Mayur Dev Sewak, is a serial entrepreneur, technology enthusiast and has spearheaded several programs spanning his career, which has given him much credence among his peers. In addition to it, he also gives occasional lectures as well as undertakes workshops on his expertise topics throughout India. He has conducted more than 100 sessions on various topics related to social media, robotics, technopreneurship and information security to an audience comprising of academicians, which includes professors, lecturers and college students.
After completing his graduation from BITS, Pilani, he started a stellar career by Co-founder Emanagineer India. Few years later, he ushered in another startup with the name EISystems Technologies. Till date he had successfully impacted out an excess of 10,000 students through his various initiatives and technophobic events.
Please provide a brief overview of your product/ service.
We provide workshops and training’s on topics related to technology like Robotics, Information Communication Technology, Application & Smart City Development, Automobiles etc in B2C segment and manufacture robotics kits and components in B2B segment.
Some of the places which we had covered in last 2 years includes IISc Bangalore, IIT Bombay, IIT Delhi, IIT Kanpur, IIT Roorkee, IIT BHU Varanasi, NIT Warangal, NIT Tiruchirappalli and more than 150 engineering campuses across India.
What inspired you to build the above product/ service?
I think it was a flaw in our technical education system which inspired us to do anything which can bridge the gap between industry demand from its new recruit and a student passing out from any engineering college, you know if you go to any engineering college in India you will be surprised to find that they impose 75% lecture attendence rules on students and when it comes to practical then its all about sitting and doing nothing but the problem is this, industry needs practical oriented recruits not those who are having 80% marks in engineering and literally almost zero in technical or practical exposure.
What is your life mantra?
If you have things to do then better finish it off and as soon as you come on the verge of completing that work, a new idea will come and this process will continue.
What was the most challenging part of your journey till now?
We are a business where we do marketing of our product sitting here in Delhi but almost 60% of our business comes from south India, the most critical time which we had faced in our journey till now when our concerned market got crashed during Telangana creation and literally at that time we were just 6-7 months old.
That simple bandh actually caused cancellation of more than 30 workshops in that 1-1.5 month period but finally we dealt with the situation and now we are moving into next era of our self development phase.
How did you overcome those challenges?
Of course whenever you are sitting in an organization whose operations are scattered all across the nation right from the day one, then in that case you have to give due respect to every region of the nation and you just cant rely on any specific state or place, we took some good steps and you can see the difference that 85% dependence on one region now gone down to 60% and I think this is an indicator of reform in process.
Share some details about the investments that you have been able to fetch for the business till now.
We approached few VCs at the time of our founding and most of them either denied or simply preferred to stay unresponded and one the reasons which we felt was no body in our team was carrying any IIT tag with him/her, but we feel great that we started from Rs. 1700 only(Yes its the domain and hosting cost) and now we are doing in 8digits plus mark in just a span to 2.5 years.
I know somewhere growth is curtailed due to fund related issues but currently we are in talks with few good people (I hope you understand) and we will be announcing very soon.
How do you protect yourself from the problem of Brain Drain?
Give your people a better environment to work, tell them that it’s their organization and whatever you are doing is going towards the betterment of your company. Rest you just leave on them, of course they are smart people.
According to you, what are the three qualities an individual must have to achieve success?
- He should have a vision and a guts to make things happen.
- He should be able to take risk.
- He should feel no problem in starting up after the end of disaster.
Which online tools/ services/ apps do you use the most and would like to recommend as well?
In that case I will only if anything is available for free (We do pay for paid applications) and if it can ease out your task, so go and use it.
Dropbox, Google Spreadsheets, Mailtrack, Analytics, Salesforce, Mailchimp are of the great products.
Share any one habit which you think makes you more productive.
Simply think “Habit” in wee hours that you need to increase your team and I am seriously telling you that there is no better feeling than this, when you are giving a livelihood to few people, I think offering job to a correct person is the biggest motivation to me.
Share any one habit which you wish to change in yourself.
I still wake up at 10am and go for sleep at 3am and I am really doing hard work to change it.
Answer in less than 50 words
One tip to success:
Success is a feeling and is a very relative word, for any two individuals definitions can be different but this is for sure there is no shortcut to achieve this.
One mistake you believe every individual must avoid:
Over confidence in himself/herself and over dependence on anyother’s capability.
One most important lesson that you have learnt till now:
Every moment, Every minute. Every Hour you learn something, learning is simply a indefinite process.
What are your plans for next 3 years?
We are diversifying and now we are working very aggressively, talking about the revenues at this forum will not be a good idea but we are actually working on the hybrid model of inorganic and organic growth.
If you get a chance to start your career again what would you do differently this time?
I think it will be better if we leave it for that time, I will surely let you know about this then.
What are your top three getaway destinations?
Share a quote that inspires you the most.
“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful, that’s what matters to me.” -Steve Jobs