Question 1. Tell us about yourself and your achievements?
Answer. I am Srishti Sharma and I am a serial entrepreneur and a social activist. Currently, I am the founder at GAME which stands for gaming and multiplayer eSports, Asia's first eSports online marketplace to help globally sports players to establish their careers. I am also building India's first space mining company where we build a technology that would extract various minerals from nearby asteroids including the moon. So these are the two major entrepreneurial ventures that I am on right now. Previously I have co-founded a company namely Human Science. That's how this entire entrepreneurial journey and how I entered the startup world. Talking about the social entrepreneurship that I have had, I have found a few projects to name some of them, Project Kilkari and Project Rehmat. Project Kilkari works on providing free educational rights to the kids that we usually see begging on roads. We have around 18 Kilkari Pathshalas school structures, that's how we call it. And in Project Rehmet we work on the rehabilitation of this community known as Manual Scavengers. I am also a 4-time TEDx speaker, Josh Talks speaker, young achiever 2019 awardee, exemplary performer of the year 2019, Indian leadership awardee 2018, and distinguished women entrepreneur of the year 2019. I have been fortunate enough to share my journey on various platforms.
Question 2. From most accepted female entrepreneur to Asia's most innovative women entrepreneur of the year 2020. Have you ever faced any kind of stereotypical obstacle like gender bias in your journey? If "yes" then how did you overcome them and how did your parents support you throughout your journey?
Answer. First of all, wanting to be something as risky as an entrepreneur, you can't ignore the sacrifices, blood and tears that go in the process. I started my journey at the young age of 16 at that point telling my parents that this is something that I wanted to take full time as my career you see a lot of obstacles, you face rejections. The entire entrepreneurship journey is all about 1000 no's and then finally coming up to that yes. So I would say it is not at all easy but one thing that kept me going was that I was doing something that I wanted to do and I discovered very early in life that entrepreneurship is my passion. Talking about obstacles, yes life is not easy especially in entrepreneurship it is a very risky game we are in. But in the initial days, non-acceptance and rejections were something that I had faced a lot, going out at the age of 16 when you are not even graduated from high school so people don't take you very seriously, and being a female no matter how much we say that things have developed there is still I would say patriarchy that exists and girls are not pretty much expected to do something as major as kind of starting up. So I would say more than merit, people rejected me because of my age and gender. I won't lie, I won't say I had the strength to never give up, of course, every day as I struggled I felt like giving up but when you are very clear as to what you want from your life you somehow gather the strength to face the rejections and obstacles.
Question 3. Who was your inspiration? How did you come to know that your passion is entrepreneurship and how did you start going about it, what kind of people you met, what kind of inspiration you got from everywhere?
Answer. It was never a scenario when I got up one morning and thought that this is something that I want to do. It never happened like that. We have to spend a lot of time doing 10 different things that may fail and that is the kind of life that helps you to navigate your passion. I would say I was one of the fortunate people who has discovered her passion very early in life but it was accidental I would say. I got rejected for multiple other things that I was doing. For example, I was a science student, and giving JEE exam and getting an admission into IIT was my pretty focus and goal and that's what my parents wanted me to do and after studying so hard and not doing anything in life except studying and I fail that examination of course now it sounds like a very small failure. Everybody says that that's okay, it's just an examination but at that point of time for somebody whose entire life aim is to secure a seat in IIT, it was a big loss. And I think that is when I was very much demotivated and after that, I tried my hands on modeling as well. I taught myself how to walk in heels, how to pose, and being a studious student to completely transform myself into at least trying to be a model in that I failed very badly not once but twice. And then the next thing I thought, let's try starting something on my own and at that time I was not even 18 so by that time I had started Kilkari where I started at a very small scale and because I had to cut compensate for the recent failures that I have had and when I started that project and saw that because of my actions may be real lives are getting impacted and changed and why not I discover in the process that I am good at it. I find that I can strategize, I know what leadership is and how to handle management I know I was confident about that, and remaining that I don't know I learned through my journey. So I think discovering your passion is something that happens when you fail at multiple things, you can't handle it and one day you dream about it and think like what it is meant to do so, me it happened accidentally and that is when Kilkari became a thought this is something that I should take full time as well. Discovering your passion I would say is a very pure thing that will take time and your life will change. Your life will make you feel rejected at 100 things and that is when you will be able to find that one thing that you are meant to do.
