From Board Games to Boardrooms | Ankit Aggarwal | TEDxIIFTDelhi
05 Sep 2024 (14 days ago)
Early Entrepreneurial Experiences
- Games like Monopoly taught basic business concepts such as earnings and expenses.
- Selling SIM cards and mobile phone recharges during college provided early exposure to business and entrepreneurship.
Business Ventures and Lessons Learned
- While working at Sapient, the speaker and two friends began developing a movie ticket platform, but abandoned the project when a similar platform, BookMyShow, launched.
- An individual worked with two others on a business idea, but it ultimately did not succeed because they lacked the maturity to envision multiple players in the market and the individual lacked the courage to pursue it independently.
From "Dare to Compete" to Unstop
- During their MBA program, the individual chose to opt out of summer placements to focus on their idea for 2-3 months, creating a blog called "Dare to Compete" to share information about opportunities in the B-School and engineering markets.
- After joining Deloitte Consulting, the individual became the highest-billed consultant within 8-10 months but declined a visa opportunity to work in the US, opting instead to address the issue of nursery school admissions in India by creating an online platform for applications.
Unstop's Success and Partnerships
- Some college administrators offered to pay 75,000 rupees per student admitted through a common admissions platform.
- Reliance and the ADB group offered to pay for B-School engagements to promote their brands.
- Unstop has over 9 million users, works with over 20,000 colleges in India, and partners with over 800 brands.