Rokda: How Baniyas Do Business by Nikhil Inamdar

Author:Nikhil Inamdar [Inamdar, Nikhil]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9788184006599
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2014-10-19T18:30:00+00:00

CAPITAL ONE

Destiny they say is not a matter of chance, but a matter of choice. In Rohit’s case this didn’t hold true. Barely weeks after joining Capital One, he would find out that he wasn’t fated to go to the US after all. They had applied for his visa, but the limit for the H1B quota ran out and so he was asked to move to Bangalore instead, with a promise that he would be sent to the US a year later.

Alas, even that was not to be. This time not because the visa didn’t come through, but because of his own doing. Kunal Bahl, his old friend, had by this time begun working for Microsoft after graduating from Wharton. The duo had kept in touch despite being 7000 miles apart and would meet when Kunal came down to India a couple of times every year. Rohit would even do his computer science assignments that Kunal found very hard to do. The two were still best buddies and would often bounce off ideas to one another over email on potential businesses they could start together some day.

‘He was surer about entrepreneurship, I was a bit tentative, but Kunal talked me into it quite quickly,’ says Rohit, who decided fairly out of the blue, a few months before he was due to leave for America, that US could wait, entrepreneurship was more exciting. ‘It happened during Kunal’s brother’s wedding, when I flew down to Delhi to be with his family.’

A day after the functions were over and done with, Kunal gently broached the topic. Rohit casually nodded in agreement, but Kunal had made up his mind to act swiftly. He was very serious and told Rohit to come home the very next day to brainstorm.

Neither had envisaged that they would lock themselves in a room for the whole of the next week in the course of which they not only discussed multiple ideas but also firmed up their decision to give up their thriving careers.

Wasn’t it a HUGE risk?

‘It was, but if I had to take it, that was the time. The IIT background and the work experience had instilled enough confidence in me to justify to myself that I could chart my own path, perhaps falter along the way, but never die hungry and poor,’ he says. ‘It was a two-five minute decision, and ever since most other major choices in my life—whether it is to do with marriage, adopting a particular business model, or a marketing campaign—have been two-five minute decisions.’

Convincing the bosses at Capital One was a difficult task though. A twenty three year old upstart giving up a dollar salary and a great job was considered madness. And Sarvottam, Rohit’s immediate boss at Capital One did all he could to convince the young man that he was being unreasonable in quitting barely a few months into his first job ever. So much so that a meeting had to be set up with the MD of the company Atma Iyer in a bid to stop him from resigning.

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