1. Tell us more about your company and your journey.
Dalham is a new-age multidisciplinary education enterprise.
We are the first organization in the country which delves deeper into the
application of social sciences and humanities in the world of technology and
artificial intelligence. We have micro-learning programs of 21st-century
skills and liberal education courses which are integrated as minors in
university elective programs primarily for engineering and management
institutes in India. Our program helps students get a broader understanding of
society, culture, and people and helps them shape better opinions about their new
jobs that are emerging and the new world that they are preparing themselves
for.
Personally, I have been in the education space for almost a decade. Being an entrepreneur for almost 12 years, Dalham is my second innings. In my previous avatar, I built Great Place to Study, which works with schools and certifies them based on happiness and student satisfaction. Great Place to Study as a brand got acquired in 2020 by an American organization, and they're spreading its wings across different countries around the world.
2. How did you come up with this idea and go about executing
it?
The idea was very simple. I thought that education needs to
change based on the economic condition of the nation. If we look at the past 75
years of Indian independence, we have been struggling to create employability and
new jobs. Though there has been incremental growth in particular sectors that
has created financial independence in many families in our country, it is only
applicable primarily to the top 25-30%. Automatically, the need for education must
change based on demand and supply. So largely, India has been a labour economy
driven nation wherein we have been the supplier of services, be it coding,
internet, technology, and any other service-related activity. When a nation must
transform from going from being labour-economy driven to a thinker-economy
driven system, we also need to parallelly prepare young minds and students for
similar kinds of roles and responsibilities.
It has been globally acknowledged that liberal education prepares
students not just for a particular job but for life and makes them resilient to
change. Being better thinkers, they are better problem solvers and better
communicators. With this, when they are skilled in any discipline, be it
coding, marketing, or data sciences, they will become better performers. It
will lead to new innovations and better implementation in whatever the younger
generation is doing.
We saw the opportunity for liberal education with New Education
Policy 2020 coming in place, as it makes holistic growth of students a priority.
NEP requires every college, every program, and every course to become more
holistic and multidisciplinary. So as an organization, we don’t just come as a
curriculum partner, we are an ecosystem bringing holistic growth for the
students alongside their current education. For example, if you are a computer
science student in college, you can do psychology in business, Public Policy
and Governance or digital anthropology along with your undergraduate education.
This makes you a better computer science engineer with multidisciplinary
learning and problem-solving skills.
3. What has been the biggest challenge that you have faced? And how did you overcome that?
As an entrepreneur, challenges never end. There are different kinds of challenges that you face every day. One of the biggest challenges I have faced on my entrepreneurial journey, and a constant one, is that all the products and solutions that I have been designing and building have been ahead of their time. Dalham is the only venture which I still feel is on time, but still a little ahead. The biggest challenge I face, or rather, as an organization we face, is to educate the mind on the need and the importance of such education. For example, 10 or 20 years ago, being healthy or being well fed was not a part of our lifestyle.
Today, if you look at the number of gyms and
the number of health-conscious activities that have come up, is much more than
the demand, which means that people have started consciously and subconsciously
started practising good and healthy lifestyles. In our case, we are trying to
look at intelligence and knowledge as a lifestyle for all.
A mind should not be constricted to thinking from one
perspective, but it has to think from multiple perspectives that comes with
knowledge. So yes, our biggest challenge is to educate the community on the
need of being curious. Primarily we want the Deans, Principals, and Directors
of institutions to understand why an engineer needs to study history, writing, and
communication, and the list goes on.
4. What do you think are the most important qualities of a successful entrepreneur?
I'm a very small entrepreneur with respect to how society looks at an entrepreneur. But I think one of the key criteria is that you need to, firstly, be self-motivated and be sold to the vision and the idea that you have written for yourself and others and be committed to it. You might be walking alone for years on the idea, but sooner or later, you will find a tribe in a community following you. It’s also important to note that maybe what you're trying to build may not be seen as a great success concerning its economic growth, but maybe you will build something that might turn into a legacy.
So, all you need is passion and commitment. You need to wake up, dream, and
sleep your idea. I think these are very important qualities in an entrepreneur.
From a skill point of view, an entrepreneur needs to be well educated in
finance. Along with finance, compliance is a very important thing that we don’t
focus on when we start up, but these are the two strong pillars to make an
organization successful.
5. What are some of the most important factors for running a successful business?
I think there are two kinds of businesses today. When we
look at a start-up, which values at a billion dollars and generates less than
half a million in revenue, do you refer to that as a success? Or do you refer to
a 50 people team doing healthy business and generating profit successfully?
I belong to the second category. My school of thought says
that a successful business is one where you can drive your vision, implement
your mission statement, keep a healthy work culture, and at the same time you
are generating profit without compromising on ethics or quality. One of the
most important factors for an entrepreneur is to balance yourself between your
cause, your commitment, and your passion versus the economics. It's very, very
important.
6. What are your tips for first-time and aspiring entrepreneurs?
My tip has always been one simple sentence, if you believe in it, go for it. There are two kinds of entrepreneurs who take birth. One who tries to solve a problem and discovers the solution at the right time, scales it up, and brings a big value proposition to the community. The other kind of entrepreneur is artistic, like a filmmaker who doesn't go and survey that there is such a problem which needs a solution. They genuinely believe in what they're trying to build, and that product, solution, service, or organization becomes a habit and lifestyle.
So, computers, smartphones, smart homes, technically, were not a problem, it was a lifestyle issue, and they brought in a better lifestyle. So, my suggestion, recommendation, or tip for first-time and aspiring entrepreneurs is to decide which path you are following. Based on that, be double sure, have clarity, and communicate effectively. If you're solving a problem, be clear about the problem that you're addressing and how big the problem is. And if you're an artistic entrepreneur, be clear about how it is going to influence the human mind, and will they adopt it as a practice and as a habit.
7. How can one overcome the hurdle of lack of funding when starting up?
I think this is a never-ending, vicious circle that we all enter. But I think to overcome this hurdle, you need to know your economy well. So, more than predicting how much you can generate revenue, be clear about how much you will spend in the next 24 months. If you can bank it, if you have that clarity, if you have a fund, then work on your idea daily that you must achieve this goal. But if you are bootstrapping, try to keep your costs as low as possible in the initial phase. Increase them only if you are confident about the demand and supply curve.
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