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Alok Kejriwal- From making socks to leading online game company

India, Inspiration, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By

The thinker + Doer = Rodinhood says his Quora profile; Alok Kejriwal is the man who changed the pace of India’s online gaming industry. Rodinhood is inspired from Rodin – who sculpted ‘The Thinker’ and Robin Hood who ‘got things done’.Alok Kejriwal

Born on 25th December, 1968, the renowned CEO and co-founder of Games2win is known to the world as Rodinhood. Alok Kejriwal is an entrepreneur who knows how to utilize a problem as an opportunity to build business around it. He started his journey by joining his family business of socks manufacturing at the age of 18, while he was still in college. After 10 years, he moved out of the family business and started something of his own which was not into manufacturing. He went on to venture in mobile and then online games.

Making of the Rodinhood

As they say, leader is  one who knows the way, shows the way and goes the way. Alok Kejriwal is a true leader and has proved his leadership, honesty and truthfulness in every walk of life. He started his socks business around 1989. Once when his socks factory was preparing Argyle socks order for a leading retailer he noticed an issue with packaging. He picked up one bundle of socks and opened it like a consumer for final inspection. As he ripped the adhesive sticker from the socks, he was thunderstruck as the thread of the small ‘criss cross’ lines that make the Argyle pattern so famous began ripping out of the socks. The shipment was ready to be shipped in 3 hours and the socks had PASSED inspection from Europe and India. Without worrying about extra cost of building top pair of socks and losing credibility or business he decided to be truthful and informed the buyer. This critical decision earned him a lot of respect in the eyes of buyer. The buyer was so delighted and grateful that he not only paid for extra cost but also gave many more orders in future.

In 1998, Kejriwal founded an online contests portal company named Contests2win.com (C2W) with a borrowed laptop and only Rs 5,000. He realized the power of internet while working in the family business. During this time, he used the internet for information on spare parts on company websites. “I got fascinated with the power of Internet to distribute knowledge and thought of building business around it.”, Alok once said.

Later, he launched a venture entitled “Mobile2win” in china in 2001. Mobile2Win organized mobile competitions and promotions on mobile interactive platforms. In 2003 mobile2win operations were also started in India. He got the VAS Business of Sony Channels’ singing show Indian Idol. Alok was one of the pioneers of ringtone business. He did create a lot of value and money before mobile companies and tv channels themselves started doing this business to maximize their profits.

Mobile2win was doing fantastic but due to funding, scale and other issues, Alok was  asked to leave mobile2win. However, this sad exit turned out to be good for him in long turn. He got million dollars on exit from mobile2win which he invested in conetst2win. Later the Indian arm of mobile2win went to Chandigarh (India) based company for no cash deal while Chinese mobile2win got acquired by Disney.

Taking the legacy forward, he came up with a new venture Games2win in the year 2007. Today, Games2win is ranked among top gaming site across the world. The most popular game at Games2win is Parking Frenzy and has about 20-25 million downloads. Besides Parking Frenzy, another 15 of their games have 1 million downloads now.

As the popularity increased, Games2win discovered that thousands of other websites and blogs were embedding Games2win games on their sites. Instead of blocking games on other websites or sending them copyright infringement notices, Alok and his team used an innovative idea. They started displaying Ads within the game whenever it was played on a website other than Games2win. Suddenly their success metric changed to the number of websites illegally embedding their games. More the embeds, more display ads, more revenue.

Although not being a great supporter of mobile only approach, he moved Games2win from a top game company to a mobile games company while struggling with static traffic in 2010. Games2win started focusing on mobile games and stopped making web games in 2014. New games are only available for smartphones. However, you can still play old games on their website.

Tough calls and work life balance

Entrepreneurship is bed of thorns. Being a successful entrepreneur and a successful father, husband at the same time is not that easy. You are always occupied with business deals, meetings, and dinner with clients and what not. Alok Kejriwal is married to Chhavi Kejriwal and has two daughters. In his blog “would you marry an entrepreneur? “, he jotted the pros and cons of marrying an entrepreneur. Topping it with his own story, he recalled a real life incident.

Can you imagine where was he when his second daughter was born? Hospital? No, you got it wrong! Well he wrote,” I skipped visiting the hospital and escorting my wife and my newborn daughter (my second child) home, because that evening I was signing some term sheets of my first venture contests2win.com in the lobby of The Oberoi in Mumbai.”

Startup mentor, critic and attention grabber

Alok never shies from going public with his views on different startups and their business ideas and many times he has been proved right. Alok criticized the app only approach of Myntra and Flipkart which turned out to be true after these companies rolled back their decision.

