My Entrepreneurship Journey Mr Rahul Mishra-IIC
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Summary
This video summarizes an entrepreneur's journey, highlighting key lessons learned from early career struggles to building successful companies in cyber investigations and blockchain. It emphasizes the importance of discipline, resilience, continuous learning, and realistic goal-setting for aspiring entrepreneurs.
Key points- The speaker shares his personal journey from studying mechanical engineering to working in corporate sales and eventually starting his own companies.
- He experienced significant setbacks in his entrepreneurial career, which taught him the importance of diversification and staying motivated.
- Key advice for entrepreneurs includes having clarity, learning to say no, and practicing basic financial planning.
- The speaker stresses the importance of enjoying the entrepreneurial journey rather than solely focusing on future financial rewards.
- He advises students to set realistic goals and commit a significant amount of time, like three to five years, to their entrepreneurial ventures.
Chapters
Notable quotes (4)
“someone said it very correctly that you know i was born intelligent and education ruined me”
“if i commit something i try to complete it if i say i'll send you a mail or if i say i'll send you some details so i'll be on time or i'll i'll ask for more time if i'm not done hey i've not done this thing i may need another two three four days so i'll try to do it that ways”
“so sine wave is something which goes up and sine wave is something which cups down”
“money is not something you work for money is a by-product you work because you want to change someone's life”
7:34good afternoon mr raul hi pooja can you hear me yes i can hear you how are you i can't hear you now can you hear me
7:56just click here it's quick is it portable now
8:04can you hear me i can hear you well i can't
8:16rahul it's something from your end can you hear me now can you hear me now some problem from your end okay
8:36can't hear
8:56but i can't hear you i can't hear you
9:08there's something on the mic uh why i don't hear you
9:33yes i can hear you now okay fine perfect thank you so much okay so if you're ready shall we start
10:17puja how can i share my presentation uh and okay let me make you the presenter
10:30okay now you would be having a share button at the bottom right from there you can go ahead and share right i'll just share my presentation
10:48yes we can see it
10:57raul if you're ready can we start please please okay so a very very good afternoon to mr rahul mishra and all the participants that have joined today with us uh hod cic hod ece the faculty members of our institute and very dear students i welcome you all to the iic initiative in which we have mr raul mishra with us mr rahul mishra otherwise known as metal has broad involvement with cyber investigations computer digital and mobile forensics digital evidence analysis end user license agreement audits blockchain and smart contract product development for government private entities for higher education and so forth talking about the brand himself the the
11:52handle name metal suits in pretty well the man of resilience who can flourish from the challenges aside from the entirety of his working experience he is a hodophile traveling and exploring introduce him a ton continuously quick to learn new things and this is the means by which he continues to excel in his life i have known him from many many years and i know how he has gone from the very beginning till whatever he is today the owner of two companies and blah blah blah so he would be talking about his entrepreneurship journey and how he was able to reach to this particular stage i'm proud of you mr rahul mishra and i'm
12:31really very happy to have you here thank you so much for accepting the invitation and please it's over to you now thank you uh so much puja uh it's been a pleasure and great to see you again uh we and pooja we know each other for uh more than 20 years now yes we were together in college so uh i'll i'll i'll go with a mix of hindi and english because i think hindi is language of our hearts and it goes pretty well rather than if i explain something to you in english so um i'll i'll come directly to the uh how it all started
13:08before that i would like to thank triple i t nagpur our all the students who have taken their precious time out of their busy schedule all the huds and the techies who are present here thank you so much i'll try to share as best as i can and if you have any questions you can ask it during the session after the session i'll be more than happy to answer assist let's make this an interactive session and to be really very frank i'm doing this kind of session for first time in my life otherwise it was all about forensics blockchain and more towards the technical aspect of things
13:46so i i went to i went to a i mean i'm from a fairly decent family went to a very good school i'm from jabalpur in mp went to a good school uh sort of a privileged childhood you can say and studied mechanical engineering of all the streams uh not exactly my choice but i was confused so uh just like you guys i was also confused what to do what not to do and back then mechanical was still sort of in demands so we started with mechanical engineering first guy to admit the fact that i was not good in mechanical engineering i was not good in academics
