What we dream of, it’s not necessary you get it, but if you don’t try for it then better don’t Dream!
Rishav Agarwal, Born and Bought up in Asansol a Tier-ll City in West Bengal. Coming from a typical Marwari Business Family where I saw my father and uncles struggling to provide 2 Times meal to sending me to an English Medium School and seeing Growth and Hardship Journey in my Family.
I completed my schooling from Nursery to 12 from Burnpur Riverside School and was an average student always and always had fear of speaking to Random People and Definitely not able to speak much with Girls. In my entire School life, I never spoke by standing on Stage in Morning Assembly just standing once for a Theatre Act.
Completed my 10th with an Average Grade and Took science because till now no one in my family took Science.
Was good at Maths and Chemistry but somehow but studying I managed to pass with Average marks and started applying to multiple colleges for Engineering, my Father said me to apply to all Colleges Preferably in West Bengal itself but I wanted to go somewhere else since in my entire 18 Years of life till then I never went anywhere else apart from Kolkata and Jaipur.
Somehow I managed to get into SRM University Chennai in 2015 in the IT department and got admission there and finalized that I am gonna study there. My father told me once complete my Graduation and then I need to look after Family Business, but yes he never forced me or asked me for anything.
Entering an unknown city Chennai and stepping out alone for the first time my fear of speaking with people didn’t go off. Rather I have still had a problem of Fumbling and Speaking out of Smooth English so I refrained from speaking to many people. And once again never interacted with Girls being in IT Department.
But Luckily I started getting friends and they are still my best friends from my College life with whom I started speaking a lot and began things.
For my Entire first Year, I was focused on my studies because had a mindset of becoming an Amazing Developer and getting a Handsome Package and even I got good grades in my first two semesters.
Staying in Hostel during my first year I enjoyed it a lot but didn’t want to stay more in Hostel and moved out to a Rented Apartment from here on I started finding different stages and Challenges in life.
Accidentally I applied to a Marketing WFH internship in a company named Nearbuy and started doing tasks which they were providing, but I never had an idea what it was. For doing some tasks I used to approach my friends to help some of my best one’s did help and some told me “C**** hai kya*
But since I was learning I kept doing it and I started liking it and I did amazing and stood top performer and kept on getting promoted to Cluster Manager, City Head, etc but along I kept applying for Internships in any Random Companies in the field of Operations, Marketing, Campus Ambassador, Content Writing, Human Resources, etc all had nothing to do with the degree I was pursuing and I ended up doing 43 Internships in the entire second year of my college. During that time work included getting downloads on the app majorly for which again I used to hear from random people so many times “C**** hai kya, Insab se kuch nahi hoga” but I wanted to do it since I took work and need to complete it.
During that time my grades dropped slightly but not that much but I never got detained or failed in any subject, additionally, my parents or any of my family members never asked me what’s my grades.
As I entered the 3rd year I came up with an idea based on the understanding and learning I had from Internships and saw a huge gap that can be solved. Witnessed that Companies while looking for interns had a tough phase and they ended up paying higher costs in Management, Productivity, and Hiring leading to consumption of Resource and Time. Right from Shortlisting Interns, Forming Groups, Allotting Work, Explaining Work, Managing them, Reporting, and ultimately rewarding Stipend/Certificates a huge timeline was involved.
On the other side, I was an intern along with fellow interns who often felt that we aren’t getting regular replies from Companies, and adding to that even after completing certain internship Certificate/Stipends were delayed.
To overcome this I formed a group of friends with whom I did an Internship and started approaching some companies where I had interned to take their work related to Marketing which consisted of App Downloads, Social Media Activities, User Acquisition, and much more, and started meeting through them. And set up my first company named INTEGER Innovation which focused on Campus Training and Outsourcing works.
But still even taking the first project I wasn’t aware of what kind of Contract needed to be signed with the company and even after getting the work done effectively company didn’t make my payment of 40K which was certainly a huge amount for me. During that moment I had two ways either not pay to one’s who worked on a certain project and close everything and people wouldn’t have trusted me back or pay from my pocket by managing somehow to build trust among people.
Decided to go with the second and anyhow managed to clear everything, for the entire third year of my college I tested and tried this idea working on several tasks and built a Proof of Concept, and started having decent revenue inflow.
For an entire year, I kept on doing and experimenting with multiple things across without thinking of making a product and making some profit and thought of Forming my Company and Registering the entity named Floatex Marketing Solutions Private Limited on 18th July 2018 soon I entered my final year of Engineering.
By this time I made up my mind, I am gonna pursue this along after my degree and won’t sit for Placements and came up with a Product Idea named Picxele by November 2018 and started making the product with three of Flatmates and completed the same by March 2019 and Launched Picxele in June 2019 soon I graduated.
Picxele helps companies meet their on-demand work requirements through trained Gig Workers, where companies pay only for results delivered not for manpower. Through Picxele Companies can meet their requirements through Influencer Marketing, Content Creation, WhatsApp Marketing, User Acquisition, Campus Marketing, Social Media Engagement, Data Entry, Transcription, Merchant Onboarding, Field Operations, Vendor Acquisition, Account Management, Online Survey, Mystery Auditing, Market Research, Data Collection, On-Field Surveys, Product Sampling, Online Reputation Management, Lead Generation, Geo-tagging, Identity Verification, Telephonic Customer Support, Screening Resources and much more.
Moved to Noida and did set my office and started working with a team of 4 Members and Tushar Bhatia my Friend and COO of Picxele also left his well-paid job to join Picxele and came up with Vision and we started scaling slowly and got around 20K users until March 2020 with decent Revenue for the Fiscal Year and then Pandemic hit our Country and things started moving online.
Moved back to Asansol in March 2020 but had a fear of getting affected by the pandemic and panic around but as we say Hardwork gives Fruitful results we did grow and got around the next 2L users in Fiscal year FY21 with a 10X Jump and also our Revenue Boosted 3X and planned to raise round to scale the Product and grow my company and started talking to investors from April 2021 and had multiple discussions until June 2021 and got a couple of commitments from Angels and VCs but dropped the plan to raise and decided to remain bootstrapped due to self-belief.
Also began my Journey as Angel Investor from January 2021 and invested in 6 Startups until October 2021 and been Mentoring and helping fellow student Entrepreneurs as they need major handholding and support in their startup journey and coming from that background I can definitely sense that when no one believed or supported me.
In this entire Journey as an Individual I got various perspectives of different people, Many cheated in terms of Money, Many in terms of trust, Many looked out for taking advantage, and much more. What I believed is being honest to yourself and others yes the Journey of being honest is tuff but definitely, it gives a sense of self-satisfaction by end of the day. Today after 2 Years of a full-time startup Journey without raising a Penny and scaling to 3.5L users and with working with around 200+ Companies the thing which I am left with honesty and credibility and yes growth must not be that accelerated but have an inner belief of doing things along.
I always advise Young Student Entrepreneurs in India that only startup if you want to startup don’t get fascinated by the term Entrepreneurship and jump without knowing consequences and never make raising funds your first and only priority to run your startup.