At BrilliantRead Media, our aim is to bring to our community some of the unique and compelling stories from the start-up ecosystem. As part of this endeavour, we invited passionate entrepreneur – Bhupesh Deshmukh, for an exclusive interview with us. Bhupesh is the Founder Of Inception X. His startup Inception X is an experiential marketing company that is committed to redefining the concept of interactivity, with a focus on the exciting fields of Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Artificial Intelligence Gesture Tracking, Sensor Technology and various digital marketing technologies. Let’s learn more about his exciting journey as an entrepreneur, his background and his advice for our growing community!
Excerpts from our exclusive interview with him:
Talk us through your background and your journey as an entrepreneur so far, please;
So I did my engineering (B.E) from my hometown Akola (MH), which is about 600 KM from Mumbai and then I moved to Mumbai to pursue MBA. After finishing my post-graduation I worked with multiple small-time advertising agencies in Mumbai for a couple of years.
It was all hardcore business development. That experience helped me a lot in terms of understanding the different aspects of running a small business. I then reached a saturation point where I always kept on thinking of doing something of my own.”
That is when I thought about starting a company that specialises in Augmented & Virtual Reality Domains since it was fairly a new sector at the time we started. I had to borrow 15 K from a longtime friend of mine and another friend lent me 25 k and let me use her house address for company registration (the most important step in starting a company)
We started Inception X in July 2015 with a vision to become one of the leading Augmented & Virtual Reality Company in the world/globally
In the past few years, our team has gone through a lot of tough times, but that’s what great companies/teams are all about. Tough times don’t last, tough people, do.
Inception X is known in the industry as a creator of innovative, immersive & exciting interactive experiences. One of our latest work is for MTV Reality Show “ Super Model Of The Year”, An Augmented Reality Experience with an important message of “Save Tigers”
Inception X has always delivered on its commitment because in service industry consumer trust is the single most important factor that can make or break a start-ups future
Why did you choose entrepreneurship over a job?
As cliche as it may sound, I didn’t choose to become an entrepreneur but entrepreneurship chose me, although I always had a sense of independence and want to conquer new horizons. It’s really not easy to actually quit a well-paid job and follow your passion where there’s no stability of what the future holds, nevertheless after working for 7 years in the advertising and marketing industries, I realized I do possess the skills required to own and operate my own organization. We started Inception X in July 2015 with a vision to become one of the leading Augmented & Virtual Reality Company globally.
How do you find the industry/niche that you’re in?
The industry is highly competitive but with clean competition comes good learning and with good learning comes great innovations. I personally feel in today’s day and age we have great opportunities to innovate and expand and yes, it sure is difficult but worth it all at the end. The Augmented, Mixed and Virtual Reality domain is still in its infancy and going further it will certainly have a huge part to play in a common man’s life
What gets you out of bed in the morning i.e. what’s your source of motivation?
My responsibilities and the love for my Vision is the motivation that gets me out of bed every single day. The very fact that I love the work I do, my clients are happy, my employees enjoy working with me on our Vision, what more I could ask for. Also being an entrepreneur in itself is a motivation to get me out of bed. I’m the leader if I don’t show responsibility how my subordinates would want to work for me.
What challenges/obstacles did you face in your journey so far?
The biggest obstacle that we faced is generating continuous revenues since we are a bootstrapped company. We needed to win back to back projects in order to bill our clients and then reinvest the money earned through these projects back into the company. So it’s an extremely vicious and risky bet that we had to take all the time.
Another challenge was to win new businesses, our hit ratio has always been anywhere between 60 to 70% which is quite good in terms of B2B sales. Without this kind of hit ratio, we wouldn’t have survived. Since it is extremely difficult for a start-up like ours to find decent business development people in the early stages.
What comes first for you – money or emotions?
I’d be lying if I said money isn’t important but definitely you’ll be affected by the emotions much more.
You tend to invest a lot more emotionally when you start something from scratch and it makes you a tougher person most definitely. Any business demands emotions and the money part is the reason why you do what you’re doing, I’m just lucky I get the money while we march forward towards achieving our Vision
How do you handle the pressure and manage stress?
To me, the best way to handle pressure is to talk to people who are expert in their particular domains. Such people can provide valuable inputs to the issues that one is facing and thus it brings the pressure levels down and helps in finding a reasonable solution.
Another option that I have always used is to watch interesting interviews of business personalities on YouTube / social media about the pressure issues that they faced and I’m facing in current scenarios.
What is one strategy that you believe has helped you grow as a person?
Every business has risks, no business is risk-free but overcoming every challenge with a positive attitude and thinking of every challenge as an opportunity to learn from.
In your opinion what are the keys to success?
ATTITUDE IS EVERYTHING.
The right attitude brings about a lot of change in a person’s personal as well as professional life. When you have the right attitude everything comes to you as an opportunity to enhance your skills and spread your wings. A positive attitude will always lead to positive outcomes no matter how difficult the situation may be.
What advice would you give to someone starting out as an aspiring entrepreneur?
“The grass is always greener on the other side,” the truth is, “The grass is greener where you water it.”
You can’t expect entrepreneurship to be a walk in a garden; it’s actually a rollercoaster ride. Consistency leads to smooth sailing in any organization. The more value you add the more value you’ll get out of it.
Always deliver on your commitments 365 days, 24 hrs. Be brutally honest with your customers
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.
