It is always our endeavour to share with our community some of the compelling stories on entrepreneurship. One such story is of Amanveer Singh who is a passionate entrepreneur. We invited him for an interview with us to share his journey with us. He is the founder of Westart CoWorking Space. Let’s read more about how he started his entrepreneurial journey while he was just a student and how he managed to come this far!
Excerpts from our exclusive interview with him:
Tell us a little bit about yourself and your startup please;
I come from a really humble family and am the only non-engineer family member. Being the youngest of the siblings, I was allowed to experiment with as many things as possible, this led me form an entrepreneurial bent of mind from the very beginning. I often organised farewell parties and conceptualised various events and activities across schools for some extra pocket money and I loved doing it.
Then, I went to Delhi university to pursue my bachelors but soon realised that the formal education is not something I’m meant for. I have always believed in challenging status-quo and acquiring skills, self education and knowledge by experimenting. I was just 20 when I opened a restaurant and this happened when I was pursuing my graduation, Due to its significant success, I managed to sell it for good profit within 2.5 years of starting that venture. Since I wanted to build a more scalable and robust business, this led me to be a fellow at ‘Founders Institute’ and also apply for NMIMS for my MBA.
My first stint with food startup always stopped me from having orthodox education and hence I dropped my NMIMS plans even before joining my 1st lecture. I continued my fellowship with ‘Founders Institute’ and invested family fund of about 500k USD in real estate across various cities.
I invested the money I was able to make from my earlier ventures in a coworking space business in 2017 and started ‘Westart Coworking Space’. We reached break-even within 2 years and I went on to become a part of the startup leadership program in 2017 as a fellow and also became a co-prog leader in the year 2018. This fellowship is considered as one of the most prestigious fellowship for founders and entrepreneurs.
We are now on an expansion spree and are soon opening 3 more venues from October onwards which would help us reach revenues of around 2.5 crores.
In 2019, we also ventured into the social consumer brand that essentially helps us have a social impact while we sell our products. We are launching a slew of products for women in the healthcare and skincare sector and all our profits from this venture will go straight in women hygiene, women self-help groups and maternity healthcare in the rural sectors of India.
How do you find the industry/niche that you’re in?
Both the coworking business and women consumer brand have some tough and competitive landscape. Hence, we needed to be better by at least by 5x. Both the companies are strategically pacing towards creating a significant difference in the market and carving our own niche and audience.
Coworking space was a relatively new business in India when we started and it has reached its prime. Whereas we believe that genuine and natural skin and healthcare products always have a market since customers are getting really conscious about what to use and consume.
What gets you out of bed in the morning i.e. what’s your source of motivation?
For me, creating value in whatever I do has always been a constant source of motivation. Just building a company for profits was never the agenda behind founding a company. Each business transaction we do, we make sure that some part of that goes to our pledge of making an impact to our society. Right now, one of our focus is on having an impact on environment by integrating sustainable manufacturing practices within our lines of businesses.
Our consumer brand also focuses on creating innovative products for women which helps their lifestyle, altogether.
What is one strategy that you believe has helped grow your startup/person?
Being non-complacent and paranoid about what could have lead us to build a new and more valuable plus sustainable products for all our consumers.
Building lean strategies across marketing, sales and operations have helped us immensely in keeping our company and revenues sustainable.
How do you handle the pressure and manage stress?
We have a great team and a wide spectrum of mentors who help us keep everything under check. We have a good set of practices in place. While losing money each month always puts a lot of pressure on a person while he or she is striving to put some value on the table and also, while one is in his early 20’s, self-doubt too is something that puts stress because the stakes are high in the business. But like I said, you have to learn to deal with these things to strive further particularly when you have such a vision. I have to balance out things to keep evolving and to keep moving forward. I personally take it as positive element of running a business.
In your opinion what are the keys to entrepreneurial success?
Just be as raw as possible, don’t be afraid of making mistakes and never be complacent. One grows as a person as the business grows, setbacks help you mature as a founder. There is still a lot more to learn as we step into newer and bigger ventures.
What advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs?
My advice to all the aspiring entrepreneurs is – Do what you believe in, add value to the lives of people through your business as much as possible and you will never run out of money to run your business. Build a sustainable venture and have patience, since good things take time to shape up.
BrilliantRead is committed to bringing stories from the startup ecosystem. Stories that reshape our perspective, add value to our community and be a constant source of motivation not just for our community but also for the whole ecosystem of entrepreneurs and aspiring individuals.
Note: If you have a similar story to share with our audience and would like to be featured on our online magazine, then please write to us at [email protected], we will review your story and extend an invitation to feature if it is worth publishing.