14:27i think a very apt uh uh someone said it very correctly that you know i was born intelligent and education ruined me not the case exactly but uh learned it pretty early that i don't want to make my career in mechanical engineering because it was tough i mean being a mechanical engineer working in plant with all those machines and everything it was tough i realized it during my industrial trainings and i thought this is something that i can't do i should not do so uh i moved ahead with mechanical engineering now my first job was in delhi as part of april through campus interviews so i went there started working
15:16that was my first exposure towards a corporate life started enjoying it for most of my career initial part of my career i was in delhi only although back then even bangalore was a big thing uh i should have gone to bangalore maybe but i went to delhi uh worked in delhi for three years worked with vipro worked with ibm i was in corporate sales and worked in a company a startup called lattice bridge it was incubated by iit chennai and i was again in delhi i was taking care of sales so in total i was in delhi for three years in total i worked that
15:57was my entire working journey my entire journey as an employee was for three years only from 2003 to 2006. that was very important why it was important because i learned to some extent how big companies how big corporate work i also worked in a startup so i got to know okay this is how a startup works uh these are the things which are needed first and foremost which i think everyone can inculcate in their lives is they can be disciplined they can be on time like today i was not on time but i was not on time because of some technical issue usually i'm on time
16:41so that is something uh i i'm really proud of that i'm usually on time i'm usually if i commit something i try to complete it if i say i'll send you a mail or if i say i'll send you some details so i'll be on time or i'll i'll ask for more time if i'm not done hey i've not done this thing i may need another two three four days so i'll try to do it that ways so that that is how if your discipline things will you know sort of work out for you so i was working in delhi uh working in a startup that was my
17:15third job and i sort of realized that you know this is something where i'm not fit for so that was more like a you know heartbreak that i realized that this is something that not i want to do now why it happened because first i was not enjoying my work secondly i was into a pre-sales position pre-sales positions are usually very technical my job involved working on tender understanding government processes most of the time i was working with government setup only so government projects take a lot of time to conclude and convert and maybe you work for six months seven months and after six seven months nothing happens
18:01so all that hard work it goes into wayne so uh i thought this is something i don't want to do and because i was not able to convert the projects there was hardly any reward or recognition or appreciation coming in whatever i had it was very few and far in between so i realized that i i'm someone who can take the risk as i said i was born into a decent family so there was no issue as such you know father not well papa github and all those things so though it was not there so i was fairly privileged that ways so i i came back to jabalpur started my
18:43company um called it bluest metal solutions private limited so i had no no idea of what name you should keep otherwise i would have kept it as the facebook also however i thought that this is how a name should be so i i started a company from inception it will itself it was a private limited company initially it was tough because i was doing only sales related consulting so for all the companies who want to come to india i was consulting them in various aspects but largely depending on the sales part because i realized it pretty early that i'm good at sales good at talking to people good at
19:28sort of convincing people so i had only two options either start a company or join an mlm multi-level marketing kind of thing you know the mlm was not my cup of tea so i started a company went into sales straight away when i started it was largely a work from home kind of thing and talk about 2006 16 years back right now work from home is something that everyone is aware of however back at that point in time work from from home was something not a lot of people heard about so it was tough it was very tough convincing parents it was very tough convincing
20:06friends very tough convincing my siblings i have an elder sister and a younger brother so they were not able to answer keep learning so they said that he is doing something on his laptop or internet something he travels a lot but we don't know what he's into uh so uh that is how it all it all started my first project was with indian army wherein we had to supply a software which will integrate all the systems over lan now coincidentally while we trans while we supplied the software it was from a uk based company i went for another project to chennai and then i got a call from this colonel
20:50apparently his name was also rahul that it's not working on our wi-fi i said sir i can explain it to you and you can you just need to do a few clicks and it will happen he said no boss we have paid you you will have to come and do it here so from chennai i went to bangalore by a bus and from bangalore i got into a train and came back to jabalpur and eight o'clock i reached jabalpur by 10 o'clock we fixed the situation however i learned something there that this is something i should not do this is something i shouldn't have done
21:24because it was not something when i can't go to each and every place to solve each and every problem so since then we for a large time till you can say 2015 and 16 i was not doing any id projects directly i was doing it with my partners now when i was doing consulting 2006 2007 2008 and part of 2009 was really great because a lot of companies were coming to india we are we were helping them in uh getting their sales right and we were making a lot of money however life is not all hunky dory rosy so uh that is what i call a sign wave
