About me

• Writer by Interest.
• Founder by Mindset.
• Engineer by Graduation.
• Problem Solver by default.
• Product Manager by Profession

I’m in my mid-20s and just started building my 2nd startup. The first one was Rentella, an online rental marketplace for students exclusively inside colleges, Failed.

There are no failures, only feedback.

I’m based out of Coimbatore, a district in western Tamil Nadu, chances are high you heard of it by the name Manchester of South India.

I have a document signed by Anna University saying I’m a Mechanical engineer. My father used to joke that Mechanical engineers are people qualified to do everything except Mechanical engineering, and as his son, I grew up to validate that statement. Since college, I freelanced, traded options for a living, started an Import-Export company with my friends and still experimenting with a lot in life.

My Story

10thd results, my school’s promise was NO SCHOOL FEE for anyone who scores above 480. I scored 479.

The next year I was accidentally elected as the School Pupil Leader of our school. It was a last-minute drama.

I did my engineering in a tier II college. Since my birth, I’ve lived in the same city, the same street, the same school, one college and with my parents. Never moved out of home for studies nor did I have the need to. The exposure of the world was at its lowest. But do you think?

I started reading books, and that opened a new world for me. The world of startups and people who went on to change the world for the better. The experience was insane. Most of my knowledge library today is from books and the internet.

My father is an entrepreneur, I’ve always seen him being one. My friends and their parents were also entrepreneurs, the mindset was set at a very young age. The books I read, the people I watched, the company I kept and the ecosystem I lived in shaped me to think like one.

I watch, play and talk about a lot of sports.

Sports = discipline, Team sports = Lifestyle.

Playing team sports from a young age is a sure recipe for understanding life. There are failures, heartbreaks, taking blame, giving credit, going with the majority and opening a new track of thinking. While I don’t play now (injured knee 2x surgery), I still follow and talk about it. It is also an easy way of making friends. People get along easily and exchange greetings.

So, if I say that I’m an accidental entrepreneur or come from an unconventional background for becoming an entrepreneur, I’m lying in your face. Hit me with a brick.

The only challenge to me was doing something unique and bigger than what people around me had done.

Experiences

1. First Startup – Rentella
   • When we were in the 2nd year of college we started, we wanted to do something with Technology. Because we were hyped about watching the movie “Social Network”
   • So, my nerd friend, me and a few juniors from the Computer Science department decided to build Rentella- A rental marketplace for students inside our college. 
   • It was a fun experience because we decided to build a startup without knowing what a startup was in the first place. 
   • We shut it down for multiple reason. 
2. Shark Tank India Season 1
   • I applied for the Shark Tank India Season 1. I had no team, no company incorporation, nothing. I was a naïve idiot with a shitty presentation and an irrationally ambitious startup idea.
   • I had one thing, good persuasive writing skills. I did three online rounds and went up to the pre-finals in Bangalore. It was a good experience.
   • Probably I was the only one from Tamil Nadu to represent the show until that stage back then. 
3. Product Management
   • While Tech has always fascinated me, I never learned to code. Because I didn’t have the interest first and then the ability to learn coding. 
   • I’ve tried, pushed myself hard and even forced me to learn coding, but no success no far. Without interest I was unable to start it. 
   • But I was always curious about Technology, design and problem-solving. For some reason, I showed a natural affinity towards product management right after college. 
   • I really didn’t know what PM is but somehow my curiosity brought me to it. I went down the rabbit hole, consumed a lot of books, videos, and blogs and followed a lot of product people. I understood what PM is to some extent. It naturally piqued my interest. 
   • So I decided to upskill professionally. I joined a product management Career Accelerator Program from a famous EdTech online. 
   • The review about the course and the platform is a story for a different day. 
   • I spent 6 months heads down and upskilling as a PM. I did a lot of drills, assignments and case studies. They all made me a better thinker.
4. First Job – Frigate
   • With good exposure to product management and the confidence to crack PM roles, I started reaching out to people for APM jobs. No success. 
   • But luckily, I got an inbound lead from a startup based out of Coimbatore for an APM role. 
   • The startup was Frigate.ai, the founder Tamizh reached out to me on LinkedIn and gave an interview. 
   • I passed it and was offered an APM role. I was the 8 member of their founding team. Their first PM hire and directly reported to their CPO. Frigate was a VC-funded startup that made noises in Coimbatore. 
   • That experience lasted only for a couple of months. 
5. Second job – Deck Rooster
   • The endlessly curious person in me was always lookout for something interesting and challenging. I was trying to build a startup by solving a real problem, trying to apply for PM job. 
   • When I was scrolling Twitter one day casually, I saw this company hiring for an uncommon role Startup Narrative Strategist. 
   • I found the role and JD interesting. The job was to write compelling investor narratives for startups raising their series A, B, and C rounds. 
   • Since I was interested in startups, fundraising, business strategy and products, I was able to crack that role. 
   • A great founder, and a great team and my learning curve moved exponentially. My worldview of startups increased to new dimensions and perspectives. 
   • A good salary and decent perks made me a little impatient. Plus, I didn’t ace the role to the team’s expectations. So I quit and found a problem statement to solve effectively and commit the next 5-10 years of my life to it. 
   • I was probably the only person in the team who came from a tier 2 city, tier 3 college without much hype to my name and the brand of my past experiences. 

What am I doing now?

1. Building Record
   1. Wearing all hats across products, marketing, sales and investor relations. Sometime I pretend to be the CEO when shit hits the roof.
   2. Companies can find and hire skilled freshers with zero friction from our verified skill repository. 
   3. We have taken a long bet on skill-based hiring. If you are a fresher trying to find your first job across, tech and non-tech domains, join Record and start earning your skill badges. 100+ recruiters across the country are actively scouting talent like you on our platform.
   4. We are a team of 5 right now, including my co-founder and interns. 
   5. Visit getrecord.in, Read here for more details on what we are building.
2. Co-Founder Ad-titude Labs
   1. After we decided to remain bootstrapped, we needed a way to keep our startup alive. 
   2. While freelancing was one way, we also found a huge trend with personal branding. Especially in our city. The trend was about to pick up. The wave is moving from the west to major parts of India and now finally to our city. People are buying from people. 
   3. So we started Adtitude Labs, our city’s first Personal Branding agency. We help busy founder, professional and business owners establish their personal brand across LinkedIn and Instagram. 
   4. We mostly offer 3 services
      1. Video Production
      2. Personal Branding
      3. B2B lead generation
3. Pitch deck Narratives
   1. While doing both effectively, I also honed the skill of writing investor narratives and converting them into Compelling Pitch Decks.
   2. If you are an early-stage startup raising funds or trying to convey your startup’s stories to the investor, you can ping me.
   3. More about this service here.
4. Product Consulting (Paused)
   1. I help early-stage startups to make the right product decisions.
   2. Early-stage founders are mostly good at coding and executing. They sometimes lack the knack for product, a high level of product sense and problems converting user requirements into features.
   3. I help these startups achieve their product goals and product roadmaps.