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Harsh Agarwal : The Success Story of Indian Blog Scientist & the Founder of ShoutMeLoud

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“Follow your passion and the success will follow you!” the phrase that has become quite common today, and actually has done wonders for many. Same is the story of Delhi-based entrepreneur, Harsh Agarwal, who left a job (many of us dream of) just to follow his passion, and indeed the phrase set true for him, too.

Early Life

Born on 22 June 1987, Harsh Agarwal was a curious child and was always into learning new things. When he was 14, he became interested in computers and started saving to buy one. In 2002, he along with his family moved to Delhi, where he joined the Laxman Public School to pursue high school. After completing his school education, he joined the Sharda University and pursued a B.Tech degree in Information Technology.

Like any other parents, it was expected from him, too, to get a good job in an MNC and settle for a regular life. But it was not what Agarwal had ever thought. Having a curious mind, he was always into creative things and even got a certification in ethical hacking while in college.

Career

Soon the time for the placements came, his knowledge and creativity landed up him getting a job with one of the biggest MNCs, Accenture, in 2008. Since there was enough time between his graduation and joining with Accenture, he started working for Convergys.

harsh agarwal
Image Source: Twitter

Along with his job with Convergys, he started writing about things he knew and the things he was learning, at the BlogSpot platform. At that time, blogging was not as popular as it is today. Soon he also received his acceptance letter and joined a regular job at Accenture.

Along with his job, Agrawal was continuously working on his blog. He was interested in network and computer security, so he started a community named Underground World on Orkut. Soon the community started approaching more people, and Aggrwawal decided to build a blog with the same name. He tried to get a domain with the same name on BlogSpot, but the domain was not available, so he started a blog with name virgintech.blogspot. The first paycheque that he received from his online job was of $10, and the first money that he earned from AdSense was of $40.

Soon, the blog was making enough money with AdSense and other sources, such that Agarwal was able to pay his daily needs. After six months of his blogging career, he decided to devote all his time to his blog and left his job. His prime focus was to work on his blog, so he migrated his blog to a WordPress website and chose Shout-Me-Loud as the name for his blog.

Turning Point

On 29th June 2009, Agrawal met with a terrible accident, and the doctors advised him to stay on bed for the next six months. The accident was so bad that doctors had informed him that he won’t be able to walk again. Agarwal was shaken and had lost all hopes. But all he could do was try. Being bedridden, Agrawal had plenty of time to study and work on his blog. Along with working on his health, he was constantly working on the growth of his blog. According to Agarwal, it was a life-changing experience for him.

After seven months of practice and treatment, he was back on his feet. In December 2009, he met with another Blogger from Pune and partnered with him for a new venture. The two started working on a new project, and Agrawal became the B.D.O. of the firm. In just six months the company was financially independent, but the partnership was not going quite well. So, Agarwal decided to end the partnership and move back to Delhi.

ShoutMeLoud Growth

When Agarwal moved to Pune, he hardly got time for ShoutMeLoud, but when he came back to Delhi, it was the only thing which he was dedicated to. Soon the blog came back on track, and Agarwal started blogging to create awareness about making money from blogging. In just two years, ShoutMeLoud became one of the best blogs in India, and in 2013, even won the “Best Indian blog by Indiblogger” award.

By the year 2014-15, Agarwal received recognition as a public speaker, too. He organised plenty of workshops, and also, organised a blogger awareness trip ‘ShoutMeet’ from Delhi to Kanyakumari, in 2015.

Currently, ShoutMeLoud is operating under its parent company ShoutDreams and other than ShoutMeLoud, ShoutDreams is hosting WPhostingDiscount, ShoutMeTech, WPSutra, and CoinSutra blogs. In the past ten years, ShoutMeLoud has grown to a company of its own name, and many other bloggers are getting inspiration from the success story of Harsh Agarwal.

Colin Huang : From Son of a Factory Worker to the CEO of a Billion Dollar Company ‘Pinduoduo’

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There are rare chances that the destiny of a person meets his talent and help him achieve the things that at a point might be unimaginable. But there are real examples in the past that has proved that in the success of a person his hard work and talent work even more efficiently if his destiny is working with him too. The son of worker Parents, Colin Huang, would have never thought that his brilliance, and his destiny, will coincide and he will have his own rag to riches story. The 13th richest person in China, in just three years. The life story of Huang surely is a great example and inspiration for many.

