Varun AggarwalCo-founder of Designhill.com Published On: Friday, June 10, 2016 Views 3246

"Hard work beats Talent on any given day."

Started with a team of 4 developers and 2 designers,Rahul Aggarwal and VarunAggarwal co-founded Designhillin an office in New Delhi with the sole mission to change the way how design industry works by launching a marketplace that is specifically based on the design industry.

The duo launchedDesignhill in October 2014, which grabbed the attention of international clients due to its quality work, reliability and uniqueness. Today, Designhill has expanded to two more locations, such as, Gurgaon and also operates from Delaware, United States.

Please provide a brief overview of your product/ service.

Designhill is one of the world’s fastest-growing custom graphic design marketplaces that connect graphic designers from across the globe with clients looking to source high-quality graphic designs at affordable prices. Over the year, the company has helped thousands of startups and small businesses source unique graphic designs from its community of 30,000+ graphic designers from all over the world.

What inspired you to build the above product/ service?

I used to be a freelance designer myself in the early days and did work on a number of platforms to find good freelancing opportunities. It used to be a pain for me, as a designer, to be able to find clients and on top to be able to find genuine clients who would pay me on time & pay me according to the effort I would put in. The clients themselves faced a very similar problem where they were not able to find good quality designers, delivery on time was an issue, no affordability was another pain point etc. and that is where me & my brother Rahul Aggarwal decided to build an open and innovative crowdsourcing marketplace to address all these issues faced by the dedicated freelance designers and design seekers who place creativity and ingenuity above everything else. We wanted to change the dynamics of the design industry.

What is your life mantra?

Patience & Perseverance. I think it’s very important to not give up and keep working. You might fail once, twice or thrice but in the end you will eventually succeed.

What was the most challenging part of your journey till now?

I think the most challenging part of our journey was to establish Designhill as a brand that people could trust. Being an Indian Startup & trying to attract businesses in the US, Europe, Australia was not easy.

How did you overcome those challenges?

It took us a lot of time and effort to create that trust among our customers and now after hundreds of happy clients, we have finally started to overcome the challenge. Also, the way products are marketed in India and by Indian digital marketers is completely different from what works in the western countries such as US and UK and hence, it was a huge challenge for us to learn and understand the nuances of digital and content marketing and now we have a number of leading social media accounts on twitter, LinkedIn as well as various blogging sites.

Share some details about the investments that you have been able to fetch for the business till now.

Designhill is completely bootstrapped.

How do you protect yourself from the problem of Brain Drain?

We ensure a culture of support in our office to help people grow within our office. We make sure that our staff feels that their efforts are being recognized and appreciated. We don’t force our staff into an abrupt knowledge transfer. These are just some of the many practices we follow for attrition control.

According to you, what are the three qualities an individual must have to achieve success?

The three qualities an individual must have are: 1) Work ethic 2) Perseverance 3) Adaptability

Which online tools/ services/ apps do you use the most and would like to recommend as well?

There are tons of tools or services or apps we use, to name a few: – Customer.io – Hootsuite – Google Analytics – AWS – CDN – Zopim for customer support chats – Mailchimp

Share any one habit which you think makes you more productive.

I write down all my tasks for the next day, on the previous night and then i try to finish them by the end of the day. That way i keep track of all my pending & future tasks.

Share any one habit which you wish to change in yourself.

I sometimes get over ambitious and am working on it.

Answer in less than 50 words

One tip to success

Prioritize your goals & never give up

One mistake you believe every individual must avoid

Not having clear goals and vision

One most important lesson that you have learnt till now

Talk to your customers. They know more what they want than you do.

What are your plans for next 3 years?

Now that we are an established company we are also looking for major PR push in the western countries that would add credibility to our brand. On the product side, we want to become a fully integrated design platform and not just a crowdsourcing platform. So a lot of our new development & strategies are around this goal.

If you get a chance to start your career again what would you do differently this time?

I would speak to my customers and designers from the very first day. I understood the importance of this quite late. I think its very important to connect with them.

What are your top three getaway destinations?

Maldives, San Francisco, Ibiza

Share a quote that inspires you the most.

Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing. – Muhammad Ali

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