Mohankumar Swaminathan is a computer science graduate from Karunya University in Coimbatore who heads DoPartTime.com as the co-founder. He is passionate software professional with a knack for product development. ‘Why India lacks in offering employment to part-timers?’ this question always grabbed his attention as he saw friends doing part time jobs while studying abroad. It was during his Hong Kong visit that he realized and convinced himself that part-time jobs have a market everywhere.
After playing several roles as software developer, team lead, and consultant for 3 years he took to entrepreneurial world. Starting DoPartTime.com in India was a challenge that he chose to face together with his friend Arun, who was equally excited about is idea. There was no looking back afterwards. What makes him special as entrepreneur is ahead…
Please provide a brief overview of your product/service.
DoPartTime is a job portal built to focus on part-time jobs, bringing together part time job seekers and job providers. Jobs listed will be either part time, seasonal, temporary or flexible time jobs.
Job provider will be able to post job openings on our website, while our Quality Management Team takes the extra effort to verify the employer with basic credibility checks.
The job seekers can search for part time jobs with varied filter options (timing, days and locality) and apply. Registered job seekers will be served with matching job suggestions based on their profile, skills and interests.
The website is customized for the job provider to make the hiring process hassle-free and effective. They can the review applications received, and our Premium Subscription option will give them extra benefits where they can instantly connect with matching candidates etc.
For the non internet users, we have a separate SMS based application to register, search and apply for the job.
What inspired you to build the above product/ service?
The Idea is to organize Part Time Jobs in India and make the most out of the untapped – skilled Human Resource, who can’t take up a regular 9 to 5 job.
The whole concept popped up after hearing our friends who travelled abroad for studies, say that they prefer taking up a part-time job to manage their living. This ignited my curiosity to know more about the Indian Part Time Job market, and we discovered there being a potential business opportunity.
What is your life mantra?
Only you can experiment with your life; never settle for less. Unlearn the regular process to innovate.
What was the most challenging part of your journey till now?
My first challenge was to convince my parents. Coming from a middle class family, with a younger sister it’s considered a sin to ask parents for business investment. So, all my hard earned savings was our initial investment to register our company.
After enough details were collected through our market study, we participated in TiECON Chennai 2013 PitchFest with a MVP and won incubation at StartTank Chennai (PayPal – TiE). Only after getting incubation invitation, we registered the company and put down our papers.
Though the incubation center was a plug and play, it took around a month for us to brainstorm and study the recruiting in industry. Coming from a technology consulting background and both the co-founders being tech geeks, our challenge was to accept that this isn’t a fully technology based company, instead it needs a solid business focus.
We come across challenges as a start-up founder every day. Making your start-up is your first challenge, getting your v1.0 product is a challenge, finding your first 1000 users is a challenge, making an impression on your start-up is a challenge, marketing your start-up is a challenge, building a team is a challenge and resolving an unsatisfied customer is a challenge, more than everything, keep going is a major challenge. Every founder has a different style of overcoming these challenges.
Share some details about the investments that you have been able to fetch for the business till now.
We are a lean bootstrapped start-up organization.
How do you protect yourself from the problem of Brain Drain?
Entrepreneurship is all about risk and rewards. Not just the founders are entrepreneurs; all our employees are entrepreneurs too. It’s all about motivating them and showing the bigger picture and asking them to join us on this challenge.
We make sure that their careers are more interesting and worth the time and money they sacrifice.
According to you, what are the three qualities an individual must have to achieve success?
Passion, Presentation and Smart work
Which online tools/ services/ apps do you use the most and would like to recommend as well?
Github, Trello
Share any one habit which you think makes you more productive.
If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Plan and measure to see if it meets your plan. 80% of planning will help in 20% of the execution.
Share any one habit which you wish to change in yourself.
Balancing work, my personal life and health are things that I’d like to focus on a bit more.
Answer in less than 50 words
Money is just a byproduct, experience is what matters.
- One mistake you believe every individual must avoid:
Education is not a reality framework. Learning and common sense it is.
- One most important lesson that you have learnt till now:
I Need to STOP Saying YES to Everything and Everyone.
What are your plans for next 3 years?
In view of expansion, we knew that this is going to be the next generation hiring tool. We are right now focusing on South India and will expand to cover the whole of India in the next six months.
As a product road map, this classical job board is to build up our part-time job seekers’ database. Our ultimate aim is to make peer-to-peer tasks done easy, with help of part-timers. We will also introduce elite value added service for our 5 star rated profiles.
Find a job that fits with your life, not a life that fits with your job!
If you get a chance to start your career again what would you do differently this time?
Just follow my instinct from day one and start-up. The energy one has when he is inside a campus is unmatchable.
Share a quote that inspires you the most.
You only have to be right once!