Roshan Agarwal is an undergraduate at IIT Gandhinagar pursuing Civil Engineering with minors in Management. He is an aspiring entrepreneur, social media strategist and a lifelong student of marketing and sales.
He founded White Panda, which is a small enterprise marketing company. He pivoted the business plan and idea a lot to reach a proper customer segment.In the next three years, White Panda visions to revolutionize content creation and marketing in India as well as be a strong community of Writers from across India.
Please provide a brief overview of your product/ service.
White Panda is a content development platform, connecting clients in need of content to freelance content writers looking for work. Our aim is to simplify the process of content creation for businesses by removing the need to screen the writers, negotiating payment details and constant monitoring the writers. White Panda’s platform ensures that the most relevant writer is assigned to a task with the help of a two-step writer selection process. The writers, in turn, get access to a huge job feed and guaranteed payment with the freedom to work from anywhere.
What inspired you to build the above product/ service?
As Roshan Agarwal, the founder, was interning at IIM Ahmedabad, he realized the shabby state of the content marketing and the massive need for content today. Writers being denied of payment despite completing the job on time, and clients receiving substandard, poorly written and unedited content. All of these facets inspired him to come up with White Panda.
What is your life mantra?
My long term mantra for life is to evolve better.
What was the most challenging part of your journey till now?
So far, time management and finding full-time employees have been a task. Being undergrads, we also have to give time to the courses we’ve taken apart from taking care of business at White Panda
How did you overcome those challenges?
With the help of the dedicated team members of White Panda, motivation from mentors and feedback from clients and writers has given us a lot of insight to overcome most of our challenges.
Share some details about the investments that you have been able to fetch for the business till now.
Currently bootstrapped. However, we’ve received few investment offers from some angels and investment firms as well.
How do you protect yourself from the problem of Brain Drain?
Our commitment and loyalty into building the model of this startup has been a binder and that has protected us from Brain Drain
According to you, what are the three qualities an individual must have to achieve success?
Loyalty; Commitment; Innovation.
Which online tools/ services/ apps do you use the most and would like to recommend as well?
Trillion; tiny. cc; google services, of course
Share any one habit which you think makes you more productive.
Reading – Feedly provides me with curated articles from all over the web. This helps me understand the industry and evolve accordingly
Share any one habit which you wish to change in yourself.
Time Management; I would really love to change the way I manage my time/schedule.
Answer in less than 50 words
Working with Pareto principle has worked for me so far and I believe can work for a lot of people, hence this would be my tip to success for people out there.
- One mistake you believe every individual must avoid
Over-estimating or under-estimating capabilities of individuals and self. Striking a balance between the two is very conducive.
- One most important lesson that you have learnt till now
If you don’t show trust in your products and services, nobody will. So always believe in what you have created and have a good backing of answers to support the idea. This will not only portray you as a strong entrepreneur but will bind people’s interest in the products and services
What are your plans for next 3 years?
Along with establishing the current White Panda platform, I and my team aim to launch more innovative marketing products to facilitate the growth of businesses and various communities.
If you get a chance to start your career again what would you do differently this time?
Nothing. This path has worked in a very apt way for me. I have the support of mentors from top educational institutes, best colleagues who happen to be my friends first, investors looking forward to investing in us because we’re budding students, and last but not the least, there are young people like me out there who have shown keen interest in White Panda. Thus, I don’t think there could have been a better kick start to this.
What are your top three getaway destinations?
Turkey; Maldives; California
Share a quote that inspires you the most.
“Know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories.” – Sun Tzu