“Imagine ten years from now: There will be no concept of an office, no sense of time and space. We could work out of any place at any time,” says a yuppie tech entrepreneur, based in Mumbai, with a glimmer of excitement in his eyes. He reiterates that the artificial revolution is much like the internet age or the industrial revolution. A staggering number of start-ups – as a new wave of creative, intelligent forces - are changing the rules of the game now, much like IBM and Microsoft did in their time. Such start-ups are bringing technology into every possible sector including fintech, media, FMCG, among others.

This momentum is being spurred on by the Government's interest and the corresponding announcements regarding new measures to promote entrepreneurship and small businesses. Media has also played an active role in fostering this energetic environment - enterprising, new media portals such as ‘I Am An Entrepreneur,’ (IAAE), powered by Start Guru, is one such dedicated platform for start-ups and newbie entrepreneurs. IAAE was conceptualised and launched in December 2016, under the aegis of Start Guru and its affiliates who are registered under the parent brand name Guru Media & Entertainment. Guru Media & Entertainment was founded by Satish Raju around two decades ago.

Since IAAE's inception, several tech entrepreneurs including Arpan Shah, founder of Virtu Propdeal, Adil Shetty of Bankbazaar.com, Harshwardan Kumar of Eltrix Technologies, Varun Gupta of Goomo, Manavjeet Singh of Rubique, Sachin Vasanth Shenoy of Let’s Service Automotive Technologies, Abhik Saha of Origgon.com, and Arjun Pratap of Edge Networks have been covered. They all are a breed of gutsy, talented and globally-minded entrepreneurs. They have made headway in uncharted territories and invested heavily in their line of innovation.

We have compiled some key takeaways we at IAAE have learned from the failures and successes of the tech entrepreneurs we have covered:

- A lot of start-ups in India focus on team building and hiring. They don’t focus as much on growth retention. Capital should be used to grow the customer or user base, engaging and retaining them. This will go a long way in ensuring the start-up's success.

- There are no mistakes, there are only learnings. Mistakes happen when you get bogged down by results – or the lack of them - and do not learn from the 'mistakes' instead. So, look at every contrary result as a learning. Even when you have a clear vision for your enterprise, obstacles are bound to crop up. The important thing to do, then, is to focus on solving the problems at hand.

- Hiring personnel and retaining them has been one of the most influential pain points in the start-up space. Many start-ups are heavily invested in this particular area of operation. Exceptional talent is hard to come by, but when you do find it, you should put in a lot of effort to acquire and retain such talent. Such talent can be found through alternative talent discovery methods, but platforms such as LinkedIn and Hackathons have been huge supporters in fostering recruitment for start-ups.

For other lessons, do visit http://iamanentrepreneur.in/