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Successful startup founders are often envied for leading an alluring, prodigious and heroic life. There’s something to all this.
What nobody talks about is the back side of Entrepreneurship!
It is indeed fun, rewarding and freeing but starting up on your own can be gruelling, spirit-breaking and hard-hitting.
Considering, the number of efforts required to cope up with sleepless nights and brutal failures, if nothing else, a thick skin is what you need the most to be an entrepreneur.

Nitin Choubey is one such player in the field who, with passion, translated his life experiences into start-up gold!

His journey started in 2000, when after working in Microsoft, Redmond, Washington for 15 years; he decided to come back to his homeland.

“When I came back, about 2.5 years ago, I decided to rather put my experience and skills together in creating something impactful, and what better than trying in India! The country has a lot of challenges, and where there are challenges, there are a lot of opportunities! That’s when JeeoHitech E-Commerce came into the picture.”

At first, his family wasn’t very supportive, considering the untouched territory and the risks involved.
“When you belong to a business family, starting your own venture is easy, but with a service background, there is no one to guide you. My family was sceptical of me to start on my own, but their reasons were valid.”

In the building stages of the startup, seeking work-life balance seemed pointless. Work became his life.
“You can’t help but think about work all the time. Even at home, I was always floating through work ideas and plans. My wife and kids understood it and gave me my space.”

He started in the middle of 2015 and subsequently assimilated people, brainstormed, and eventually formed a team.
Having noticed the persistent problem in India to hop around the different digital platforms, they decided to launch “Connect” – an App that would cover all the shopping needs. From online shopping, flight bookings, hotel and taxi, places to eat, booking movie tickets, events, music and games –the app takes care of everything!
Allowing the users to share their actions and response with their friends in just a tap, the idea seemed promising, holding a unique position in the market!

But destiny had different plans.
In mid-2015, just when they decided to step into the market, the system of funding for startups in India got sluggish; it was a dry phase financially!
“From there the struggle started, and it was on a day-to-day basis. We were drained out to a point where we had to make immediate decisions on how to keep the team intact, or how to continue rolling out our services.”

“The lack of funding scenario was very hard to deal with. The entire year of 2016 has been tough for us. We were trying to go with the flow for as long as we could. Being a bootstrap, everything was going out of our pockets.”

It was hard to stay motivated! Every morning began with putting great efforts not to lose hope. Every day passed, holding in the anxiety to not give up! Then again, the commitment and enthusiasm of his team were encouraging enough to keep him going.
“Watching them ideate and working hard constantly, gives me a push to rise above the concept of success and failure! I’ve learnt one thing, in business, there is nothing as a failure. It’s either triumph or learning!”

It’s very easy to lose your vision. If that is lost, you lose your strength very soon!
But Nitin was not someone to back down. He was aware that the journey of success wasn’t a sprint; it was a marathon, where everything would not always be fine.

When a crisis occurs, you just need to come up with immediate solutions. For Nitin, the urgency was to get a workspace in limited funds. Nitin found him by switching to a coworking desk at iKeva last year, for about 10 employees. With a very basic list of requirements, there he found his checklist to keep the employees happy.

“Things are better than how they were, but we have a long way to go. It is a slow and tough journey that would not be done overnight. Make mistakes, don’t repeat them and keep improvising. Time makes you a wiser person. Tough journeys make you a better person.”, he said with a humble smile.

The hard truth is that there will always be days when you’ll have to pour every ounce of your energy into selflessly working, with a smile on your face to tell the world that everything’s OK.
Well, if you are prepared to go through that, one day you’ll wake up, and everything really will be OK!

Just embrace your failures graciously, and everything shall fall into place!