Entrepreneurs Are Successful Only Due to Strategic Forecasting and the Ability to Scout Opportunities - Chavi Agarwal


CView is a software development, profile building and CV creating start-up that combines Artificial Intelligence and Human Expertise to help students and job seekers in profile building that helps them acquire their dream job. With our vision to
assist budding students & recruits, we seek you as a quality platform to reach out and introduce our services to students and professionals through sharing insights on professional development.


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

CVIEW

CView is an organisation in Career-Technology which has built India’s first end-to- End ATS compliant CV Service to alleviate the issues youth globally faces due to Lack of right Job- Person fit and awareness of ATS compliance leaving the youth unsatisfied and unmotivated as they settle for suboptimal opportunities.

We understand how difficult it gets to cope up with these issues and hence provide profile building hacks and CV curation services along with all possible updates.

CView’s in-house Application Tracking System (ATS) has similar capabilities to any robust MNC based ATS system. Its design and results are unmatched and their CV’s increase the customer’s chances of getting an interview call from MNCs, MSMEs and Start-ups by 60%.

Chavi Agarwal and Journey

Ms Chavi Agarwal, Founder & CEO of CView is an entrepreneur with a demonstrated experience in Career Technology and ATS software development. She did her Bachelor’s in Finance from Warwick Business School, UK. The fire to be an entrepreneur and the urge to create something tangible for people around her led her to pursue a Master’s degree in Innovation Entrepreneurship and Financial Technology from Imperial College, London. 

It was at the Imperial College that she finally honed the idea of doing something for the students and recruits seeing the issues students face while applying for jobs globally. She has worked in eminent startups and one of the Big4s in the field of Mergers and Acquisitions. She has mentored more than 1000 students and has given 100+ webinars all across the globe to actively contribute to the student and youth community.


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

IDEA

Ms. Agarwal saw a huge gap in the market between the recruits and the employers. She noticed that students did not know the importance of an effective CV and did not even know that their CV went to certain software called the Applicant Tracking System and not to a human anymore. 

She observed that maximum applications globally are rejected because of a poor CV. Upon research in the market, she also realized that existing services are generic and create CVs out of prototype templates. 

This is when she combined her knowledge from personal experiences with her learning in artificial intelligence and machine learning and started CView, a software development company that combines AI and Human expertise to guide students with their first impression into a firm- their CV.

She combined her human expertise with artificial software and built an in-house Applicant Tracking System to easily churn out CVs so the students would be able to get better opportunities. She was able to see scope in this field which is still manual, in a technologically heavy environment. It had to be internet-based since she did not want to territorially restrict her organisation to simply one country.

EXECUTION

An idea is only as good as its execution or trial The starting point of working on the idea should be laying it down in a tangible form rather than having it in your mind. To follow this, one should start by doing a market research and competitor analysis. 

Start by easy tools like SWOT and PESTLE analysis along with perception mapping. Once viability is observed, one needs to follow it up with a strong hypothesis testing or trial execution to see the loopholes, issues, advantages, disadvantages and advancements to be able to constantly better your offering and value proposition.


Quick tips on working on your idea :

  • Talk to potential customers by offering concessions in the beginning to understand the market better
  • Talk to industry mates and network with entrepreneurs 
  • Leverage portal like LinkedIn to learn about your market and connect with like minded people
  • Have feedback forms and questionnaires to constantly understand the customer
  • Hypothesis testing and group testing are key 
  • Competitive analysis and monitoring of what competitors are providing


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

As a woman entrepreneur, especially in Technology, she faced the following two challenges:

Firstly, people, investors, partners and collaborators kept second-guessing her commitment and hence the longevity of the business. As a woman entrepreneur, she saw herself constantly working harder to showcase her passion, ambition and her long-term vision. She found herself explaining her vision and the enormity of it more than any male counterpart would ever have to.

Secondly, people expect women to be working in women-oriented businesses and the challenge then is to constantly face an ongoing perception battle. Although, what keeps her going is the fire and the urge to provide a new and improved value proposition to the youth, globally.

Apart from that, the organisation has to continuously educate customers about the ATS as most people do not understand the importance of it and thus, this results in a high customer acquisition effort and cost which is quite a challenge.


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

Deciding to be an entrepreneur itself is very admirable and appreciable as there is nothing more courageous or empowering as being one. I personally believe a few general or common qualities I have observed in the entrepreneurs I admire are - perseverance and belief. Personally, in my humble experience entrepreneurs are successful only due to strategic forecasting and the ability to scout opportunities.


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

Any venture is as successful as its satisfied customers and results they ought to reap from your value proposition. My five quick tips on successful ventures are -
  • Customer orientation and satisfaction is key
  • Keep on researching the market and its corollaries, never think you know everything about it 
  • Think of trends 5 years later in order to create strong foundations today
  • Learn to waste your effort, as wasted effort helps you build strategies, patience and smarter methods to do the same things. 
  • Cancel the negative noise around you, your ideas and your working. 

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

"As a budding female entrepreneur, I cannot stress enough on the fact that you really do not need high investments or a million-dollar plan. You can leverage your skills, existing platforms and tools available to create value and establish something you enjoy doing. 

We had a 0 INR investment and have a 92% profit ratio at the moment through our bootstrapping efforts. You just need the will and the urge to create value for people and address existing problems in the market. We are constantly told to innovate something unique, be disruptors and create new markets to be called an entrepreneur. 

That is not true, you can be innovative in the way you tackle a problem by creating a new value proposition for the market."



- Interviewed by - Sanjana Jain