Colin Huang was born in 1980, in Hangzhou, to the worker-class parents. While in school, he participated and won a medal in a Mathematics Olympiad, after demonstrating an aptitude in Mathematics. This was the point when his destiny started pushing him towards a good life. The prize of the Olympiad was a scholarship to a reputable school in Zhejiang province.

Colin Huang
Image Source: colinhuang.com

In the school, he got to know many elite students and was even introduced to the daughter of the Mayor of the school, as she too studied in his class. This helped him a lot to build up confidence in him and hence became more comfortable in interacting with the most brilliant students of the school.

As soon he completed his school, another opportunity came into his lap, and he was chosen to study at the prestigious Zhejiang University, where he pursued a degree in computer science. In his first year, he was also selected to be a part of the Melton Foundation.

During his college, he started an internship at Microsoft Beijing, where he earned the stipend worth 6,000 yuan. According to an interview, Huang accepted that the stipend he received for the internship was already greater than the salary of his parents altogether, at that time.

After completing his graduation, he went to the University of Wisconsin to pursue a master’s degree. At the university, he was doing exceptionally well, and his professor impressed by his brilliance provided him letters for the recommendation for a few of the biggest tech giants of that time.

After completing his education in 2004, he received the offer letters from three big companies, i.e. Oracle, Microsoft and IBM. Turning down all the three offers, he decided to work with Google, the company which had just filed its IPO in the same year.

Huang joined Google as an engineer. After working for three years with the company, in 2007, he resigned from his post, as he had got tired of flying back and forth, from the US to China, to resolve even the tiniest of matters. By the time, he had earned a lot of good money and was able to take the decision of quitting his job.

He flew back to China and started his first venture, an eCommerce website named Ouku. The website became popular soon, and after three years, in 2010, Huang sold the website. After Ouku, he founded Leqi, another website, and then, Xunmeng, a gaming studio.

All the three ventures he started, paid him well to lead to him to found another venture, Pinduoduo, which is also the most successful venture of the serial entrepreneur, Huang.

Pinduoduo is an eCommerce platform that provides its users with offers on group purchases. The company was founded in September 2015. Within a year, Huang was able to raise investments from the leading companies of China, i.e., Tencent, Gaochun and Xintianyu. The three companies alone invested a worth of US$110 million in company’s B round funding.

In 2018, the company reported the number of users, more than 200 million. On July 26, 2018, the company went public on NASDAQ, and with a US$1.6 billion IPO, it became the largest IPO of 2018. Pinduoduo is one of the youngest companies which is giving a tough competition to the more than a decade old eCommerce giants like Alibaba and JD.com. In fact, it is the third-largest e-commerce company in China by sales numbers, after the mentioned companies.

According to Huan, he had never thought of changing the world, but if he is contributing to that, there is nothing bad in that.

Pinduoduo, gets most of its traffic from the lower-tier cities, such that people belonging to the lower-class are also able to buy things on the website. The success of the company has even made Huang the 13th richest person in China. Currently, he is working as the CEO of the company, and his net worth is estimated to be $15.6 billion.

Richard Liu – CEO and Founder of ‘Jingdong’; Journey of a Man from Nowhere to Billions

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Every big journey has a small start. Every success story has n number of hardships and failures and so does the success story of Richard Liu have. The man who rose from multiple failing businesses and everlasting debts to fame and a business worth billions of dollars. His story speaks up that sometimes taking the wrong roads might benefit as they teach important lessons for future life.

Richard Liu (also known as Liu Qiangdong) was born on March 10, 1973, in a family having a business of coal shipping. He had a vast interest in politics, so he got enrolled in the department of sociology, in the People’s University of China. During the same time, he also studied computer programming as he realized that a degree in sociology, won’t ensure him a job.

richard liu
Image Source: Forbes

While in college, he invested his money in a restaurant venture which failed deliberately and left him in debt. He passed his degree in 1996, and after that went on to pursue a degree of Executive M.B.A. from the China Europe International Business School.