22:08so sine wave is something which goes up and sine wave is something which cups down so in 2009 my world came crashing that was my first setback i have had i can say three major setbacks in my entrepreneurship or my corporate career so far that was my first major setback and i was not prepared for it so i had very little kitty saved in you know for bad times almost very little or no money for any kind of future this thing because i was living the high life so uh those three four months were really bad however during those months also i realized that i need to
22:52diversify my business we i need to diversify into things that i can do and i also realize that i need to keep myself motivated as an entrepreneur it is very hard to keep yourself motivated
23:20somehow you will have to keep yourself motivated and everyone draws their strengths from different things or maybe different people and so you guys may also find something that that may fit into something wherein you can draw your strength from i drew my strength from you know my high life i realized that boss i need these things in my life i want a comfortable life and for that the easiest way is to make money and that is where i concentrated we diversified we went into uh hardcore cyber crime investigations computer forensics mobile forensics prior to that i was only consulting in that but this is when i went hands-on
24:02and we started we developed a wing and i started doing it uh then life was again i mean sine wave it came down and it started going up so um we we went up in 2000 so 2010 was my second best year 2011 became my best year then 2012 became my best year 2013 became my best year i was going up up up and i bit more than what i can chew so we made new partners we hired a lot of people we took a large space for our office and i thought that this is life and that we will get funded and soon it will
24:43happen so justin just an anecdote that till now i'm bootstrapped we have not taken a single rupee as outside funding and sort of happy at what you are again in 2014 to 2015 the natural law of gravity took place we came down this time because of because i relied on people outside my organization i instead of developing my core competencies again i was dependent on partners but this time i was financially prepared so it was uh back then i thought that it's it is such a big thing but now i realize that it was just a bump and we were on course again and again we from 2016 onwards again
25:29back into diversification uh started up a a small group in blockchain research it started and then uh we reshaped it into a full-fledged organization in 2018. now we need to realize that all these things that come into our path i'm calling it a bump you can calling it you can call it an obstacle or you can call it whatever but these things are very important in our life to realize our true potential at times we only perform well when we are under too much of pressure just like upload just an example memory and whatever we see or hear we realize it through the day and that is how i have passed my
26:16engineering and maybe a lot of you will also be doing it similar way if not doing then it's great otherwise that is one way of doing engineering so again keeping yourself motivated uh diversifying into different geographies or in this case we have not exactly diversified we were already into cyber we were sort of backward integrated into uh cyber got more into cryptography we got cryptographic elements we developed a group on blockchain started researching in 2016 started delivering projects in 2018 so again exploring all the unexplored verticals that we had now in this case obviously you need to learn unlearn and relearn this is one very important aspect of
27:06life wherein you need to learn a lot of new things you need to unlearn a lot of bad habits and you need to relearn something what you have forgot over the years it can be you know coming to office on time it can be appreciating normal gestures it can be you know a lot of people right now they don't even say thank you to someone who to someone who has really helped you now this is required this is essential because karma it all comes back so you need to take this into account that you need to be appreciative of the fact to people who stood by you
27:43when your time was right or when your time was wrong so again we we did a lot of r d we did a lot of research and development developed a group group on blockchain and from there started delivering projects now again um what is entrepreneurship all about in my case it is about connecting the dots in my case it is more about what we intend to do or what we intend to achieve now if you want to make a million dollar organization you will help you will have to solve a million dollar problem if you want to make a billion dollar organization you will have to solve a
28:26billion dollar problem if you want to make a trillion dollar organization you will have to solve a trillion dollar problem so in a sense in a sentence it is very easy to say that you want to create a million dollar organization solve a million dollar problem and there it is however it is easier said than done uh you will a lot of our solutions are in front of us we just need to connect the dots you don't have to come up with a solution every time yourself and that is why you have a company you have resources you have people so collectively we solve the problem i'm
