As part of our ongoing quest to get you meaningful and powerful stories from India and around the world, we invited yet another passionate Entrepreneur and Business Leader – Vikas Chalke for an exclusive interview with BrilliantRead Media. He has over 10 years of experience in building teams and business verticals. He is the Founder and Director of Inventius Technologies Private Limited. Let’s learn more about his journey and his advice for our growing community!
Excerpts from our exclusive interview with Vikas Chalke:
Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey, please;
Being born and brought up in the commercial capital of India, Mumbai; I guess to become an Entrepreneur was an obvious choice for someone like me. Family background was a mix of law enforcement and private sector employees, so predominantly working class.
Hence, the dream of launching own venture and making it successful was always there since childhood. Being from Mumbai based average middle-class family, traits like confidence with a touch of realism, focused aggression and foresight were obvious once. And last 2 decades of industry experience developed acceptable business acumen.”
My Journey in the IT industry has been quite exciting. After learning DotNet development from then Internet Guru of India, Mr Vijay Mukhi, It was quite obvious to get into the cybersecurity industry. Though I started my IT career with Microsoft licensing and Storage sales; but soon entered into security domain and since then sold multiple security solutions for more than one and half-decade. Built successful channel business practices for a couple of Indian ISVs during this period; before venturing into Inventius Technologies.
Last 4 years journey for Inventius Technologies has also been very fascinating. After facing typical startup hurdles like a difference of opinions, cash crunch, lack of market acceptance; ultimately in the third year of business we actually started gaining acceptance from partners as well as ISV community. Over the last 4 years, Inventius has established itself as a Distributor of choice for introducing innovative niche technologies to the Indian market. Today Inventius is looked up as a trusted business launchpad by upcoming Indian ISVs as well as some of the International ISVs from the cybersecurity domain.
Recently we also started exploring few of the overseas territories with and for some of our ISV partners. These are still early days for Inventius in overseas markets, but we are getting good response from couple of these territories as of now; which makes us more confident to explore new routes in this entrepreneurship journey.
How do you find the industry/niche that you’re in?
Cybersecurity is one of the most fast-moving and ever-evolving industry worldwide. Finding a niche in such a fast-paced industry requires continuous market touch and understanding. One always needs to keep his learner’s hat on. Being a Distributor, Inventius is in the centre of the value chain. For us, it’s very important to keep communicating with our customers, partners, industry peers about evolving market conditions, near-future challenges, and realistic market opportunities for near future AND on the other hand also to keep learning what’s new in global markets, which technologies can gain acceptance in our markets, which vendors got aspirations and the right attitude to enter these territories, etc. Continuously finding a niche and keeping ahead of the market is a challenging but equally exciting job and it’s fun. I thoroughly enjoy it.
What gets you out of bed in the morning i.e. what’s your source of motivation?
My mantra of my self-motivation has been simple; “there is a hidden opportunity in every challenge, you just need to identify it and unwrap it.” Running an autonomous and self-sustaining business presents a wide range of challenges cum opportunities for you. You just need to look at every challenge, every problem, each hurdle with a positive attitude and approach. I strongly believe, for being a successful entrepreneur one has to be highly self-motivated and self-disciplined.
What challenges/obstacles did you face in your journey so far?
Apart from typical startup challenges like lack of funds, resources and initial success; we didn’t really face much of challenges. As we have been introducing completely new, unknown and innovative solutions to market, we always knew it’s gonna take time; and we were prepared for that. Though channel fraternity knew me for more than one and half decade, still it was a bit difficult for them to believe in solutions and vendors which we introduced and promoting those customers without having Indian success stories to build confidence to their customers. As we were well-versed with these challenges in advance, from the initial stage we followed multi-pronged and more holistic go to market approach. This really helped us to create market awareness, acceptance and to achieve success for brands which we introduced.
What comes first for you – money or emotions?
Business ethics. My industry network is my strength and I built it over the last 2 decades on the basis of ethics like trust, commitment and transparency.
How do you handle the pressure and manage stress?
I believe pressure and stress are an integral part of human life. There is nothing to worry about. These factors become big, when either you make them big or allow them to grow. If you look @ any problem or challenge with a positive attitude, there is no real need to take undue pressure or stress in any given situation. Just stay calm, stay positive, find the way out and walk on that path.
What is one strategy that you believe has helped you grow as a person?
I’m not sure if we can call it a strategy (I may not); but being honest, humble and courteous helped me throughout my journey till date.
In your opinion what are the keys to success?
Self-belief, commitment, honesty and realism. Be gracious enough to accept your mistakes and correct them as soon as you learn them.
What advice would you give to someone starting out?
Don’t start anything, just cause you want to try it out. If you really got a passion for your business idea, properly evaluate it, prepare yourself for it, and then venture out. Be prepared for the worst and keep striving for the best. And if you don’t carry “never say, never again” attitude; then don’t get into business; you better be salaried. When you decide to jump in business, cut all your strings which can bring you thought of taking a U-turn. Any uncut string can make you accept defeat before giving your best shot. Try to manage your funds wisely and be very cautious while taking any business decision. Respect opinions and suggestions of those who believe in you and wish for your success.
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.
