At Brilliant Read Media, we always strive to bring you meaningful and powerful stories from India and around the world to empower and motivate our growing community of business leaders, investors, management students and aspiring entrepreneurs. This week we invited yet another passionate entrepreneur Shivam Dhawan for an exclusive interview with us. Shivam is a Seasoned Entrepreneur, Leader, Strategist, and the Founder of VideoWiki. Let’s learn more about his inspiring journey, his way forward and his advice for our growing community!
Excerpts from our exclusive interview with Shivam:
We are aware of your contribution to the ecosystem, talk us through your background and your journey as an entrepreneur, please;
Like many people in this generation, I was finding purpose in work and work in a purpose. So, after 5 years of corporate life, spanning multiple continents, I decided to take a chance at the things I really wanted to do. So I wrapped up my corporate high paying job and went out to set up a startup.
Little did I know of the path in front of me. With many assumptions going wrong and reality hitting me hard. My savings ran out quickly, funding was a myth despite a promising proposition. The marketing went viral on launch but the product failed to deliver. This was the rock-bottom from where on I decided to slowly build a life that I wanted while realizing that yes, it is going to take time and probably a couple more tries at it.”
Cutting the story short of travelling multiple countries like, how I was excited of Dublin Web-Summit selection, how I ended up training in Barbados, how I got a paid masters title work-study opportunity in Barcelona, how I visited China for a possible long stay, how I got invited to Kuwait with work and stay permit but didn’t pursue, and then got invited to Iran for a PhD in entrepreneurship and then finally a startup Visa for Portugal, and now a six month stay in Iceland as Covid cut the strings lose again.
Life, at one point, was falling so fast, just to realize later that its part of the roller coaster ride I was (and am) at.”
What attracts you towards entrepreneurship instead of a corporate career?
I chose to work what I like to do, be it entrepreneurship or a job. I always want to make a positive impact on any environment that I am working in. I don’t despise a corporate job, it has given me so much too, respect, opportunities, learning and amazing mentors who I still seek advice from.
I have always been an entrepreneur with a curious hustle along. You see – happiness is when you create something from the scratch. It takes a lot of courage, perseverance, hard work, teamwork, combined with good execution skills and even a lot of luck. Some setbacks are so discouraging that no logical person would carry on but yet here we are illogical beings making unstructured choices getting out of the predefined zone.
Startups are now being recognized as entities and entrepreneurs are being considered a different working class. So now it is the community network effect that keeps you positive, encouraged and alive.”
‘VideoWiki’ is such a unique name; talk us through more about it, please. Our audience would also love to know what kind of problem you are solving with the help of your start-up?
The project originated through a hackathon and was named ‘ed4u’ initially, after the success of the hackathon I was explaining the project to my mentor, and he was excited and mentioned it to be the video Wikipedia as in ‘VideoWiki’ and the name made so much more sense. It almost has all the essence of what we are doing and want to accomplish as in:
Project VideoWiki is the immersive encyclopedia of the future, sustained and driven by a global community.”
It is an Open Collaboratory Content Editing Platform that enables rapid Creation, Modification, Protection, and Monetization of Immersive Content.
What’s new in the world with VideoWiki?
An estimate of 1.5 billion students has been affected worldwide due to the pandemic. more than 90% of students are impacted due to school and university closures. Learning has been disrupted due to the pandemic. There is a requirement for a new education model.
As the solution is born to counter the disruptions caused by COVID,
~ Assisted immersive content generation using AI without advanced tool or tech knowledge
~ Collaborative Authoring of content with Distributed Ownership and Share of Financial Remuneration
~ Reputation and Influence scores for the participants that allow for community intelligence for content ranking and moderation
What are the business mantras you have embraced as you sought to establish your success story?
1 – Never let go of good people.
2 – Life is too short to not try and is long enough to make things happen.
3 – Do not forget to live in the in-betweens.
How do you manage yourself and keep on going despite the challenges? What drives you?
Knowing that we are creating value for others is a good enough reason to get to work every morning. It is a lifestyle choice now. Sometimes I am motivated myself, as I love creating value when I am not inspired, I try to find inspiration from the people I work with and often times I am the one motivating others with challenging visions. Each small step is a unique reward.
What are the three most important lessons you have learned building your startup?
It takes longer than you expect.
Given the rapid pace at which the world is changing, what are the leadership traits that are necessary for success?
a) Adaptability
b) Courage
c) Forward-thinking
In your opinion – what is more necessary: Idea or a good team for a successful startup?
That looks like a trick question. You need so much in successful start-up. There is no secret or one way to ensure success. Start-up, by its definition, is an innovation, in process, or technology, or marketing, or anything that has a perceived new value.
So there are startups solely based on patented unique ideas, and some only with an execution team that took something ordinary and whacked it up 100 times. So I think, any combination of factors can make a startup successful and sometimes even having all the right ingredients it could fail for unforeseen reasons.
You are always positive and motivated, what keeps you going?
If not then what?
We would love to know your advice for all those starting out as an aspiring entrepreneur?
There is no one way of doing things, entrepreneurship, like all games, becomes more fun when you realize it is just a game. Keep on playing and enjoying it.
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.
