Today, we will talk about Ishwar Kumhar, with no family background in Business but spirit that is capable of moving the mountains.

Here goes the story.

Please let us know about yourself

Ishwar Kumhar, a small town guy and I hail from Sirohi district of Rajsthan. Just like a normal school guy, I entered NIT Jaipur as an Electronics Engineer and completed my engineering peacefully. I got a regular job meant for a regular guy but I wanted not remain a regular guy anymore.

You started PrintClubZone soon after your college in your college. What made you start this venture and how did you get the idea about it?

As I have already stated that I was just a regular guy. It was during the engineering years, I started reading inspirational books and biographies of great men and started thinking of doing something on my own; to become an entrepreneur. The seed was sown right there, but at that time I had no idea from where to start and more importantly what to start.

After engineering I joined Atos Origin as a Software Engineer, but the fire to become an entrepreneur was not subsided. A lot of ideas came into mind, which I discussed with my friends and colleagues, to get feedbacks and perspectives. It was a ‘one of those’ drinking sessions with friends, when suddenly this idea of customized apparel popped up from someone’s mind in the group.

On further discussing the idea, it looked interesting as well as feasible and a plan was drawn right there. I started researching more on the idea of customized apparel and within a week left my job to pursue the dream of becoming an entrepreneur.

What were the difficulties you faced and what kept you going?

There were a lot of difficulties in the journey which everyone without business background has to face. I had no before-hand idea about how to manage a business. Everything I had to start from scratch. I had no idea about apparel industry, customization, from where to procure and whom to sell, nothing; it was like a blank paper for me where I had to write without any clue of the topic given.

But these challenges made me even more determined as this was the path I had chosen leaving a promising career behind. But the things that really kept me going were my family and friend’s support. My parents never questioned about my decision and at every stage provided moral and financial support whatever was required.

Friends were very helpful in setting up the business, which would be really difficult without their support. Also when I started building my business network, I came along some wonderful people who helped the business grow what it is today.

And today you have another retail brand to your name, WoW Retails. What is it and what brought it into the picture?

Wow retail is a concept where we give gifts a personal touch. A gift is a way to warm someone heart, and when it becomes personalized, the intensity only grows stronger. So this was the idea behind starting WoW Retail. At WoW Retail we are into 3 businesses mainly

a. corporate gifting

b. physical retail

c. online retail

China, Taiwan and major Indian Corporate houses have become our customers and the chain is growing rapidly. Currently we have four retail outlets functional in the business capital of country, Mumbai.

All the customization at these outlets is done on the spot. Customers just need to visit with an artwork or else our designers are there to assist them while our production guy makes your product ready.

Lastly, the online retail is simple, you choose, you pay and you get at your doorstep. If you are a designer, let us put your design on our website, we sell it and you earn 25% royalty of the sold item.

We have worked hard to mark our presence in the Indian marketing Industry. Today we have tie ups with UTV India.

WoW retail is exclusive merchandise partner for John Abraham (JA) brand. We have setup an online store for John Abraham branded merchandise where people can buy merchandise with designs provided by John Abraham himself.

Ideology and Work Methodolgy

What we do is not ‘work’, it is our passion. We are a group of friends and the way we work is simply amazing. We are ready to work 24X7, all of us and none of us ever feels tired.  Wow team is comprised of engineers from NIT and MBAs from IIM. After office, we sit for long hours to discuss our plans and strategies and review how things are going at present.

We started with the idea that we need to do good work because money is a byproduct of work. We intend to do the good work and money will follow.

Lastly, we at WoW strongly believe that no one except you can stop you from achieving what you want. So don’t be a prisoner of your own inhibitions, overcome your fear and you’ll be amazed to see what all you can do.

Failure is when you stop dreaming or stop putting efforts, when you accept that you have failed. Failure is nothing but a state of mind; if you believe you are successful you will be successful, definitely.

www.wowretails.com | www.printclubzone.com | Facebook Fan Page

Three years, two retail brands and a happily satisfied team, you do not want more from life.

P.S: Within three years, WoW has become a popular name in India and recently they made an appearance on the ET Now TV for the brilliant start up idea of theirs.

This man talks from his experiences and his experiences have made him a learned and famous man.

Check WoW Retails @ ET now: Video Link

Surya Pratap Deka

Tell us something –when did you realize the entrepreneur in yourself?

