Previous Occupation: Marketing Manager at Microsoft
Present Occupation: Co-founder and COO at NowFloats
Sector: Online/ Internet
Work Experience: 10 years
Interests – Professional/Personal: Entrepreneurship and travel.

Can you tell us a little about your family background/ history?
I was born in Delhi but moved to Hyderabad when I was two years old. I did my schooling at Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan’s Public School. My parents enrolled me in a computer hobby class when I was in Class 4, which sparked my interest in technology and eventually led me to study engineering at Delhi Institute of Technology. After graduating, I worked with  companies such as GE, Microsoft, Intelligroup and Birlasoft and I now run my own technology start-up, NowFloats.

Briefly describe your personal and professional achievements (including recent awards/ special projects).
Establishing a start-up (with three other co-founders) was a great milestone for me personally and professionally as entrepreneurship is something I have long been passionate about. NowFloats was selected as the most innovative start-up by Microsoft Bizspark, a great achievement for the company in the first year of its launch. NowFloats was also recently named as one of the NASSCOM Emerge 50 Companies of 2013.

Tell us about your profile pre-ISB, and recap your professional life after ISB, including your career progression.
Pre-ISB, I worked with GE in the industrial/ embedded systems industry as an engineer. The experience was fantastic as GE helped me build great leadership skills, and I not only worked on technical functions but also got good business development and global exposure. Post-ISB, I worked with a couple of mid-tier IT companies like Birlasoft and Intelligroup, where I focused on business development/ sales and learnt how to set up and expand new businesses. At Microsoft, I played various roles — sales, delivery and marketing — and got an opportunity to work across various geographies globally.
Then I, along with three other co-founders, started NowFloats. We felt that for a small business owner, an obvious pain point was getting online and managing his own online identity, i.e., a website. He had to get hold of a trusted developer, pay a good amount of money for the development of the website, and even after the website went live, he still had to worry about aspects like search engine optimisation (SEO), hosting, maintenance and updating his site! Hence, we came up with a solution through which a business owner could create, update and maintain his website by using a simple channel like SMS and not worry about having an Internet connection to manage his website. It has been an exciting ride at NowFloats. We currently serve more than 5,000 businesses online in India and are now focusing on scaling this business across the country and exploring expansion to international markets.

Describe your fondest memory of ISB.
I was always excited about entrepreneurship and from my early days at ISB, I was focused on getting as much exposure as I could to various aspects of entrepreneurship. This led me to run for the post of president of the Entrepreneurship Club at ISB. I did not know much about entrepreneurship then, but the Class of 2005 probably sensed my enthusiasm for this function and elected me president. Running the Entrepreneurship Club took up a lot of my time, and I have some fond memories of it, including meeting various entrepreneurs and venture capitalists and organising events. I also made a bunch of friends who are close to me even today. One of the best characteristics about ISB is that it helps you chart your own path rather than being channelled into any single career track. Also, I learnt so much from classmates who were from various backgrounds that post-ISB, no function is a mystery to me.

In your personal life, how have you changed post-ISB? Do you see yourself doing something differently because you went to ISB? What has left a lasting impression?
I guess spending a whole year with classmates from such diverse backgrounds made me a little more humble and taught me to appreciate different perspectives. Because of my ISB stint, I now tend to listen a lot more to people even though I may or may not agree with their views or strategies. Also, studying various real life cases made me strongly believe that everything starts very small and can be scaled to whatever heights one envisions and works towards. I am following that single belief in my current start-up!

How do you think ISB has contributed to your career growth?
I caught the bug of entrepreneurship at ISB and I am here now following my passion and running a start-up; hence, I can say ISB has definitely contributed to my growth and choices!

If you have to sum up ISB in one word:
Roller coaster.

What was the main highlight of your programme at the ISB?
ISB has made sure that everything it launches has a world-class touch. Be it the student body, faculty, administration, courses, campus or events, everything is of the highest order, which I felt was the main highlight.

Word of advice for the current class?
When you are at ISB, it is easy to get overwhelmed by the number of career choices that will come your way. My only advice to the current batch would be to choose a path that you are passionate about and not because it is the most logical career move post an MBA. If you go for a job or career option that your heart is not into, you will end up burning out. Do something you love to do and nothing else.

What was your favourite course/ class at ISB and why?
Entrepreneurship is the obvious one, but I also enjoyed some of the quantitative marketing classes. I liked the entrepreneurship courses because the case studies were very inspiring, while the quantitative marketing classes were exciting because they showed me, a person who used to earlier consider marketing a qualitative function, how much science can be applied to it.

Was there anyone during your time at ISB who acted as a mentor for you? Tell us a little about this relationship and why it was valuable.
I had not one but a few mentors. Dr. Chandroo and Professor Subramonia actively mentored me at ISB when I was trying to work on some start-up ideas and they continue to mentor me in my current start-up as well. I continue to learn from them and bug them even today!

What are the areas in which you can contribute to ISB?
I would love to mentor fellow ISBians who are interested in starting up a business. It is not an easy road, and if my experience and tips could be of help to fellow alumni and students, I would love to share them. Also I genuinely believe ISB can play a much bigger role in fostering entrepreneurship in India. I would love to participate in and contribute to any such initiative at ISB.

What do you enjoy most about your current career position?
When I get up in the morning and go to work, it doesn’t feel like work anymore. It is exciting and challenging, with its own ups and downs. The day at work passes by much more quickly nowadays. I don’t look forward to the weekends for a break from work as I once used to because I enjoy what I do.

What is the next new thing in the industry or vertical you are working in? Any trends that you can see?
I am in the online industry. With over 40 million businesses in India and less than five percent of them having their own online identity, I see this space exploding in the next 10 years from a business perspective. You will be surprised that even in markets like the United States, a large percentage of businesses do not have their own online identity though they may be listed on various third party sites.

Specifically from an India perspective, there are many existing online solutions, for example, recruitment, travel, shopping, ticket buying etc., but I think the next level of innovation is waiting to happen, and hence, there is a lot of potential in the online industry. Also I strongly believe that design and content will be the drivers for innovation and that technology will be an enabler rather than a driver in the future!

Linkedin: in.linkedin.com/in/nitinjain1
Twitter Handle: @rebel_nitin
Email: nitin_jain2005@pgp.isb.edu
Website: nitinjain.co

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