The Internet has helped many people to bring out the entrepreneur in them and establish their own startups successfully. The idea of a startup is interesting, but the obstacles that one has to face in this journey always get registered to a separate big book of failure and rejections. One such startup is Techugo, a four years old startup, which has established its name as one of the leading software development companies, despite going through big challenges and hurdles.
Ankit Singh, the founder of Techugo, was born in Varanasi, India, in a working-class joint family. He was born to a lawyer father and was pursuing electrical engineering from Uttar Pradesh Technical University (UPTU). Studying at the university, he was determined that after completing his education he will join an MNC. His aim was clear, but when the placements came, he found out that the students with a good personality and the ones who could present themselves well were getting the jobs, and even the toppers of the class were rejected at the placements.
It was a reality check for him, and Singh realized that this has been happening to many talented candidates for years. Even being much skilled, the ones lacking at personality were not able to get the opportunities. The incident was enough for him to rethink about working with an MNC. At the same time, Singh started thinking about ways to help such candidates with their interviews. He did not know about what but definitely wanted to do something for them.
Being good at academics as well as capable of representing himself in front of others, he was able to go through the interviews and get a job in a famous MNC at the placements. Even have got a good job, he was not excited about the opportunity he had received. Even before a week from the date of the joining, he became confused about joining the job or dropping the offer. But like any other college graduate, accepting the offer was more reasonable at the moment, and he became prepared for starting his career as an employee at the MNC.
“Just a day before my joining, I called my mother, and she sensed the agitation and discomfort in my Voice and without blinking the eye, she simply said, ‘Don’t you think somebody more deserving than you need this job? You are born to make it different in your family, go ahead, we are with you.’ ” said Singh in an interview.
This was the Eureka moment for Ankit, and he decided to drop the job and start his own company, where the candidates will be chosen on the basis of their talent.
A startup needs a good team, and before that a good investment. Being a fresher, and the owner of the idea of a startup, he only seemed to be an immature young graduate to the investors and was rejected at the very first business pitch. One after another, he was rejected by eleven investors. People learn from mistakes, and Ankit also was among those people. The 12th pitch he made became more polished than the previous ones, and within fifteen minutes of his presentation, the US-based investor Sumer offered him the initial investment.
Finally, on June 13th 2015, Ankit started his company from a shared office space, where at first he played the role the owner, HR and the office boy of the company. Sumer became the co-founder of the company and Ankit started hiring other people too. But again it was also not easy for a startup, as no experienced people wanted to join a freshly started company.
After becoming a team of three, Ankit hired one of his friends in college as the tester. Within the next fifteen days, the company had a CEO, CTO, a professional HR and started adding up more people in the Techugo family. Today the company has raised to 143 employees including Ankit, all under the age of 30.
With the inception of the company, Ankit has been hiring employees who are technically skilled, even if they are not good at communications. The company hires such candidates and help them to grow confidence and improve their communication skills with the help of personal training.
The company currently works on building mobile applications for its clients with businesses of every scale. The most successful project that the company carried out was Fanzir app which is powered by Euroleague. In the first five days of launch, the app received the 5,000+ installations, and in mere 15 days, it made $1M.
Techugo has provided its services for the Fortune 500 Company Airtel, Global 2000 Company like Godfrey Phillips, the largest political party in India BJP, and the budding and successful startups like Prozata, Fanzir and many more.
The company, currently, along with its India office has established its branch offices in the US and Dubai. Soon the company will also be opening its off-shore offices in Australia and Canada.
Yashica is a Software Engineer turned Content Writer, who loves to write on social causes and expertise in writing technical stuff. She loves to watch movies and explore new places. She believes that you need to live once before you die. So experimenting with her life and career choices, she is trying to live her life to the fullest.