I was just an ordinary guy with a big dream. A dream to become a great programmer in the Technology Industry has always fascinated me to work harder & harder every day. Hi! I am Rahul Khanna, Founder of Ichiban Retail Tech, a start-up I had commenced almost three years back. Well! Not that Rahul Khanna from ‘KKHH’. I was totally the opposite of him, neither romantic nor a basketball player but a techno freak. Since childhood, I was allured by computers and technical things, developing an urge to seek how it works and functions.
As soon as I completed my schooling at St. Xavier’s School, Delhi, I had already decided to pursue Computer Engineering from a University that could deeply understand my potential & launch my career with one of the biggest software MNCs. Being an entrepreneur, my father had always advised me to accompany him, but I was never interested in joining his business. I wanted to join my dream company “Cognizant ” in the USA.I took admission in B.Tech Computer Science & Engineering at Quantum University, Roorkee. During my second year, the University offered a MINOR in Entrepreneurship. I took it reluctantly just to please my parents as I had no interest in learning an additional subject. Slowly over the years, my interest in Entrepreneurship started to develop when we studied various cases studies of entrepreneurs. By the time I was passing out, my focus and mission had completely changed. I wanted to start my enterprise. This is when my journey began.
The initial years were a lot of struggle. With very little capital and experience. I founded Ichiban Retail Tech within 6 months of passing out. The first struggle was to find the right place to set up an office and build a team. I borrowed 2 lac from my father and 1 lac from a friend. The first 6 months went by only in programming and building the SAAS model. We were able to launch the product after about 8 months. I personally went to the market to sell the product.
Although no sales were happening, we started getting a lot of great feedback from the market on how to improve the product. But by this time our initial capital had dried down. So Instead of utilizing my time on product development and sales, I was spending more time on fundraising. Hard work paid off and I was able to raise small seed money from one of the angel investors. He has till date invested with us and has been giving us great advice on how to grow the company. Slowly our product started getting accepted in the MSME segment and we started getting acknowledged. One sale led to another and within 2 years our product had generated a lot of great word of mouth. Within 2 years we had grown from a team of 4 members to a 17 member team. Today our team size is about 56 and are planning to add another 50 in the next year. We have raised over a million dollars and are on our way to becoming a 10 million company in the next year.
But this journey has not been easy. It has had its ups and downs. Hard work and consistency always pay. One thing that I would like to say to the new entrepreneurs is that never give up on your dream and always be receptive to what the market is saying about your product. Never think that what you have built is the best. Because as they say ‘Customer is King’.