Pallav Nadhani, now 27, founder and CEO of FusionCharts, turned to entrepreneurship at the age of 17 and has some of the biggest names among Fortune 500 companies on his client list. Also, Barrack Obama, is one among thousands of his social media followers. Being a tech entrepreneur, he is an Angel Investor too. Pallav talks to Vijay Kumar about entrepreneurship in general and his future plans.
What did you decide to become an entrepreneur?
It is my way of exploring things without any bounds or anything to confine me to a certain limitations.
How does India serve as a platform for budding entrepreneurs?
Our country has a lot of issues starting from food to education to energy and therefore, it is a potential platform for entrepreneurs. Also, people are looking at entrepreneurship as one of the primary career options and with the government encouraging this, it becomes all the more better.
Speaking about entrepreneurship, what role does the government have to play?
Entrepreneurs in China succeed because of the government; entrepreneurs in India succeed despite the government. Time is the most vital factor for an entrepreneur. A lot of government processes like professional tax payments and regulatory procedures slow us down. Automation of procedures will be a great relief. For instance, if I have to get a passport for a person whom I have to send abroad officially, unless I bribe various officials, it’ll take ages.
How do you tackle these issues?
There are teams that I have created. They take care of all the paper-work. However, this might not be possible at a start-up level where the man-power will be less.
What could be an alternative that the government could adopt?
Maybe, it is not the intention of the government but the structural flaws in the system. Allowing private players in the services that government provides could create a radical shift as it was seen with private courier services taking over the conventional postal services and the private aviation players overshadowing Air India.
Government has a monopoly over a lot of processes and hence it does not feel the need to make it better. Private players have to constantly strive to be better than the next person for their sustenance. This competition will result in excellent services.
Social entrepreneurship is another big word these days, how does India support this?
First of all, in my opinion, social entrepreneurship is anything which is sustainable and not a zero-sum game and mainly which helps people around you, where the people are uplifted and the entrepreneur grows along. A few examples are Zoho University where unemployed people are trained for 18 months and are given a job as well and A1 Future Technologies where artists who are not even able to sustain are given computer training, they now have the 5th largest team of graphic designers.
What is your success mantra?
Experimenting and reinventing is my mantra, however,we should also remember to celebrate our failure, which could be their mantra. As a nation , we are still not in a phase of celebrating our success but we no longer laugh at people who fail at least.
Where do the future entrepreneurs seek support?
There are a lot of organizations like NEN, TiE which train them to be an entrepreneur. Personally, I have publicly documented my entire journey as an entrepreneur, which could help them.