The the blue eyed gaming champ also criticized then Housing.com CEO Rahul Yadav for two Housing.com hoardings that were barely visible behind trees which attracted a sharp reaction form Rahul Yadav.

Alok kejriwal

Alok kejriwal rahul yadav

Amidst all the criticism, chaos and challenges, Alok kept pushing himself and continued to grow as an entrepreneur. He knows the art of being in news and use the right opportunity at right point of time.

Alok belongs to that rare breed of successful entrepreneurs who go extra mile to help budding entrepreneurs achieve success. This “Crazy Internet Entrepreneur” of India is playing the role of a startup mentor and motivator. Alok runs Rodinhood.com where he and fellow Rodinhoods share their experiences related to startups, products, teams, marketing & business. Nothing can beat such startup stories and experiences in helping budding entrepreneurs run their show successfully. He and his team of volunteers organize The Rodinhoods Open House(TRH) in different cities of the country for free. TRH helps startups meet industry leaders, pitch their product to investors and network with fellow entrepreneurs.

A TRH workshop in progress

His favorite advice to entrepreneurs is

“To go where no man has gone before…” (from Star Trek).

Jack Ma: A self made billionaire

Inspiration, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By

E-commerce is one of the fastest growing segments in the industry. Many young entrepreneurs have tried their hands in this field but very few were able to taste success. One such hugely successful eCommerce business is Alibaba.

The man behind this extremely successful ecommerce business is Jack Ma. Today Ma the founder and executive chairman of Alibaba Group has an estimated net worth of $25 billion. Who would have imagined that a 5 feet tall Chinese man will lead Alibaba to a record breaking $25 billion IPO and become 18th richest person in the world? Alibaba’s IPO was bigger than Google, Facebook and Twitter combined.

Determination & persistence paves the way
Ma was born in Hangzhou, China. Lack of resources was never a excuse for him to learn or do something. In Childhood Ma developed a desire to learn English, so he started to converse with foreigners. For nine years he used to guide foreigners around the city for free to learn English. This opened the door to many entrepreneurial skills; from interacting with people to knowing their thought process; this somewhere pushed him to develop his own views on capitalism and entrepreneurship. During this course he became pen pals with one of these foreigners, and she nicknamed him “Jack”, because his real Chinese name Ma Yun was too difficult to pronounce.

But before he became the richest person in China, Ma went through a lot of rejections. Can you imagine the man behind Alibaba’s success was rejected by three universities?Quote JackMa2

Today world’s top universities and business schools like Harvard take pride in inviting Jack Ma for guest lectures whom once they were not ready to give admission. He was rejected by Harvard 10 times as a student. Jack Ma learnt from failures than through the formal channels of education.

He applied for 30 jobs and got rejected. Jack Ma once said, “When KFC came to China, 24 people went for the job…23 people were accepted. I was the only guy who wasn’t.” His journey from a failed man to a successful tech leader & entrepreneur is exemplary .

Ma’s first date with internet and rise of Alibaba
“Beer” was the first word that Jack Ma searched for on the internet- Really? Beer? Well, during his trip to US, he searched for “Beer” and then “China”, when no results came up, he decided to set up a Chinese website. He saw the web as the future of business and even tried to register the name Internet!
In 1995 he along with his wife and a friend founded an internet company called China Yellow Pages. This company made 5,000K Chinese Yuan (US$800K).

In 1999 he started Alibaba, a B2B marketplace along with his 17 friends. He chose the name Alibaba since it was unique and easy to spell and people were able connect with this name very easily. Alibaba.com allows merchants and companies to trade products online. Within a short period of time Alibaba became one of the largest websites online.

Ma is a larger-than-life figure. Even after reaching the great heights, Jack Ma is the exceptionally optimistic and determined. His journey to success is definitely one which will inspire you even in your darkest days. Jack Ma believes that “If you are still poor at 35, you deserve it!” His journey is a perfect example of a rag-to-riches story. The most important lesson is- when the dream is big enough, the facts don’t count.

Most of us indulge so much in making excuses about things that we even forget to make the best of every situation. We all give countless excuses everyday like lack of money, lack of good education and people around us always discourage us. The same was the case with Jack Ma, he had nothing to push him forward but his strong desire to excel made him the man he is today.

“We are never in lack of money. We lack people with dreams, who can die for those dreams” – Jack Ma

Elon Musk- A tech founder on a mission to save and change the world

Inspiration, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By

This is the age of Tech Entrepreneurship and startups. From Steve Jobs to Bill Gates there are many tech founders who have made it big into technology that has changed the world and impacted our lives drastically. Today entrepreneurs are thinking beyond online ecommerce and taking huge risks to make world a better place. For many tech founders money is not the only thing that matters. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook and his wife pledged to give away most of their wealth for social causes. Bill Gates is a well known philanthropist. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is running so many campaigns in the world to improve education, health and lives of people.