29:01someone who will do the sales someone else will do the will prepare the solution someone else will test it deliver it we'll provide support for it and so on and so forth that is how you connect the dots that is how you solve a problem now in in uh in over the years a lot of people came into my life i trusted a lot of people who betrayed my trust um i trusted a lot of people who and that trust has paid rich very rich dividends indeed we have become friends for life so i we started working outside india since 2015 only so it is very decent for last
29:45seven years only we started uh something called our odc overseas development center and uh all my clients with whom i have worked we realized that we have become friends for life in 2018 while we started delivering uh big blockchain solutions i realized that we can get into uh cryptocurrency mining also back then it was not legal in india um i met a client his name is if you can see uh if you can see there's a bitcoin atm here this is israel and we started ethereum mining gpu mining in israel in 2018 itself i exited that earlier this year in february because we were getting good rate for
30:28our hardware it was very expensive for me to mine because of lockdown i could hardly travel to israel and there were number of restrictions uh particularly for indians because a lot of my vaccine certificate co-vaccine was not approved by un and so on and so forth so so as i said connecting the dots realizing your potential uh if you have a lot of times things are in front of us wherein we can see okay that this is something i could have done but you should connect the dots you should take the opportunity with you and you should deliver it there is always some element of risk but there is
31:09always some element of risk even in crossing the road so you will have to take risk and you will have to go ahead now what is important this is this is my last slide here and i talk a lot about this slide what is important if you want to be an entrepreneur so first and foremost what is important first and the only thing is required is clarity so you you can think what you want to do and you can achieve that is you need to have that kind of confidence in yourself you'll have to learn to say no if you want to go ahead ahead in your
31:47life you'll have to start saying no if you can't do anything thinking my friend can do it it's better to divert it to your friend than you saying yes to something that you can't do uh basic financial planning is always important you can write your expenses you can write your future uh money which is coming in and so on and so forth now what is clarity i uh always give this example to a lot of people what is clarity and they don't answer so i i went to a college in indore it was a tier 2 university and i was speaking to computer science students and i asked
32:26that can you name any fortune 500 company which is an indian they said reliance unfortunately reliance is not they said tata group so i said tata is a group it's not a company there are multiple companies in the group however none of them are a fortune 500 company so the only indian fortune 500 company right now is rajesh exports limited they make almost 30 to 35 they mint 30 to 35 percent of global gold they have refineries in middle east they have refineries in europe they have refineries in india uh then students said that okay we we rajesh exports is a very new name for
33:11us and it is something that we should have learned over the years but somehow it has never happened because rajashike sports is a media shy company they are more into a b2b kind of segment so it was not required to be for them to be in the public domain then i asked that if given a chance that you can marry any girl on the planet which one would you like to marry a lot of them said katrina kav someone said kareena kapoor someone said a new heroines i'm not sure the names so so however and then i said that okay whom do you want to which company do you want to
33:52work for and they said we would like to work for google we would like to work work for microsoft so i said why don't you make your choice more realistic that if if google and microsoft they're coming to your university it's fine but if they're not coming then so they said that yes sir the these companies are not coming to our university and the companies who are coming are tier two companies or tier three companies and or the likes of the tcsas and the infosys who are mass recruiters so i said can you uh name companies in the order in which order pathology is again they started with google microsoft
34:36and everything so i said every guy has a ranking i there was a student i asked him that which company want to go he said google microsoft and um google is alphabet right now google microsoft apple and so on and so forth so i said that you want to go to companies who don't come here it's like expecting an uh aishwarya or katrina kaff or kareena kapoor to marry you however you will have to marry someone in your community someone from indoor only so why don't you be realistic that whom do you want to marry so he was not able to answer so i asked how many girls do you have in
35:17your class he said we have roughly 30 girls almost 50 percent are girls i said do you have a ranking of those girls that this will be this will be my first choice to be a girlfriend this will be my second choice to be a girlfriend third will be third choice can be this girl fourth choice can be this girl and most of the boys i know this for fact most of the boys say said yes similar was the question i asked girl do you have a have a choice that this can be this boy looks like a rhythmic ration or this so he can be my boyfriend number
