Student Leader Success Story

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1. Tell us more about your company and your journey.

Inception Wave is a tech based startup, currently working on developing a social media platform to bring together like minded individuals and help them improve their productivity by collaborating and achieving common goals and milestones.

Our flagship product, Grapido, provides a platform where people can connect and work on ideas and find events, seminars and workshops based on their areas of interest. This will help them to nurture their skills and also reclaim their passion while pursuing their degrees.

The network section allows you to become a part of communities which engage in healthy discussions on various subjects. The profile section can help you build a strong professional online presence which can help you in your recruitments.

We incorporated the company in February, 2019 and our journey so far has been astounding. We never thought we would come this far and learn so much in just a couple of months. We had a small team when we started but slowly we started growing.

Internally, we had a lot of disagreements and hot discussions because of all the pressure to cope up with the college work and the startup, but we came out stronger and grew wiser. While a few were not able to manage and left the venture, a lot more joined in.

Currently, we have teams in several colleges who work closely with Inception Wave and represent IW in their premises. We have provided internships to thousands of students in different domains such as Web Design, Marketing and Business Development, HR Management, Graphic Design and Content Creation etc.

We have been successful in running campaigns and have 37 communities till now with 3000+ participants altogether. We intend to keep growing and providing this wonderful learning experience.

2. How did you come up with this idea and go about executing it?

When I entered the first year of my college, I used to be surrounded by a lot of people but I never really figured what they liked to do and what were their aspirations. Everyone was a stranger to each other.

But being a trailblazer who couldn’t sit idle, I wanted to find people who were more like me so that I can brainstorm with them and think of creative solutions to the widespread problems. The idea of Grapido hit me for the first time when I found it really difficult to meet individuals with similar interests and aspirations.

In the second year of my college, I tried to build this platform by myself, but due to lack of required technical expertise, I failed miserably. Then and there, I realised the value and necessity of such a product even more.

In third year, Yash and I became flatmates. That was the first time when we were discussing something and he suggested an idea very similar to what I was thinking. He was trying to build that while I was learning other aspects of the business.

That’s when it hit us that we can accumulate the beneficial features and remove the contradicting ones to build an amazing product, Grapido. We started skipping lectures to streamline our idea and put it into execution. And that was it. We never stopped after that.

3. What has been your biggest challenge that you faced and how did you overcome that?

Either of us were students who belonged to middle class families. But finance was never the biggest challenge for us. Being a tech based startup, we kept the expenses minimal and invested all of our savings in company registration, legal work and other starter expenses.

The biggest challenge for us was to find the right people to work with and to squeeze time out of our everyday schedule. Being a college student, we were mostly occupied with our projects, assignments and exams. And just like us, our friends were equally preoccupied.

We had to struggle a lot in order to find motivated individuals who can juggle well between college and the startup. It took time but we did overcome it one way or the other. We built teams across colleges and involved more and more people with us. While everyone was preparing for the placements, we overlooked the pros of it and devoted our time to Inception Wave.

4. What do you think are the most important qualities of a successful entrepreneur?

According to me, I believe that the most important qualities of a successful entrepreneur are patience, perseverance and consistency. An entrepreneur should be always optimistic but must be able to think rationally and assess the risks as well.

There are days and weeks where we made no progress at all, or everything we did resulted in a miserably failed attempt. But we still stand strong because my team’s never giving up attitude.

“Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” - Winston Churchill

5. What are some of the most important factors for running a successful business?

A successful business starts with a right business idea and a right timing to execute it. With the abundance of ideas available in the market, the idea worth selling is the one which is novel and reduces the pain of any user in one way or the other.

Once you start putting your ideas out and build them, the next step is to continuously improve it. Your customers/users should be constantly happy and satisfied with your products/services. If not, you should do everything in your power to rectify the errors.

One last important factor that I think is the leader who guides and mentors the whole team. He/ She should be able to instil the vision into others as well and be friendly but also be strict and stern whenever needed.

6. What are your tips for first time and aspiring entrepreneurs?

Being a fledgling myself, I can firmly say that any aspiring entrepreneur should always aim at innovating and catering to the needs of the society rather than expecting for something in return. There should be a smart business plan to generate revenue at some point of time but money should never be the first agenda while building something.

Secondly, even after back to back failures, a person should never give up because failure is a part of any process. Failure comes first in the process and then the success and all the recognition. I firmly believe that failures make you humble and everyone should be able to acknowledge it.

7. How can one overcome a hurdle of lack of funds when starting up?

While starting up, bootstrapping for the funds is the best option. One can always reach out to investors but it comes with a lot of responsibility and accountability. You also lose ownership too early. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, it's just not ideal for early stage startups (is what I believe).

An entrepreneur should know how to save money and invest in the right place. There are many other ways to generate funds as well i.e. participating in competitions and hackathons. The prize money comes with no strings no attached, rather it helps entrepreneurs to connect with similar people.

“If money can fix a problem, then it really isn't a problem” - Kim Kadarshian

8. Which is your favourite book and why?

I’ve read a couple of books from different genres, but my personal preference is entrepreneurial books and even more if it's a biography. The one that I liked the most is the biography of Elon Musk (Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future) by Ashlee Vance.

The book traces Elon Musk's life from his childhood up to the time he spent at Zip2 and PayPal, and then onto SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity. Reading that one single biography has been an incredible learning experience for me.

I’ve been following him and his ventures for a long time now and I am always a little more awestruck when I read/hear something new about him. The guy lives his life on his own terms and builds companies for the sake of humanity and development.

Some other amazing reads are Crushing It!: How Great Entrepreneurs Build Their Business and Influence-and How You Can, Too by Gary Vaynerchuk, The Lean Startup by Eric Ries, Zero to One by Peter Thiel, Start With Why by Simon Sinek and Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.