Setting up a start-up, straight out of college

In 2012, when Sachin Gupta graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee with a job offer from Google India, he faced a conundrum. In 2011, while pursuing a master’s in civil engineering from Berkeley College, US, Sridharan presented a business plan on water supply distribution in a college competition, and, with half a million dollars worth of grants, moved to Hubbali-Dharwad, Karnataka, to begin NextDrop, a social enterprise in the field of water management. Within 12 months, she had to face the hard truth: “We had to discontinue our product, shut our first company and start a new one because of the mistakes we made in the beginning.” In April 2017, she launched a new company, also called NextDrop, with a product that used IoT devices and data to connect water tankers with businesses and apartments. “Till today, there are days I wake up and just cry,” says Gupta, “Many a time, you just want to write code and not do things like read legal documents, or wear a suit for yet another meeting, but it’s all part of running a business,” he adds. “When you’re starting out from college and doing something that’s not been done before, what you need most is a good sounding board and a group of mentors and advisers who can ask the right questions.” The transformation of an idea into a business is the biggest challenge young founders face, says Rutvik Doshi, managing director, Inventus Capital, a Bengaluru-based early-stage venture capital firm.