Question 4. How did the idea of starting a GAME come to your mind? You are an economics hons student and you started an eSports company. What kind of idea did you have about it and what kind of ideas do you have right now. Also, did you face any kind of obstacles?
Answer. I am an atomic hons graduate and an actuarial scientist. So this background has nothing to do with gaming and eSports but I have realized in this entire process of having two three startups before starting GAME is that I am good at understanding problems in specific markets. So if that is the kind of characteristics that you have as an entrepreneur, things get easy, and remaining is something that you can teach yourself. Similarly, the idea of GAME stuck to me after understanding a problem that exists in the gaming industry. With covid, we know everything is online and offline model and physical model has gone. Big pedias and theatres are gone. Before starting GAME I was running a physical business model after covid for three-four months we were depressed about how to deal with it, at that point of time the idea came in of locating an industry that would be booming and then finding a problem there. That is exactly what we realized that in the eSports industry as well most of the eSports events happened offline and there was no single dedicated platform that can help users to earn from their skills. So these were the major problems that we identified. That's when we started this platform where we call ourselves a marketplace so people, gamers, non-gamers, and even those people who have a very basic interest in gaming can come on this platform and we will also teach them how to build a career in that. It was even today that taboo in the Indian as well as Asian market that eSports is not considered as a viral career option the way entrepreneurship was not maybe 5 or 10 years from now but now since we see success stories people are more likely to agree to it similarly young people from our country and Asia as well who are more likely to be a part of this but they don't know what to do and that is when we came to the picture so the idea was clear, the problem was recognized then the visual was to a lot of people to establish their career into eSports. In less than 6 months we have acquired more than 10,000 users on the platform and have more than 600 teams globally on the eSports platform. Our journey so far is so good. Going further, we are planning to provide them with a platform that will train different people from different parts of the world from where they can also represent their country in the Olympics.
Question 5. Since you are a founder of Kilkari and Rehmat and also you are a public speaker and a social activist. What are your goals, what kind of changes do you want to bring to society?
Answer: There are a lot of changes that need to be made but the way of doing it can be different. We talk about social activist I would say I have worked with poverty, hunger, education, and then we worked on manual scavenging and unemployment I think the end goal of doing all these is to bring in equality in people be it through education, be it by indulging the kids that we see begging on roads into the school system so that is also where we bring in equality. Education is every child's basic right and nobody should be kept away from it because of financial issues and that's the reason we have the right to education in India but unfortunately, it was not implemented practically. So I think the end was to any of the causes that I do is to bring in equality. So, inclusion and upliftments are the two major goals that I look into for any of the philanthropic work or when I start any of the social projects. Specifically, with Rehmat in 2021 we can't even believe that this concept of untouchability would have existed even I didn't believe in that so I used to think that we have studied this in textbooks which we have heard only and this didn't last now but when you talk about Delhi and areas like Rohini and many villages today you can see the discrimination where these manual scavengers who belong to a certain caste and they have to go inside a manhole to clear our shit and it was so unbelievable to even expect something that even exists in today's time. In Project Rehman what we do is we tell them to leave this work and we provide them with alternate employment opportunities. So again, the end goal is to be able to have a fortunate life. Again, that is pretty cliche. How do we do that? We need to have parameters for me the priority has been improvement, equality and inclusion, even when we talk about speaking or maybe being a public speaker I don't know why but most of the time I am called to talk about women-centric issues because even today in the 21st-century the things has gone well there is patriarchy that exists. So I think inclusion and equality are the end goal for me.
Question 6. Please throw some light on your journey.
