Expresso Chapter 2.0
A session on Entrepreneurial Journeys.
In the second chapter of Expresso, our online interactive sessions, we had the honor of interacting with Mr. Akshay Chaturvedi, CEO of Leverage Edu. Held on the 21st of June, 2020, Akshay Sir was about to interact with almost 100 enthusiastic students about him as an entrepreneur and his journey.
Akshay Sir is the creator and driving force behind one of India’s fastest-growing startups Leverage Edu - which empowers students across India to choose the best-matched career & higher education options, with one-touch access to personalized mentors and leading global universities He is one of the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia and India and is also a CNBC Young Turk Award recipient. He was also selected as the Prime Minister’s Champion of Change and is one of the Top Tech Entrepreneurs to watch out for in 2020.
Akshay Sir is one of the coolest personalities we have talked to. He started off by discussing his earliest days at Leverage Edu and even the hustle before and we must say, it was inspiring. He shared how it’s easier for entrepreneurs today with all the resources easily available as compared to those who hustled in the late 90s to even get the basic resources like a good workplace.
Every entrepreneur we know has been through the hustle but when we asked Akshay Sir about the same, he shared a real enlightening insight about his experience. He said, while the hustle part remains the zero to one process, it’s really exciting in the beginning, but sooner or later it becomes the same, and then onwards it’s all about how much perseverance can one show.
Here are some very important takeaways we had from the session:
- Work for enough startups before you go out there and startup on your own.
- Akshay Sir focussed on reading books related to Entrepreneurship and Business Management, attending sessions, note-keeping, podcast listening. According to him, these basics were something he still follows to date.
- A very important point was to promise yourself to improve your leadership ability with every passing day. To promise yourself to scale up your skills along with your business.
..there’s nothing that comes without hard work and patience…
Akshay Sir also shared some thought on what an entrepreneur should be focussing on with the dawn of the new normal post lockdown (pandemic):
- Understand what your consumer is actually looking for.
- Be obsessed with your customer.
- Analyze where your company will be 5 years down the line after the new normal settles.
When asked about higher educational preferences, his answer was pretty simple. Looking at the current pandemic situation and how countries were reacting to it, he suggested that students should prefer Indian Universities for higher education but if they wanted to pursue research as a career, Universities abroad were yet the best choice available because of the opportunities and amenities available there.
Some important things we learned from him as he discussed his journey was how anyone who is starting off has to fail, and how it is important to take some time off, understand what went wrong and work on your mistakes. It is really essential to not stop, but fight back and make a comeback. Akshay Sir is really an amazing personality in all aspects. The amount of enigma and energy he propagated through the seminar was inspiring and we hope all the participants felt the same way. You could watch the entire seminar linked below.
“Some people want it to happen, some people wish it would happen, others make it happen.” -Michael Jordan
At last, we would like to thank all officials, teachers, staff, members, Samrat Sir and Akshay Chaturvedi Sir for making this possible.
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