This is a guest post by Relina from Jobspire. The views and opinions expressed in the guest post are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views held by YourDOST.
There are new companies starting up everyday. Especially, in India where there are over 4,200 startups, it is the third largest hotbed of activity. Along with innovative ideas and products, the startup stories are equally interesting.
Here are a few inspirational stories to get your fire burning.
- KleverKid’s Shabnam Aggrawal
Shabnam grew up in Silicon Valley so the entrepreneurship bug caught her young and early. She launched three startups and failed twice before she found success with KleverKids. The company is a marketplace to curate and inform parents about the best after school classes and activities in their city.
“I moved to India 7 years ago, to embark upon my dream to build things for kids here. I started out building a company that used mobile games to teach kids English. One day I found myself sitting outside a principal’s office, waiting to be admitted in.
There I met a young mother fussing over her little daughter, looking worried and troubled. I asked her if she was OK, when she broke down into a long story of the trouble she was having finding a great pre-school near her home for her “over-active” child.
As I listened to her story, I noticed her worry did not stop there. She wondered which dance teacher would be best for her daughter’s needs, which arts class would support her creativity, and eventually which math tutor would enable her daughter to pass her exams and attend a great college.
She had so many concerns and yet the solution to her worries seemed so simple to me. That’s when the idea of KleverKid was planted.” (Excerpt from She the People interview)
After being funded by former Infosys CFO, Mohandas Pai, this startup has grown in leaps and bounds. They are looking for talented people to help them grow further. The goal is to make mentors, teachers and activities accessible to all parents and children, so all kids have equal opportunities to grow.
- 91Springboard’s Varun Chawla
The idea began with Varun Chawla, who is one among the six “on-site entrepreneurs” 91Springboard has.
He had sold his last startup to Makemytrip and found himself spending a lot of time with first-time entrepreneurs giving advice on topics ranging from how to get customers to pay their bills to where to find cheap office space. These informal chats sowed the idea behind 91Springboard. The first team member, Apurv Agrawal had just graduated from VIT when he was introduced to Varun through a mutual friend. So when Varun wanted him to join his team, more than Apruv, he had to convince his parents about his idea.
The team put in a lot of effort to make a hip and happening place for startups. When you have so many interesting people working together, interesting things keep happening. Even the name, 91Springboard has an interesting story.
It came up in a brainstorming session in the days leading up to filing the legal paperwork. “Springboard” captured the team’s vision to create a platform for launching startups in India. And 91 is borrowed from the country code for India.
So, if you are looking for a place where you can meet interesting people everyday and get a front row seat to ‘The Next Big Thing” then this might be a great place to find a career.
- Babajob’s Team
Babajob is shaping the way people hire and get hired. By seamlessly connecting employers and jobseekers through our digital platform, we make jobs accessible to everyone, and make hiring fast and easy.
They were founded with a purpose — to provide skilled aspiring workers (such as drivers, delivery executives, nurses, beauticians, entry-level sales, BPO executives and more) access to better employment opportunities. Babajob is not just about creating jobs; they are about bettering people’s lives and providing dignified livelihoods.
“If only we could digitize the job seekers and the jobs – to connect job seekers to better opportunities – we might be able to catalyze the escape from poverty for millions of people. I also looked around and saw that there were no digital tools to connect informal job seeker and employers.
Thus Babajob was an idea I fell in love with, an experiment to find a scalable way to connect millions in the informal sector to better jobs.” – Founder Sean Blagsvedt (Excerpt from YourStory interview)
This video pretty much summarizes what a great place Babajob is to work at. Babajob has a simple motto- “Better Jobs for everyone”. They have gone home to home in slums trying to get people to sign up to their service and in the years following they have had more than half million job seekers sign up.
If you are looking for inspiration to start up on your own, then there are a hundred more stories available. And if you are looking for innovative places to work then Jobspire is the way to go.