Answer. Nobody has to follow anybody's path. We all can just trust our individuality and learn from other people's experiences. And if you start young or if you start something non-conventional you will face a lot of challenges. It is not easy no matter how much we say that things have changed, people are accepting that the entire world is not the same because I have kind of felt that in my journey. We come from families where our parents have never differentiated between us and our brothers. But going out and expecting the world to be fair that way that shuttles you, and that shuttles your entire strawberry world that we especially at a young age live in like when I will go out I will make it happen. By saying that I don't intend to demotivate anybody but I think the most important thing when you are starting whatever you have done is non-conventional or not, you will face a lot of challenges. So before you step in make sure that you are ready for that because the mistakes that we as young people and college students make is we live in a world of assumptions where we feel that no matter what we will do is very easy but when you go out you try to make it happen the reality is heartbreaking so before we ensure that or before we jump into it let's be clear and lets me practical enough to think that it's not going to be easy and whether I am ready for it or not? If your answer is greater then don't let any kind of circumstances affect you be it your job, your parents ask you that you should get a job, you should get married by a certain age, don't let all of that affect you. Your purpose of what you are doing should be very true. I think that's the only thing that I have learned. It is good to look at somebody but don't try to follow their steps blindly. You are unique in your ways.
Question 7. Tell us about your journey from the beginning to now.
Answer. I started at 16 but at that age somewhere I realized that this was a time where I had failed the IIT examination but I had a good percentage in 12th so because of that I got a good course and a good college in Delhi University. But that rejection has kind of made me feel that I am not good enough for anything and when you have to compensate for that you start running for other things. So after this examination failure, I had started Kilkari as a very small step where there are around 13 kids and I got them admitted to a school and it was running at a very small scale. I never thought this would be taken as a full-time project and it was just happening and at that point also before I turned 17 I was very much fascinated with the beauty pageants so I had invested one and a half years into training myself and I have appeared for beauty pageants. 6 months were hard I lost almost 16 kgs. appeared for auditions once and I was rejected and then again taking another rejection breaker me even more. After that, I took another 8 months and then I was sure that I would go for beauty pageants. For that, I went to coaching classes and taught myself how to walk and everything. But the second time I was rejected in the beauty pageants in the very first round of audition. That was something that just happened for the second time. That is when I was shattered and that is when I started working more intentionally at Kilkari. By that time almost two years were wasted in modeling. I was 18 and by that time I gathered a few friends and started elevating. I started with small steps initially. I started with 13 kids and got them admitted. With small steps, we finally established pathshala with 6 months of operation. Then we thought this is working pretty well. We can expand this to almost all the colleges of Delhi University and that is when this project became a huge success. Simultaneously I was interning with a couple of startups because I wanted to explore that angle as well. Once Kilkari was a success I founded Rehmat simultaneously. Rehman was incorporated under Enactus. This was a kind of project in collaboration with Enactus India. It was a successful project as I had to start my journey back then I just handed over this startup to the team. Then I also co-founded a company named Human Science where we were working on stress elimination techniques. We were about to launch it but Covid and lockdown happened. After four months I initiated GAME. It went pretty well we are working on it. Simultaneously, I have started another venture. Where we will be India's first company to be in space. So this has been the flow of work so far.
Question 8. Your piece of advice to budding entrepreneurs
Answer: For all the young people, whether they want to become an entrepreneur or not, the most important thing in life when you are young is to discover your passion. Graduating and getting a job and doing that won't give you the purpose in life which you will get while following your passion. No matter if there is no scope in that if you are passionate about that just go for that at least you won't be regretting not following what you want to do. It is very important to listen to your heart and your instinct. Make your life as colorful as you can.
Highlights of the Achiever's journey
Srishti Sharma is a serial entrepreneur and a social activist.
She discovered her passion at the very young age of 16. She followed her heart.
During her initial days, when she started her journey as an entrepreneur. she faced non-acceptance and rejections because of her age and gender
She faced failure in her life as well like she was not able to clear JEE, also she faced multiple failures at beauty pageants.
She believed in herself and worked hard throughout her journey.
She has founded a few projects namely Project Kilkari and Project Rehmat.
She has also co-founded a company named Human Science.
She is the founder of GAME, Asia's first eSports online marketplace to help global sportspersons to establish their career.
She is also working on building the world's first space mining company where they will build a technology that would extract various minerals from nearby asteroids including the moon.
According to her discovering your passion is the most important thing in life.
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