Starting of Atomberg technologies: A Manoj Meena perspective
Following is an excerpt from Manoj Meena’s talk “A dreamer’s journey of
building a 100 crore business”, August 2019, from Josh Talks channel.
--- From the talk---
I hail from a small village in Rajasthan, Dausa. We used to
get power only for 2 hours a day. We used to early wait for the power to come so that we can start the motor and get water for the house as well as for the farm.
I used to create toys with mud and wood. In college, I
learned electronics, programming, algorithms, motor design.
When I graduated in 2011, I didn’t know what I should do. I
knew I wanted to become a successful person. I wanted to start a big firm and
give back to society. I had a dream of creating a technology product company.
I lied to my parents. I told them that I got one year extension. Actually, I refused
the job from ISRO, borrowed money from friends, moved into a chawl and started
working on my idea.
One year went by and my down phase started. The first idea
failed. Where did I make a mistake? I didn’t create a business model. So I did
brainstorming and created a business model for my second idea. But I failed
again.
By 2015 four years had passed and five ideas had failed. But I learned from each of them. I was sitting on a big loan. But the dream kept me going.
Then I got the idea of energy efficient ceiling fans. I met
10-15 people before working on the idea. Retailers, distributors, customers,
etc. I tried to validate the idea. I had realized the importance of failing early.
I got critical feedback which I incorporated. And only after I created
50 prototypes, I got desired results. You need feedback in the early stages. Before launching I had 1500
pre-orders. That helped me get investor funding.
We have gone from a team of 5 to a team of 300. We have sold
4 lakh fans and we will make 100 crore revenue soon.
But we have a big dream.