35:53one this boy looks like sylvester stallone so this can be my boyfriend number two and so on and so forth so everyone had a ranking so everyone has a ranking but those rankings are never realistic if you can have a realistic ranking on what you want to achieve in your life on what you want to do in your life it will make more sense you can i'm not saying that none of you will get a katrina calf to marry i mean my best wishes if you can do that however if we have any kind of ranking whether it is related to our academics whether it is related to uh the job that
36:28i would like to do then it becomes more realistic and it is something that you will be more fit into and tapped into so
36:43this is something which is important uh last but not least not the least money is not important uh but i mean time a lot of people say time is uh the most important thing that you have i have i'm i'll be the first person to say that money is not important however it plays a very important role in your life it is important to make money because you meant you like to maintain certain kind of lifestyle you want to be comfortable and at the end of the day that is what we are working for however money is not a major money is not something you work for
37:21money is a by-product you work because you want to change someone's life i work because i love working i love come to i mean well coming to my office speak to my people i like speaking so i do a lot of sales calls and yes money is a by-product yes money gives us a lifestyle which we want and uh i have so many people in our office who are from really humble background really i'm as i said i was born privileged but there are so many of them who are really from humble background i would say poor background and because they are working with us for so many
37:58years it we have touched not only their lives we have touched life of their parents and we have a founder stay in our office wherein we invite the parents also they come they are happy for their kids and i'm happy for them so at some point in time you need to realize that happiness is something which is most important last and this is really the last thing as an entrepreneur you need to enjoy the journey um you can't say that i'll be happy when i'll have a million dollars in my bank account that day never come or by the time it will come maybe your
38:33appetite goes to a billion dollars so you need to enjoy the journey you need to enjoy you need to live in today there is enough money for your need there cannot be enough money for your greed so with this i would like to end my session if you have any questions i'll be more than happy to answer thank you thank you so much rahul for that a wonderful presentation and the do's and don'ts of entrepreneurship journey thank you so much any questions from the participants from the students basically any questions from the students because they are the ones who would be following the same path of entrepreneurship
39:17so any questions that anyone would like to ask
39:27uh one question from on the behalf of the students rahul uh that is what they should do yeah again the do's and the don'ts for the students because uh they would be passing out in another one or year or two years so how they should go about it many people do you have an entrepreneurship cell in your uh we do have that uh but essence because of corona so things have gone a little slower uh the students are joining back the institute the next week and we would be uh then uh taking care of all those cells which have been developed but how they should go about it like uh the
40:01fundings and the the as you said that we need to have a product so how they feel about it so i also i never said to have a product because we ourselves are a services based company uh see first and foremost and again we are not funded we are bootstrapped and that is the best thing to do if you so we regularly get offers for funding however now we have reached at a stage wherein we don't need a lot of money to grow whatever we are making we we are sort of bootstrapped and whatever money that we are making we can reinvest that now if if you want to be an entrepreneur
40:39you should you need to draw a line somewhere that i will give it three years or i'll give it five years and then probably if i'm not if i'm if i'm not successful probably i'll go back and do a job or will do some kind of further study and so on and so forth most important thing is you need to keep yourself motivated most important thing is don't waste your time most important thing is give it the committed time commit at least three years or five years because anything less than that and you may not be able to succeed and then you will blame the system then you will blame the
41:17environment surroundings blah blah blah but give it three to five years and if you're doing it if you're doing it it'll be great for everyone
41:32okay okay thank you any questions any questions from the students or the faculty members
41:49maybe if it is possible uh once this once everything goes normal and the students say here next week whenever you come to nagpur do come and visit us we'll do that we'll surely do that good that the students can interact with you physically absolutely absolutely so thank you so much for your time puja thanks a lot thank you so much rahul for giving time and uh taking out time for my visit will thank you so much no worries thank you take care bye thank you so much thank you bye bye bye thank you all the participants for joining i am closing the meeting now thank you
42:29i particularly thank the faculty members for coming here and addressing the thing and thank you all the students
42:45you
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