After completing his studies, Liu was first employed by a Japanese health product company and served as the Director of computers and business, alongside the logistics supervisor. In early 1988, he realized that it was the right time to step into the business world and in June, he opened a business with the name Jingdong in Zhongguancun High-tech Industrial Park in Beijing. The company focused on selling authorized magneto-optical products. By 2003, his business was blooming and he managed to open 12 stores.

In mid-2003, the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) forced Jingdong employees to stay back at home, and this hit the company hard. Liu’s business fell into a great loss (losing more than 8 million Yuan) and forcing Liu to think out of the box. That’s when he met with an idea to take his business online idea took him from nowhere to the entrepreneur he is now.

In 2005, Liu founded JD.com which eventually grew his business. He closed all of the offline stores and built it a full-time e-commerce company. Richard changed the company’s focus from magneto-optical products to a whole variety of products which can be seen on the site itself.

‘JD.com sets the standard for online shopping through its commitment to quality, authenticity, and its vast product offering covering everything from fresh food and apparel to electronics and cosmetics. Its unrivalled nationwide fulfilment network provides standard same- and next-day delivery covering a population of more than 1 billion – a level of service and speed that is unmatched globally,’ the site itself says.

Richard has been involved in some conflicts too, in his personal life. He was arrested in Minnesota for sexual assault but was released a day after as the company stated the acquisitions were false.

JD currently has 15,000 plus employees and is having a net worth of a massive $57.6 billion. Liu himself has a net worth of $6.1 billion (Forbes) with all-time worth being nearly $2.1 billion. In 2017, he was #25 in Richest in Tech and in 2018, was at #30 on China Rich List 2018.

Richard Liu, the CEO and founder of Jingdong, shows us that no matter how many failures you face, it is all about getting back up, learning and fighting again. Real success comes from not giving up. Richard is an inspiration to all.

Steve Case – The Founding CEO of AOL & One of the Most Accomplished American Entrepreneurs

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It is very difficult to find variety in the services in a single company, but there are possibilities for everything in the tech industry be it anything. Such possibility was put into effect by AOL (American Online) and is still doing the same, as it fulfils multi-tasks for its users. The company was not always doing this well. The man, who helped the company to rise through the ranks is Steve Case. The story of Case speaks that success is hard but not impossible to achieve.

American Online Inc. is an online service provider, headquartered in New York City. As of now, AOL is a division of Verizon Media, but it had started out all its own. It dates back to 1983 when the company started as Control Video Corporation (CVC). The company provided game consoles at a fixed cost, and after that started charging $1 per game to its users. Steve Case, initially, was hired as a part-time marketing consultant by Bill von Meister (the then CEO of the company) for Control Video and was recommended by his brother, Dan Case. At that time, the company was not in a good financial condition and was nearing bankruptcy. But then Jim Kimsey founded Quantum Computer Services from the remains of CVC.

steve case
Image Source: entrepreneur.com

Jim Kimsey hired Case as the Vice President of Marketing during the launch of Quantum Computer Services, and later, promoted him to the position of Executive Vice President. As the Executive Vice President, Steve changes the company’s strategy and introduced Quantum Link. This was an online service for Commodore 64 and 128 computers. Quantum Link, (Also known as Q-Link) was based on software licensed by PlayNet Inc. AOL had included the online games since the very beginning of its launch date. Quantum Computer Services grew in popularity during the 90s period as it became the leading internet service provider in the United States.

Kimsey saw the potential in Case and decided to appoint Case as the CEO of the company after he retires. Eventually, in 1991, when he retired from the services of the company, Kimsey appointed Case as the CEO of the company. Steve, in late 1991, renamed the company to American Online, and from then, the company began to touch new heights.

He began the journey with complete enthusiasm and with the decisions he was making for the company, it didn’t feel like he was a newly-appointed CEO. Steve made AOL pioneer in the social media concept. The instant messaging app that AOL rolled out was called out to be an absolute ‘killer’. He looked out into all the services to make them affordable, easy to use and fun for the consumers. AOL user base grew up to be as large as 26.7 million. By 2000, AOL’s worth was $125 Billion and was the nation’s biggest internet provider.

In that period, AOL was delivering a massive 11,616% return to its shareholders. It began to roll out more and more web services. Many services like e-mail, search engines, news, sports, weather etc. were introduced by AOL in the market.

