Building a brand that changes the game takes a lot of effort. It’s never a walk on the red carpet of flower petals. It’s more like surfing through the storm and struggling to survive in the environment which requires you to adapt to the changes every next minute.
Stories of struggle and winning in the end are always fascinating. I got a chance to listen to one such inspirational story when I happened to interview Ankit. S. Maharishi.
He is the Co-founder of Sunrise Electronics, a path-breaking brand that believes in changing the game of the industry. It is based in Jaipur, the pink city in the Indian state of Rajasthan.
Let’s look at what he has to say about his journey, what it takes to create a lucrative business.
When did you find out that you have what it takes to be an entrepreneur?
It was back in 2016, when the revolutionary demonetization happened in India. Back then I was working with some popular Global brands as social media manager and digital marketing strategist. Fortunately, most of the campaigns that I did for them worked like wonder and that helped me build trust among my clients.
It didn’t happen in a day! I too had my share of struggle and learnings. Ultimately, that has played a big role in bringing proper insight to the industry.
Running successful campaigns for my clients gave me the much-needed boost and confidence to try these tips for my business – Sunrise Electronics (@ledstripdriver).
The fact is that all of us in our lives are only trying! Things are uncertain. Somebody is trying to increase his profits, and somebody is striving to run a sustainable business. Where someone is planning to increase his standard of living, somebody in some other part of the world is working day and night to earn a living.
But the thing that is common between all of us is that we are not stopping at any point and willing to work as much as we can, to make a better future.
I believe that’s what entrepreneurs do! They take steps to improve the future and touch as many lives as they can with their work.
What were your initial days of setting up business like?
Thrill and anxiety were my constant partners during the initial days of understanding the working of a business where we manufacture LED strip drivers. I’m a commerce student, so I took my sweeat time to understand the basics of these electrical stuff. I used to look up to my father as he was working in this industry for quite some time now and as compared to me, he has way more experience of things and also, life!
As I said, I was looking forward to implementing my learnings of digital marketing to give a bigger boost to my offline business setup. This temptation pushed me to create a website along with the social media handles of my business. I started making content which was suitable for the marketing of my company on the internet. It was a long process.
Now, I had double responsibility! I had to take care of the working of my business offline and at the same time, keep updating my audience on the internet, otherwise my page would have lost all the engagement.
How do you see the small achievements that come your way during this journey?
As I said, I created the social media pages and website of my business and started making content. The next step for me was to promote this content on social media so that I could get enough leads from which I can crack some lucrative deals.
As an optimistic entrepreneur, I was anticipating that like I help my clients during my freelancing days and make profit for them, similarly I could derive profit to my business as well. That’s what happened! After a few successful social media marketing campaigns, we started getting results. People started noticing our page and most importantly our products!
We started with some bulk online orders and now we get regular orders just from social media. The best part is that most of our new customers come from the connections of our existing customers which means we succeeded in pleasing our customers and they are happy with our products.
The thing that I learned between this phase of small online orders to bulk online orders was that we should always keep our customers first and we should try to be in the place of our customers to understand their needs in a better way.
Whether it is success or failure, everything in life has something to teach us. The ways of teaching can be different, but all we need is a commitment to learn and ability to recognize what’s important for us.
What was that point in your life as an entrepreneur when you thought things were falling apart?
I believe when you are running a business, you must understand that ups and downs are a part of it. That’s life too, isn’t it? So, to be frank, I don’t really think about the things that didn’t happen as per my plans. Maybe something good was hidden behind those failures in my plans too.
Not to forget, the last year when our nation went into complete lockdown for almost eight months, I guess? That was a tough phase for our business as well, but we sailed through it.
When did you feel that your business is slowly becoming lucrative and stable?
As I said, we started with a few online orders and then we started receiving regular orders in some time. That’s when I felt that we are on the right track and that we are now in a stable state. Well, as a matter of fact, we just generated a revenue of 20 million bucks which is indeed a big milestone for us. And with that, we are looking forward to crossing many such milestones in the future.
What would you go to quote for when someone faces failure in life? And what would be your advice to budding entrepreneurs?
It’s crazy how I wrote a complete book on entrepreneurship, (title – The Entrepreneurship Recap) but I don’t really have a favorite quote to inspire myself or others.
I think if you are really focused about where you want to reach, then there is no need for you to seek extra inspiration from someone or something, and when you’re not focused enough, then indeed no motivational or inspirational video or message could take you where you want to be!
For budding entrepreneurs, I would only say that “you should know the core competence of your business, also learn the traditional approach of business, then only you can compare it with modern approach of entrepreneurship.”
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