As part of our quest to identify and share some of the meaningful stories from India and around the world, this week we invited passionate and seasoned entrepreneur Shikhar Chadha for an interview with us. He is the Founder of The Tarzan Way. Shikhar plunged into entrepreneurship when he was just 19 and managed to grow the business significantly.
His startup The Tarzan Way is a travel & tech-based venture that aims at simlifying travel for its users. Let’s learn more about his interesting journey as an entrepreneur, challenges he encountered and his advice for our community of aspiring individuals.
Excerpts from our exclusive interview with Shikhar:
Tell us a bit about yourself (background) and your journey as an entrepreneur, please;
I am going to start by saying that I am your regular 21-year old, who keeps getting different and crazy ideas everyday. I like to play piano, and guitar in my free time. I, along with my friends (disclaimer, all of them have left now) started this venture when I was 19. We had this vision and we wanted to see that materialize. But what we didn’t know was the amount of hard work it demanded. This is the third makeover of this company.
Started as a backpacking homestay, we moved on to the hostel phase and finally, working on experiential travel programs and our AI-based personalized travel platform. Starting from -1.75L to reaching a turnover of more than 50L has been one journey full of ups and downs.
In that journey, we have crossed several milestones, faced several problems, gained loads of experience but in the end, I can say that it has been completely worth it so far.
What is your most striking quality?
Along with all the major victories, I also celebrate all the little accomplishments. See, I believe most of the time people living in the start-up climate stress out by thinking that they are underperforming and they can achieve more, and in this process, they lose sight with the ground reality. What I believe in, is that we also have to give credit to ourselves for all the little battles we win. Be it securing a relatively smaller client, be it improving the design of the product, whatever the thing is, if you think it somehow improves the current status quo then it means you have done something good.
How do you manage your stress?
I deal with a lot of problems, on a daily basis, so it is natural that sometimes I get stuck on problems and become stressed out. But I have also realized that I have to maintain my calm and composure and take every decision with guarded rationality as it is not just me who is affected but the company, the employees and all the associated clients as well.
I have devised a rather simple plan to beat the stress. Whenever I sense that the environment is getting too overwhelming, I take a five minutes timeout. I do nothing but breathe with my eyes closed. I do not think about the problem, nor do I think about the solution. I just try to remind myself that “Why am I doing what I am doing”. I think this tradition has helped me a lot.
On a side note, I do engage in writing poetry; I also love playing my piano and believe that listening to indie pop music or doing little chores like washing the dishes is therapeutic for me.
Why do you want money or success?
When I started, we had no money. We had to take a loan without even telling our families. The reason was, we knew that our parents would not allow us to take this huge risk.
What I am trying to say is that I don’t know how we sailed through, but we did. With this, I would like to set up an example for all those young minds who are aspiring to be entrepreneurs that it doesn’t matter whether you are earning or not as long as you have a vision and the willpower to do what it takes.
Money is never the objective but the by-product of the arduous journey towards your vision.
What gets you out of bed in the morning i.e. what’s your source of motivation?
Like I said before I like solving problems, but, according to me, that is not enough in itself. You also have to be persistent enough to look for a solution as well. We have faced many problems in our journey so far, some little, some huge, but they’re almost always had been a solution, provided we were determined enough to look for it. What motivates me is that every time I solve a problem, I take a giant leap in the direction of my vision. This for me is physically exhilarating
How important is connecting with the people for you?
I envision creating a platform where there is a 100% transparency to the customers. I want it to be the world’s favourite and go-to brand in this industry.
It is very important to me how the customers feel when they hear our name. It is important to me that when people travel with us, they feel that unique homely experience away from their homeland. I want people to connect with our brand. I want my company to be a part of their lives and become their habit.
What challenges/obstacles did you face in your journey so far?
There have been loads of obstacles and failures so far, in fact, our failures have been at least 10 times more than our successes. Something which immediately strikes my mind is, cleaning our whole office space for the first time; One obstacle which we faced a lot of times was, that we had to re-do whatever we were doing since startup is not a straight road, and a lot of times you’ve to get back, review and start again, then finding the right team and adding to that, loads of rejections from clients, from investors and what not! The major obstacle which I recently faced was my co-founder leaving, since we had been working and living together since past 3 years, and getting over this was a huge deal since co-founder relationships are a lot like marriage.
Out of everything, I believe that the biggest obstacle was the perception my friends and family had of the start-up culture. I am not going to say that they were actively rooting against me, but there were times when I felt that I had no one on my side. I didn’t even ask any of my family and friends because I thought that it would just add on to the notion that my idea is going to fail. This sometimes became suffocating for me.
But I guess time is the biggest teacher and luckily after making a hundred mistakes I no longer have this problem. My family and friends have also recognized my talent and now have shown active support for me as well.
Do you have any regrets? If yes, then what is your biggest regret so far?
As a matter of fact, I do. My biggest regret so far would be that I couldn’t build a more emotional and personal bond with my ex co-founder. We used to spend loads of hours together, talking about work, life, other stuff in general, but I somehow feel we could’ve connected more on a personal level.
We were the best of friends, who used to live as well as work together, but we never discussed fully each others’ problems, and yeah, I feel I could’ve taken some initiative in that sense.
What advice would you give to someone starting out as an aspiring entrepreneur?
My advice to all aspiring entrepreneurs is; Start small, but start soon. You should be confident in your idea and should be streamlined in your operations. You should not just worry about capital and investments, rather try to create a sustainable venture which is aligned with your mission. Although difficult, it is essential to take risks.
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.