Steve personally had many successful interactive online titles to his name. Quantum Space was one of the fully automated Play by email game. His other contributions were graphical chat environments, Habitat and Club Caribe. Alongside that, he induced the first Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) Neverwinter Nights.

It was 2001 when Steve negotiated the largest merger in the business history that has ever been done. Under his leadership, he managed to bring AOL and Time Warner together with AOL stockholders getting the majority stakes. The merger included more than $164 billion. The merger, however, failed as AOL – Time Warner fell into recession, followed by accounting scandals and much more. In January 2003, Steve resigned as the CEO of the company but still remained in the Board of Directors. “It took me 10 years to finally realize that the company was a success,” said Steve in an interview when asked about his time in AOL. In 2005, he resigned from AOL’s Board of Directors. AOL, in May 2015 was brought by Verizon in a deal valued at $4.4 billion.

Steve is a die-hard entrepreneur, and even after his stepping down as the CEO, he still continues to invest in upcoming entrepreneurs. He went on and became the founding chair of Startup America Partnership, which was launched by the White House to accelerate high-growth entrepreneurship through the nation. Alongside that, he was a member of President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. In 2014, he was named Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship. Since then, he has been a leading voice in shaping government policies, like the passing of the JOBS (Jumpstart Our Business Startups). He is also the Chairman of Case Foundation, that has invested in more than a hundred organizations, initiatives and partnerships. Steve has pledged to donate his major wealth for the philanthropic causes.

Steve Case, who has the spirit of true entrepreneurship, gives us the clear message that passion is what drives a person to his ultimate goals. Steve is a living inspiration and is someone to learn from if you are looking to start up your own business.

Jack Wong : CEO & Founder of Meizu; A company Making ‘The’ Futuristic Phones

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The race about whom beats who, in the Smartphone industry is on since over a decade now, and there seem to be mixed answers about who, actually, is the best. As of now, there stands a number of companies that are delivering their best services, to increase their consumer base. Though Google, Apple and One Plus are some of the companies which are at the focus of the limelight, there are some other companies which are equally good and deliver the newest of the technologies remaining underground. There is no doubt that these companies provide cost-effective services and are efficient in their work. Meizu is one such company, that is beyond this era and is delivering future based phones. The founder and the CEO of the company, Jack Wong, shares a story that glorifies the fact that success doesn’t need a degree.

Jack was born on February 13, 1976, in Meixian, Meizhou, Guangdong Province in China. Since his childhood, Jack was very much into electronics and electronic devices. He was 16 when he got expelled from high school. So, due to this reason, he could not attend college and doesn’t have a degree.

Jack Wong
Image Source: mgp.ca

Jack started working as a pier porter but was not satisfied with his job, because he wanted to work in the electronics industry. With this mindset, Jack moved to Shenzhen, the hub to electronics at that time. Starting from there, he, joined as the General Manager at ‘Argean’. The company focused on manufacturing speakers and MP3 players. Jack looked forward to innovative products and induced the systems with high battery and more storages.

It was mid-2002 when he decided to leave Argean, because of the divergences within the company, which made the environment unhealthy. He, at that time, had gained plenty of experiences in making music devices. At the end of 2002, Jack decided to invest 100,000 RMB to start a new company, naming it ‘Meizu’.

The first product of the company was the MP3 players. The company focused on the quality of work, rather than on the design. The M6 player series had immense quality but had a poor design. But they soon realized the importance of design and started working on it, to raise their level for the competition.

Jack, being the CEO, wanted to bring more success to the company. The experience that he had, he applied it all in the company’s working, that gained him notable sales in 2006, which was recorded to be more than 10 billion Yuan. Meizu stepped up in the game when they launched their first smartphone, Meizu M8. The phone had a touch screen of 3.4”, Windows CE 6.0 OS, and a RAM of 256 MB.

It was not until three years when they launched their next device, and this time, the device was based on Android OS, i.e. Android 2.3, with a 3.5” screen and QHD resolution.

Since then, the Meizu phones have become very popular based on their quality. It has rivalled many of the top-notch devices having lost and won the races. In recent times, the company has launched Meizu ‘Zero’ which has become the first ever smartphone device with no physical buttons. These phones are pressure sensitive and come with a wireless charger, having no volume and power buttons. The device hails no sim tray, which also, makes ‘Meizu’ the first company to introduce the concept of ‘E-sim’. The international availability of those phones, though is not confirmed yet.

