In today’s society, there are many of us who are stuck studying a conventional course which we neither enjoy nor we have any interest in. Going through a similar situation, Zeeshan Mohammed and his buddies decided to change things for them. At the tender age of nineteen, he started The Climber. The Climber is a youth-run educational startup, currently incubated out of NSRCEL at IIM Bangalore which aims at mentoring young students to make informed career decisions
Zeeshan took some time out and shared his life’s stories and some success mantras.
He talks about his initial challenges one of which were managing college and his startup along with parental and peer expectations. Moving the startup from a college/campus startup to an operational company was another one. He also faced a major financial challenge. Within 3 months of launching, they went bankrupt and were in external debt, any entrepreneurs worst nightmare.
But this never deterred his spirit. In fact, he believes that it’s important to fail and fail fast. He takes failure positively. There is an immense learning every time it occurs, one just needs to have the strength to be persistent. Perseverance through all challenges, ups, and downs is something every entrepreneur should be ready to undergo.
As a team, they looked for solutions to this problem they were facing and took every day as a new one- another shot at solving their problems.
After a lot of efforts, they had a solution. And within a couple of months tables had turned in their favour and they had expanded to 4 different cities.
He suggests that a Startup’s success lies in the hands of the team. And so, it’s very important for an entrepreneur to spend a good amount of time making hiring decisions. And everybody involved should be driven by the company mission and nothing else. He also recommends that the focus should be on finances and profitability right from the start. And one should chase customers first not investors.
Zeeshan was inspired by the entire business industry and startup ecosystem, which made him feel that he belonged in this space. He was always supported by his close friends, his mother, and Sameer Ramesh.
Today, The Climber is identified by United Nations SDSN as amongst the top 50 youth-led solutions in the world. He also delivered a talk at TEDx. These are a few achievements he is proud of. They are looking to rapidly expand their team and work on bringing more innovation to the edtech space. He says we will soon be seeing mycaptain evolve into one of the top products that edtech space has seen recently.
For budding entrepreneurs he advises that the best time to startup was 2 years ago, the second best time is today.
So, guys, it’s never too late or in this case, never too early to start something. If you have an idea, go ahead and make it happen. The way will find you.