I believe everyone is a born entrepreneur. But few have the privilege like me of being nurtured in an atmosphere where risk taking, innovating and the urge to devote oneself to a cause greater than just him/her is simply a way of life. I have the earliest recollections of growing up to the story of how my grandfather left his cushy job in the Garo hills of Assam in the late forties when he could not bear the pain of seeing people poor and naked .He took five years off his work to invent the first spinning/ reeling machine as a means to improve the economic self sufficiency of the poor in Assam. For forty straight years, he sold the machine at a very marginal cost, with a lifelong guarantee for the machine, with free replacement of parts whenever and wherever, until the Department of Sericulture developed another machine in the nineties and it took over. Working on a non loss, non dividend model with social impact maximization as his sole goal, my grandfathers’ work bears a strong resemblance to the concept of social business as postulated by Muhammad Yunus some fifty years later.

That story was the beginning of an urge in me to create something of enduring value and being useful to people.

And how did the journey of being an entrepreneur led you to “One school for All” idea?

The urge to innovate and create led me to take up engineering as my field of technical education and then to work in diverse areas of business development, supply chain and marketing strategy in the corporate sector.

But after a few years as I was increasingly exposed to the works of Jeffrey Sachs, Muhammad Yunus,Wangari Maathai and the like, I realized the grave inequities existing outside the walls of my corporate castle and that there was a way out of it. And the Teach for India advertisement in the Times of India news paper one day was that one squarefoot of idealism for my entrepreneurial heart that I chose to respond to immediately. It is a program, which invites young leaders around the world for two years to solve the problem of educational inequity in our country. Over the last one year, my friend and a co Teach for India fellow Saurabh Taneja have been ideating on how to make excellent education available to each kid in our country. And one fine day, we arrived at our vision “One day there will be ‘One school for all’ in every neighborhood of India.”

Let us know about your current occupation. What you do, whatever you do?

Occupation is a little odd for what I do. I am committed to a cause, an enterprise.

My immediate enterprise comprises of a low-income municipal school in Pune and the under resourced community around it who believe, like me, that one day all children will have excellent education. My role as a teacher/educator is to build a commitment to excellence in my school, to impart the best of education as a part of our ‘Teaching as Leadership’ program to these kids, providing kids with life supporting skills and building mindsets of excellence by global standards to break their individual family cycles of poverty and other ills to make it big in life. My role as a community leader is to overcome barriers in the society to a good education system and student’s achievement, like educational inaccessibility, unmotivated school authorities/civic bodies, nonchalant representatives of Municipal Corporation, and family issues like nutritional hazards and malnourishment, abuses and violence, unsustainable economic conditions and a variety of social malaises.

Yet, my immediate enterprise is part of something bigger, a global movement called Teach for All, under which the India specific chapter called Teach for India was formally established in 2008 as a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to create a movement of leaders who will work to eliminate educational inequity in the country.

Like me, 253 other Fellows are working in the most challenging schools and communities of Mumbai and Pune serving around 6000 children and thousands of other stakeholders to create a better world where everyone is empowered by the virtues of a good education.

What made you to create the “One school for all” idea?

The vision of our project is : One day there will be “One school for all “in every neighborhood of India.

This is our dream of a just world, where the power of ONE is unleashed for the benefit of ALL. And the thrust is on the word all . Can we build high performance schools in India where the rich, poor, able, differently abled children all go to learn together, becoming effective leaders of today and change makers of tomorrow? What would it take to reach there?

Our model of one excellent school for everyone is based on the two strong pillars of excellent education and community entrepreneurship. We believe that these two E’s blended rightly would help create the next revolution of high performance schools in India with self reliant and invested communities of stakeholders around each excellent school ecosystem.

What is the main idea of “One school for all” idea?

Historically the concept of inclusive education is equated to include differently abled children in the mainstream and has flown down from institutions of some superiority or capacity to those needing help. This brings out the unique value proposition in my model. India’s first school opening its doors to kids from the slums and the best private schools in the world alike, to abled and differently abled kids alike by virtue of the excellent education and leadership skills that it provides, while employing a model of community entrepreneurship for the section of families from humble backgrounds around the school ecosystem making excellent education available to each kid, irrespective of where he/she some from. Something like the high performance KIPP schools in the US but with the inclusive and entrepreneurial model added to it.