“Jack prefers to be less sociable. He hasn’t given a single interview since entering the industry,” one of his co-workers said. However, Jack runs a Meizu forum, as the company is a user feedback based company and involve all the requirements that users wish to see in their devices.

Jack Wong, also known as Huang Zhang, like other successful drop-out entrepreneurs, has demonstrated another example to us that we don’t need any kind of professional qualification to put ourselves forth and prove ourselves. Knowledge comes from experience, and acquiring it can only be possible if you show the true passion towards it. Jack, gives this world the media and the ability to feel what the future may look like, by putting it in your own hands.

William Tanuwijaya : The Founder of First Indonesian Unicorn Startup Tokopedia

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There are many rags to rich stories that have been inspiring us. The story of this Indonesian entrepreneur, William Tanuwijaya, is kind of similar to those stories, expect it was not entirely based on good luck, but included lots and lots of hard work. Being born in a middle-class family, and having faced many struggles in life, Tanujania wanted to achieve something better in life, and he knew that without hard work, achieving his goals was impossible.

Early Life

Tanuwijaya was born on 11 November 1981, in Pematang Siantar, North Sumatra. He belonged to a middle-class family. He completed his school education from a local public school.

For his further education, he applied in the Universitas Bina Nusantara (Binus) Jakarta and later, got accepted for the degree course in Informatics. As he belonged to a family with an average income, he decided to work as a part-timer to support his education. He even did a 9 pm to 9 am job, at Warnet, to earn extra money. He graduated from the University as a software engineer in 2003.

Career

William
Image Source: tokyo.slush.org

Being a software engineer, like any other IT graduate, Tanuwijaya also wanted to work with big companies like Google. But since there was no Google branch in Jakarta, he started off his career as a software developer with a medium scale software company in Jakarta. He worked in the same profile with companies like TelkomSigma and Sqiva Sistem.

Gained much experience as a software developer, he shifted his interest in video games development and started working with Bolehnet. Later, in 2006, he joined Indocom Mediatama as the IT and Business Development Manager.

Founding Tokopedia

With an experience of over four years, Tanuwijaya gained enough confidence to start a new business for himself. In 2007, he started working on Tokopedia and called up his friend Leontinus Alpha Edison to work on the same, who later, became the co-founder of the company. The concept behind the startup was to create a platform, where Indonesian buyers and sellers could connect for free.

The basic plan to build this eCommerce platform was ready, but there were no investors who could help the startup to be launched immediately. At the time there were no IT-specific investors in Jakarta. So Tanuwijaya started pitching his plan in front of local investors. At the same time, his father was diagnosed with Cancer, so his plan of launching the platform in 2007, got delayed coming next two years, as the sole responsibility of his family had come on to his shoulders.

The first person Tanuwijaya approached for the funding was his boss from his previous company. His boss liked the idea and helped him to approach more people. Since Tanuwijaya did not belong to a business family, many of the people doubted his ability to handle such a big idea.

It took him two years to raise the required funding to start his business, and finally, on February 6, 2009, he launched Tokopedia. Tokopedia received its initial seed funding worth IDR 2.5 billion from PT Indonusa Dwitama. In the following three years, the company was able to get funding from global venture capitals like East Ventures, CyberAgent Ventures, NetPrice, and SoftBank Ventures Korea, etc.

In 2014, Tokopedia became the first technology company to receive a US$100 million investment from Sequoia Capital and SoftBank, in Southeast Asia.

Tokopedia is Indonesia’s first company that has grown too fast. In 2015, the company reported having more than 4.9 million active product listings, and in 2018, it recorded over 80 million monthly active users and over 4 million merchants registered on the platform.

The company also received a USD $1.1 Billion in funding from Alibaba Group in 2017. In the same year, the company became a Unicorn startup having a valuation above 1 billion US dollars.

Personal Life

William got married to Felicia H.W. on November 28, 2015. Currently, Tanuwijaya is heading the company as the CEO. Establishing Tokopedia as the biggest marketplace in Indonesia, he has become one of the richest people of Indonesia, having an estimated worth of 130 million US Dollars.