How much money is enough to make starting up safe? Vivek Sinha thought he knew: ₹50 lakh in the bank. The day he hit it, he quit.
Vivek is the founder of Emversity, which trains people for the jobs India actually has in healthcare, hospitality, EPC and manufacturing.
Homeschooled till eight in a Bihar village surrounded by three rivers, he built Buildzar, lost ₹50 lakh, and spent nine years compounding skills at Mobikwik, OYO and Unacademy before starting again in a sector everyone had written off.
In this episode, Avnish and Vivek take on,
1. Where did you get the confidence to do this?
2. Why didn't it work? What did you think going in that didn't play out?
3. Should I drop out and work full time on my startup?"
4. How do I find the right co-founder?
5. How can we secure investment in a stigmatized sector despite proven traction?"
6. What stays with you: build it for the right reasons
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
02:00 Flood village to NIT: growing up in Bihar
06:00 First startup & why it failed: market timing
11:00 MobiKwik: 0 to 20 lakh merchants in 6 months
16:00 OYO & Unacademy: the lessons that compounded
22:00 The 9-year gap: how he killed bad ideas early
28:00 Should you drop out of college?
34:00 How many co-founders — and going solo
40:00 Building in a stigmatised, out-of-favour sector
48:00 What Mversity does + closing advice