Some days before, one of my friends have shared with me a great article about the new teens CEOs of India which was published on Economic Times website. The article was very interesting and inspirational. Hence, I would like to share the same with you guys….
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After the daily grind of school and tuitions, most kids prefer to wind down by harvesting virtual strawberries on Farmville.
But some would rather make money. Meet a new breed of teens who are already CEOs of their own companies. Their success shows that you don’t need a fancy MBA to be an entrepreneur, only broadband and some out-of-the-box thinking.
MOOLAH ROUGE: Mohnish Nagpal, 17 years
Mohnish doesn’t take a break after college. He starts work at 5.30 pm when his target audience in the US wakes up and logs on to the internet. Nagpal makes money online by telling others how to make money online. His blog: Sensonize.com.
One of his posts, for instance, gives tips to teens who can do with some extra money. It lists blogging , affiliate marketing, paid surveys and writing articles for directories as some of the ways of making money. “Very few people know that you can even earn by tweeting,” he says. With a steady five-figure income, he doesn’t have to worry about pocket money. He even bought himself a six-gear mountain bike recently. “Every time someone clicks an advert on my blog, I get paid for it,’’ he smiles.
This year, Nagpal, who first earned Rs 5,000 off the internet at 13, started Limespace Networks, a website-hosting company that caters to 35 customers . A student of commerce and IT at MMK College in Mumbai, the teenager, who wants to retire at 25, doesn’t think about the future much. His wish may well come true. He has already made it to a list of top international bloggers aged 21 or under on Retireat21.com, a forum for internet entrepreneurs.
GEEK GOD: Monik Pamecha, 13 years
If you don’t find 13-year-old Monik Pamecha in his room at his Santa Cruz home, look for him at his Wi-Fi-enabled terrace. For, when it gets noisy, this blogger likes to escape upstairs, sit on the water tank and dash out posts to his subscriber base of 16,000.
The self-proclaimed geek runs technology website etiole.com, a networking site for “geeks” called iluvtech.org and URL shortening service hop.im. Pamecha’s sites are so popular he’s regularly visited by PR executives of gadget companies who deliver their latest products at his doorstep in anticipation of a review on his five-year-old blog, Etiole. The blog has 26 other authors who he has recruited from around the world. Each gets paid from the advertising income generated by the website traffic they attract. Apart from reviews, Pamecha posts technology tips. One of his posts is on “five places where you should not keep your iPhone” .
Not content with three websites to his name, Pamecha, a student of Lilavatibai Podar School in Mumbai, is all set to launch a media-sharing website. But he says he couldn’t have achieved so much without his father’s support. Manoj Pamecha bankrolls his son’s ventures, buys him gadgets and advises him on how to take “calculated business risks”.
MEDIA PLAYER: Farrhad Acidwalla, 15 years
Founder-CEO of Rockstah Media, Farrhad Acidwalla has converted his Dadar Parsi Colony house in Mumbai into a workstation for his web development and media company. Staying up all night on his Mac Book Pro is a habit he’s acquired after three years of juggling business and homework . Acidwalla earned his first cheque at the age of 13.
“I created an aeromodelling and aviation website that attracted a lot of attention and sold it later,” says the HR College student who has a long list of clients including corporates. “I have just bagged clients from the education industry in UK,” he says.
Today, the self-taught web-developer works with a team of web designers, developers, search engine specialists and social media marketers to build and promote websites. He swears by his company’s slogan, “creating awesomeness” , and looks up to fellow web-based businessmen like Ayush Software’s Karamveer Singh, Kratee’s Annkur Agarwal and Mouth Shut’s Faisal Farooqui. “Being young is an added advantage as I can come up with many innovative ideas,” he says.
LOGO MOTIVES: Tanay Jaipuria, 16 years
Tanay Jaipuria runs TJ Dzine, a company that provides web design, graphic design and search engine optimisation services . He spends 20 hours a week on his business and occasionally sacrifices eating out and catching a movie with friends to meet deadlines. Last year, the Mumbaikar designed 25 logos and created ten websites . He charges between $75- $100 for a logo and $250- $300 for a website.
But for NGOs, he designs websites for free. Last year, Jaipuria earned a fourfigure income, that too in dollars. He used a third of it to buy the latest software and cover business expenses. “I saved most of the rest, although I have used some of the money to buy games for my PlayStation,’’ he admits.
Jaipuria dreams of studying computer engineering and starting a business venture in the manner of Silicon Valley start-ups . His idol is 13-year-old Jason O’Neill , who became an entrepreneur at nine when he started Pencilbugs. “But my role model is Apple’s Steve Jobs,” he says. “He has taught me a valuable lesson — that technology and management are both important for any successful product.”
IT boy: Suhas Gopinath, 23 years
Suhas Gopinath is not a regular 23-year-old . At the age of 14, he was recognised as the world’s youngest certified professional web-developer . Today he is the chairman and CEO of Globals Inc, an IT consulting company that specialises in web-related services.
Gopinath began his journey at an internet cafe in Bangalore where he struck a deal with the cyber cafe owner and offered to run the place during lunch if internet use was made free for him. “With internet charges at Rs 10 per hour and pocket money of Rs 25 a month, I needed to maximise every opportunity I got,” he says. Of course, things were not easy back then. “It was very hard for me to convince companies to take my services,” says the boy who once dreamed of becoming a vet. “Every one of them asked for my academic qualification and would feel insecure when they realised a high school kid wanted to be their freelance web developer.”
The first website Gopinath created was called Coolhindustan. “But, of course, Hindustan is much cooler today, thanks to the power of the youth,” he says.
