This is how my Entrepreneurship journey began.
As someone who grew up in a household of entrepreneurs, I have always been surrounded by hardworking, passionate, educated people obsessed with solving problems. My lack of awareness when I was younger led me to believe everyone had their own businesses. Little did I know that very few people in this world are willing to sacrifice all the comforts of a 9–5 job to start their own business and have the perseverance to become an employer instead of an employee.
Fortunately for me, I was encouraged by my dad to join an entrepreneurship summer course when I was a freshman in high school. The program was called TyE (The Young Entrepreneurs)- a course that introduced high school students to the realm of entrepreneurship. I never thought an entrepreneurship class would change the course of my life, but it did! When I was 14, this program led me to start my first hardware technology business named Infra-detect. Long story short, we built a device that measured the distance between the TV screen and the viewer to ensure they were at the optimal viewing range. We came to this solution because our entire team had one common problem. It turned out that we had glasses and we all hated wearing them. We decided to research why this could be more than just a coincidence. Through our research, we found out that a large majority of children in our generation have glasses due to eye fatigue caused by sitting too close to digital screens like TVs and Ipads. We were determined to build a solution to stop this! While initially, this was just a project, we were the only team to go from idea to prototype within the three-month program. While I don’t take all the credit for winning, as CEO, I was proud that our team got the recognition we deserved for the work we had put into building a prototype. We did get our ass kicked during the global competition in Portland, Oregon, but it was a life-changing experience.
TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs) is a global non-profit organization that supports entrepreneurs and promotes the entrepreneurial spirit. It was founded in 1992 in Silicon Valley by a group of entrepreneurs and has since grown to have chapters in over 60 cities worldwide. This organization focuses on supporting and promoting entrepreneurship. TiE hosts conferences, networking events, and other initiatives to bring together entrepreneurs, investors, and other business professionals. In addition to supporting entrepreneurship, TiE also focuses on education and philanthropy, promoting entrepreneurship to address social and economic challenges and improve lives. One such initiative was the TyE program for high school students, which I mentioned above.
Eight years after the TyE program, I find myself as a senior at Babson College- the number one school for entrepreneurship in the US. Was this a coincidence too? Probably not. I’m graduating next semester and plan on working on my startup full-time. I’m currently working on my 5th venture, but who’s really counting. This year, Hyderabad hosted the TiE Global Summit, where I pitched my business to a group of mentors, advisors, entrepreneurs, and investors. Members from all around the world attended this summit. Through all the chaos, we had over 4000 delegates at this conference. It was indeed one of the best entrepreneurial learning experiences to date. I’ve realized that I am the product of an amazing entrepreneurship ecosystem, and this journey has only just begun for me.