The next obvious question is, in a school where the rich and poor go together, what is the model of sustenance? The answer lies in social business – a non loss, non dividend model with social impact maximization as its goal. This is the second challenge we are trying to address – to engage social business as a tool to address educational inequity and inequality of our country. Often, poverty and lack of economic self reliance is the biggest hurdle in the way of a families’ involvement in their child’s education. We believe if we can create sustainable social business experiments around both the advantaged and  disadvantaged families who send their kids to our  school, we achieve two things – restore the dignity of the economically disadvantaged  by enabling the entrepreneurship spirit in them and allowing them to earn the right to send their kids to  school, while sensitizing the well off kids and their families of the truth on the other side of the line and creating a cross ventilation of values, ethics and realizations in the society. In our unique model, we create a level playing field for all in a way which is sustainable while keeping intact the dignity of each individual or family associated with it.

You are an engineer, how you feel doing this and not what you studied for four years?

I have always seen engineering as a means to create something of enduring value for the society. In different ways, I am trying to do the same. You be an engineer or a doctor, a travel guide or a businessperson, a mathematician or a musician, if you think of each and every profession in the paradigm of service, as a thankful way of giving back to the part we owe to our existence in this world, we would be a better place.

Any message for the young Indian entrepreneur?

With around 600 million young people waiting for change to happen in India today, what more beautiful a concept can there be, than to fillip this completely renewable and assumingly inexhaustible source of youthful energy to create millions of nodes of changes in every gully, nukkad and crossroad of India. Just imagine. One Gandhi, multiplied six hundred million times. Crazy mathematics. That, is the power of “Be”ing the change

And lastly, I would leave you with a thought to reflect on. Someone once said, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves – who am I to be brilliant, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world…”

For change to happen, you either wait to see, or you choose to Be! Take your pick.

Visit www.oneschoolforall.org and be a part of  the high performance community who believe excellent education and entrepreneurship have the power to change the world.

Surya Pratap Deka | OneSchoolForAll

If you want to be involved in the One school for all project, mail Surya at [email protected] or call him at +919762539809

Vist the website @ OneSchoolforall

P.S:

1. Those who think India needs a change can step up and join the team that knows no foul play and no cribbing but playing with all their hearts.

2. Those who think India needs a change and they can’t do anything about it can wait and see Deka & Company bring the change so that ‘their’ kids are born in a changed India.

He has not become a businessman or a spiritual guru, but he has simply proved that ‘Passion moves the World’ and when you are determined and honest, things fall in place eventually.

Name : Vinay Kumar, B.tech. NIT hamirpur’08

Civil Engineer, Power grid Corporation of India.

Let us know something about you

I am Vinay Kumar working in Power grid Corporation of India as an Executive Engineer. I try to be as simple as my name is. I belong to a very small village of Himachal Pradesh where until today no road has reached, but it is a very good place to live in. My house stands on the top of the hill and it makes things look beautiful even if there is no road or bus or medical facility. My parents were not educated even to primary level but they knew very well the value of education. What I have become today is just because of their hard work and faith in the value of education in one’s life.

Childhood Memories

School days have always looked better for people when they look back. However, my school days were really very tough for me. I never had any guidance, any resource or any financial help that could have take care of my needs. My parents did all they could have done but things go out of control sometimes and those were one of ‘those times’. Passing an exam remained the highest dream for me and I always accomplished that. Failing was the last thing I could have imagined, so I always worked hard to pass every exam. Distinction, however, always remained a far-fetched dream.

To make things even more complicated, I chose to study Mathematics and Science in my higher secondary. However, switching from a Hindi school to English Medium was nothing less than a mental trauma. But as they say, God helps those who help themselves, I kept helping myself and God kept helping me. No tuition, no money and those English Medium demons made it quite difficult for me. Looking back is always easy but when you have to walk the first step, it is always difficult. However, I survived and by the time I finished my higher Secondary School, I got to know about Engineering.

Later, I got to know that kids start preparing for engineering and medical in 6^th class itself. I wondered how on earth was that possible.

College Days

I never dreamed to study in an engineering college; actually, I never thought that such a thing existed.  However, I took the test and found my life going in a direction, which became the most beautiful part of my life. Everything was a dream, it still is. I moved out of my village for the first time and reached Chandigarh. To my amazement, I saw things, people and buildings, which I never thought existed on this Earth. I loved every bit of it and my college was the best place on earth.

