9 Lessons for Startup Founders by Anurag Jain, Co-Founder at CarDekho: RSF 2016

Anurag Jain, the co-founder of CarDekho and an entrepreneur who runs 10 different projects under the name of GirnarSoft such as BikeDekho.com, PriceDekho.com, CampusMantra, YourBillBuddy, etc. spoke at the Rajasthan Startup Fest 2016 on Saturday, November 5, 2016.

Anurag shared how he started up in the year 2007 after serving 5 years tenure in corporate world. As an IIT graduate he started his venture along with his elder brother Amit Jain. The Jain brothers tried out a lot of things before they finally got attention with CarDekho. He shares a few really important lessons for every startup founder from his experiences.

1. Don’t get married to one idea.

Don’t chase one idea. They can always evolve over time.

2. Align your team towards the same direction.

It is important to end any friction between team members and to align everyone in the team towards one goal. Dissolving disagreements and growing together as a team is important.

3. Funding is not success.

The founder of CarDekho, Anurag Jain says, “Don’t treat Funding as Success”. Funding is just like fuel for your car engine. The journey actually just starts there, still a long way to go.

4. Dream big.

Target the moon so that even if you land on the stars, stars would be better than having nothing at all.

5. Make promises.

Anurag asks all aspiring or budding startup founders to make promises to themselves and work for it. Plus to enjoy all milestones on the way!

6. Do everything with Agility.

He quoted the importance of delivering quickly saying that the first version of CarDekho was done in 45 days. There could be no perfect solution to any problem so it is better to come up with a basic version of your product or app and then release frequent updates to it using the feedback you get. According to Anurag, “Your first product need not be the best, agility is very important.”

7. Customer first

8. Failure builds Character.

There is no reason to be scared of failures as failures give you far more learning than the ideas that work. Anurag shared that 15-20 startup ideas had to be winded up under GirnarSoft till date still they keep coming up with new things every time. Also they have 60+ ex-entrepreneurs in their team today.

9. Grow under pressure.

It is important for an entrepreneur or a startup founder to handle pressure really well. He stresses on this point sharing a quote that says, “A diamond is just a piece of charcoal that handled stress exceptionally well.”

All startup founders who missed the session at RSF 2016 must jot these points as notes somewhere in their head for a flourishing startup journey.