. I recognized their faces but didn’t know their stories. That’s why I thought, why don’t I start having lunch with employees,” he says.
The journey of a business person is troublesome and positively not unsurprising. As per a survey led by IBM Institute for Business Value and Oxford Economics, India is the third largest startup ecosystem in the world, with 90% startups failing within first five years of inception. The voyage to manufacture a ‘fruitful startup’ is a tough errand for any business visionary and can’t be accomplished by just the establishing group in an association. Building a ‘fruitful startup’ is a collaboration and workers have the most critical influence to transform thoughts into the real world.
Nearbuy is Ankur’s third venture and he definitely understands what it takes to build a successful organization. He says, “In the journey to build a successful organization the hardest part is not finding the customer or product – market fit but it is building a team that can translate your vision into reality”. Warikoo’s biggest learning all through his failures and success of his third venture is that, people come first followed by product and then profits. He says, “Any other order does not work if you want to build a successful company”.
Ankur Warikoo is an Internet entrepreneur, motivational speaker and Angel Investor based in India. He is currently the co-founder and CEO of Nearbuy. Warikoo was previously the MD of at Rocket Internet India, Co-founder at Accentium Web, and a management consultant at A.T. Kearney.