Bring on the problems, I am game for anything

College was good, beautiful, awesome and what not. But money always remained a problem. However, bank loan and relatives helped me to make it through. During summer vacations, I used to work with the PWD contractors to make up for my college fee and expenses. My parents never asked me to do so but I wanted to become self-dependent at the earliest. I did become self-dependent before 200 others of my batch and I am proud of that fact. I used to work during days, get money in the evening and work at home during nights. Life was never easy for me but I never thought that it was difficult either.

Learning of life is never easy but those who ‘chose’ to accept it rather than cribbing always see the light. I am not trying to preach anything but no one would dare to see what I have experienced. I strongly believe that living your dream is the only thing worth living for and to die for as well.

In his college days, he was known by the name of his village, many people did not know his real name and today he has surely made his village proud.

You do not give him road, he will construct one

Road, No Road, such people are always unstoppable.

Slow and Steady wins the race and this man is a perfect example of this saying.

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Brief History of you [actually not so brief]

Right from Childhood, I’d been a hell energetic child. I never used to study a lot, until I realized how important the education was and had been studying since then, though the studying now has totally turned the way I want it to be. During my grad school I was keen to start off some business as it was a dream I had since my younger years. I tried my luck with the multi level marketing for one and a half year and organized various events in the college. The idea behind this organization was to learn how to manage people and how to organize things that would come in handy with my plans in future. I caught the Bug of Entrepreneurship in 3^rd year after reading a few inspiring success stories, eg: Loosing my virginity, Straight from the Gut etc.

I had always wished to do things different from what others did, and walk this untraveled land.  I hail from a financially sound family and never had that unsatisfied soul but surely the satisfaction is self proclaimed. I’d waited for 5 years to get my first branded Nike shoes and things like that, but never complained. I guess not having many things or not been able to buy a few things got deep inside my mind and I had made up my mind to not to live with constraints in my life.

And here I am on the path to change it for ever.!!

Education:

Schooling: St. Luke’s Sr Sec School, Solan.

Grad School: NIT Hamirpur

Grad Research: For SWM at Fachhochschule Augsburg, Germany

Family Background: I hail from a typical middle class family with dad being a Banker and Mother retired as the Principal, Govt. Girls Sr Sec School, Solan.

Did you ever want to do a job? If no why, if yes why?

Well, I’ve always been a strong believer of one needs to follow his own plans, but sometimes we have to compromise. Though, my story of working has been a little different. I wanted to start my work in an MNC to get to know the corporate culture and how a multinational work! But my work in the company was not ideally a job for me, but a learning that I had to know before venturing out. As there is no business man in my entire family tree, I had to learn the tacts of trade.

After completion of your engineering, what were your plans? I heard tht you got a job in ABB, did you join?

During my final year of Engineering, I had been very busy organizing events, but I had started making various business plans, some, I dropped after doing some financial analysis and some due to viability factors [Both financial and demographic]. As already told, I’d planned to stay in a MNC before taking a plunge and had decided to move to Germany in one year to the company I’d done my internship in so as to get the seed capital for starting my own venture. At the same time I was working on various business plans while working with the firm. Luckily, I caught hold of a pretty business plan and after studying its viability, future scope and other factors, I knew it was time to move ahead. I worked for the organization for 5 months and then quit to start off the venture.

What made you think about this venture in particular? Was it pre-planned or came spontaneously?

After having a business plan in hand, I did a three month extensive research on the subject and did a very strong market research quantified with a few extrapolated ratio analyses before starting off the Venture.

What services you offer? How you do it?

We started our portfolio from a single service related to the Carbon Market field, as a consultant providing services to register renewable projects with the UN, and soon included Energy Audit, Green Audit, Project financing, Insurance of Power projects, etc under our services.

Who are other people associated with you?

I have employed 5 people under me, who are managing various departments in the company and have tree associated people working with Styrka consultants on profit sharing from US, Brazil, Spain and England.

How are things going? Hard/tough/ easy?

The working has been quite hard for, as we’re still hoping to generate some more business. The toughest thing is to market yourself with ZERO credentials. And managing people is the toughest job an entrepreneur can come across, because you being the leader, if the company doesn’t work, it’s nobody’s fault but your, as you could not motivate /influence your team. This also has been the best learning so far.

What are your plans?

My plan for the company is to make it a market leader in the field it’s operating in and make a conglomerate in the coming time. I never quit!

How you feel about it? Does it make you happy?

This has been the best decision I’ve ever taken in my life and I am exhilarated, excited and more than happy to work for myself.

The boy talks straight from the heart and thinks straight from the brains. Hope you ‘earn’ what you want and be the toughest and hardest nut to crack

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