Elon Reeve Musk is one such great tech entrepreneur and new age philanthropist. Unlike others his philanthropy is driven by technology that aims to make world a better place to live. The real-life inspiration for Iron Man’s main lead character Tony Stark, Musk has interests in industries like automotive, aerospace, solar energy, energy conservation, satellite and high-speed surface transportation. Working more than 100 hours a week and drawing just $1 as salary, Elon is on a mission to save and change the world by investing and nurturing companies like Tesla, SpaceX, and Solarcity.

ELON MUSK
ELON MUSK

Have you heard about Blaster? Blaster is a game that was made by a bored 12 year old in 1984. This 12 year old was none other than Elon Musk. Elon Musk one of the founders of PayPal became a self-made millionaire at the age of 27, when he sold his first company, Zip2. By age 41, his estimated net worth had surpassed $1 billion, and today, the SpaceX and Tesla CEO has an estimated net worth of $10.5 billion. Most of his innovations seem straight out of a sci-fi movie.

Tesla Motors
Musk co-founded Tesla Motors, a company that designs and manufactures premium electric vehicles. Tesla was able to succeed in the electric car market where other large manufacturers failed due to lack of innovative ideas.
Elon recently launched the Tesla Model 3 at the Tesla Design Studio in Hawthorne which will hit the market in 2017. The new model starts at $35000 and accelerates to 60mph in 6 sec. This is a next level car with exciting features. It’s Musk’s vision and innovative ideas that has led to the making of this different league model. More than 1,80,000 pre-orders were received by Tesla in a day for Model 3. Tesla is also planning to enter India in 2016.

Success of Tesla has paved way for vehicles that are stylish, feature rich and cause less harm to environment.

SpaceX
Before the closing of PayPal, he had already started dreaming about a greenhouse, “Mars oasis” which he wanted to land on mars.

Musk decided to start a company that would build affordable rockets, using vertical integration and the modular approach of software engineering. Those ideas resulted in his launch of SpaceX in 2002. His long-term goal is to help humanity through SpaceX by creating a true spacefaring civilization.

Creating a reliable rocket that successfully gets into space was not an easy job. No one wanted to invest in SpaceX because everyone believed it to be over ambitious and a venture with pretty less hope of being successful . Musk invested his own personal funds worth $100M in SpaceX. However, SpaceX was on the verge of closing due to lack of funds when three attempts to launch a rocket failed. In 2008 SpaceX did a launch of Falcon 1 launch vehicle which failed. Elon took the stage and motivated employees for the next attempt saying that rocket science is not an easy thing and failures are bound to happen. Motivated team investigated the issue and was ready with next rocket in 7 weeks which otherwise would have taken a year for any other company. On sept 28th SpaceX successfully launched the rocket and became world’s first private venture to launch rocket in earth’s orbit. An achievement that was limited to only 6 mightiest nations of the world. After this SpaceX got an offer for $1.6 billion to carry out 12 launches for NASA.

Another feather was added to Musk’s cap last week after the launch of futuristic pop-up room and landing of the unmanned Falcon rocket at Atlantic sea. SpaceX resumed station deliveries for NASA on Friday and landed its booster rocket on an ocean platform for the first time.The innovations at SpaceX has resulted in cheapest cost of launching rockets in the history.

SpaceX is currently working on a new spacecraft, which will allow humans to travel in space and take ride from earth to moon. SpaceX is making a much larger rocket that will be able to bring 100 people to Mars at once. Google and Fidelity has now invested in SpaceX.

Success of SpaceX is the result of Musk’s quest of a fantastic future. His vision is worth appreciating. Take a bow!

Solarcity
The company was co-founded by Elon Musk in 2006. Solarcity produces the world’s most efficient rooftop solar panels with a market cap of just under $6 billion and has become the largest installer of solar panels in the US. Solarcity is now building the country’s largest solar panel-manufacturing factory in Buffalo.

Tesla and SolarCity companies are making a pollution free, environment friendly renewable energy future a reality.

Man at the helm for an innovative future

Musk “the world’s most remarkable living entrepreneur” is undoubtedly an epitome of an entrepreneur, inventor and a business magnate. He is truly the real life Iron Man. In case you don’t know, parts of Iron Man 2 were actually filmed inside and outside of SpaceX and musk even had a cameo in the film.

His ideas are the most ambitious ideas so far. He is a true leader who can envision and lead people to a better world and better future.

You can read more about ELON Musk and his future plans in the book Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future.

Moikit: A preventive tech solution to avoid Kidney Stones

Health, start-up, Tech Story / By

There has been a sharp rise in Kidney stones (also known as a renal calculus or nephrolith) cases around the world in recent years. Approximately 1 in 11 people in the United States are affected by Kidney stones.

The leading cause of kidney stones is not drinking enough water. Stones commonly have been found in those who drink less than eight to ten glasses of water a day. When there is not enough water to dilute the uric acid (constituent of urine), the pH level of kidneys drops and becomes more acidic. This acidic environment in the kidneys is instrumental in the formation of kidney stones.

What if there is someone who reminds you to drink water and also keep track of your daily water intake. Moikit a Chinese tech startup has come up with a smart water bottle to track your water consumption, compile your health data and keep you hydrated.

Story behind Moikit

In 2012 Xiaoliang Li’s (founder of Moikit) wife got diagnosed with kidney stones due to poor hydration habits. When Xiaoliang studied more about Kidney stones, he learnt that less water intake leads to a host of other diseases and problems in people all over.

Drinking less water means less frequency of urination. Less urination tend minerals that cause kidney stones to settle down in the kidney nephrons and the urinary tract. When one drinks plenty of water, these minerals get flushed out through the urine instead of settling down.

In order to fix this widespread problem of hydration, Xiaoliang brought together a team to create a smart bottle that uses technology to keep people hydrated. Seed the smart water bottle from Moikit is one of the many products that Moikit is developing to solve the problem of hydration.

Seed’s built-in smart water consumption algorithms compute your body’s hydration needs according to water intake, body composition, daily activity level, and outside temperature. With this information, Seed will custom design a water intake schedule that meets your individual needs. Through small vibrations and the LED display, Seed will remind you when you have forgotten to drink enough water.

Seed using inbuilt Bluetooth transfers your water intake data to Moikit app on your smartphone. Seed also integrates seamlessly with third-party health apps and devices.

InMobi, a company that ran out of money to $2bn acquisition speculations

India, Inspiration, start-up, Tech Story / By

Every startup goes through ups and downs. It’s the critical business decisions, tough calls, hard work, persistence that makes startups survive and successful in long run.  InMobi was started  in 2006 as SMS based search platform, mKhoj, that later pivoted to become a mobile advertising platform. Founded by  Naveen Tiwari, Abhay Singhal, Mohit Saxena, and Amit Gupta, InMobi which today clocks  138 Billion monthly ad impressions and has 17 offices worldwide once barely had enough money to survive and was on the verge of possible shutdown.

Since than InMobi has come a long way. Today, company competes with Google’s AdMob, Apples’ iAd and there are speculations that Microsoft is going to acquire InMobi for $2 billion.

How team that built InMobi hopped in together
Four friends came together to build next-gen mobile ad platform. They built the first version mKhoj working out from a rented apartment in Mumbai.  In 2007 when company ran out of money, management ran the company for two months on 14 credit cards without paying bills before they hit a funding of $7 million.

Big leap & the funding
In initial days Mohit and Abhay were themselves doing cold calls to get the business. In 2007 Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sherpalo Ventures invested $7M in InMobi. In 2008 company took a call to go global but decided not to go in a crowded market like US but  in markets like southeast Asia & Africa.

Company growth and culture
From the initials days itself company believed in long term strategy to invest in technology and people. InMobi has built a great culture. Most people in the company has stock options since the founders believe that when company tastes the success, employees too should get rewarded enough for the risk, passion and commitment to stand together in every thick and thin of the company. Unlike conventional HR standards, the company has no standard performance monitoring system, no raking and ratings and believes in employee growth and empowerment.

InMobi’s is a story of passion, a story of commitment, a story of  an Indian company that dared to go global.

Video credit: InMobi YouTube, Nasscom

Watch short films from India on Shortfundly

start-up / By

Chennai-based startup Shortfundly has chosen to create a niche platform for short film publishers. The startup offers an  online video platform for showcasing curated short films from India.

On Shortfundly users can browse through different short videos based on variety of languages, genres and channels. Shortfundly is currently offered for free. Filmmakers can submit their existing YouTube, Vimeo or Dailymotion work to Shortfundly. Shortfundly is trying to build an online video platform that combines curation and social publishing to distribute the best Indian short films to niche audience globally.

 

 

Current design of platform is in pretty infancy stage and would need lot of improvements in order to get users hooked to its platform to checkout short films which are anyways available on top video platforms like YouTube and Vimeo. Read more on Shortfundly blog.