We recently caught up with Mr. Tushar Jain who is the founder at Enthu.AI, a B2B enterprise software to help voice teams improve the quality of their conversations. Tushar is also an ardent book reader, a personal finance blogger and a lifelong student of sales & marketing. Let us hear about his story:
Q1. Tell us something about your journey so far?
My start-up journey started in 2019 when I left my job to test out entrepreneurial waters. But in real sense, the journey had kicked off way back in 2014 when I started an ecommerce store selling artificial jewellery (as a side business). While I lost money and eventually shut the shop, it was a very big validation that I could set up a business, generate initial traction and do sales.
The next in the set of experiments was an e-education platform for RBI Grade B exam aspirants. I was a co-founder there, working part time during the nights. However, at the peak of it, we were a category leader generating a revenue of 25 lakhs plus every exam season. We eventually exited the business as we wanted to focus on our respective jobs.
June 2019 is when I started full time with my B2B SaaS journey.
Q2. What prompted you to become an entrepreneur?
There was no specific prompt – just a desire to build something on my own and gain more control over my decisions and time.
Q3. Tell us something about Enthu.ai. What makes it so different and unique?
Enthu.AI helps voice teams derive intelligence from their everyday conversations. Consider a case where members of a sales or support team talk to customers day in and day out. If the organization wants to know what’s transpiring in such conversations, someone needs to listen to these calls end to end to draw contours.
With Enthu.AI, this work is done by a computer, using sophisticated AI and NLP algorithms. The system derives meaning from 100% of the conversation and presents them as insights, without a human listening to even a single minute. Basis the insights that Enthu.AI derives, sales coaches and quality managers can execute personalized agent coaching programs, all with the purpose to improve the quality of conversations.
Q4. What or who has been the biggest influence in your career so far? How do you balance your personal and professional career?
I had a very fulfilling stint of 2.5 years at McKinsey & Company, and a lot of my seniors influenced me there. Apart from that, I am ardent reader and get influenced by books a lot.
An entrepreneur (especially the one at the early stage) can’t separate his personal life from the professional one. Only a balancing act can save him. That means you decide impromptu who takes the priority: sometimes it’s family, most of the times it’s the start-up. And you keep juggling between the two without offending either of the party.
Q5. Tell us about a typical day in your life as an entrepreneur. Is it very hectic?
I assume every entrepreneur’s life is hectic. What makes it easier is your strong need for achievement.
My typical day starts with an engineering scrum meeting where we discuss the progress. This is followed by a daily scrum with the lead gen team. I spend the rest of my first half connecting with people on LinkedIn and emails, or responding to customer questions. Afternoon is generally reserved for ideating on the next step of experiments or working on the product. Evenings are generally spent talking to either existing customers or running demos for the new prospects.
Q6. Which is the biggest challenge you have faced so far? What are your future plans?
Team building is definitely one of the biggest challenges. It took me 12 months to set a good engineering team. I am now setting up a lead gen and a marketing team, and the challenge is still the same: how do you find people who share your levels of passion & vision, and are ready to take challenges as an opportunity towards growth.
Q7. How has the lockdown impacted you as a professional?
The initial phase was really tough. Like everyone else, we were taken by the anxiety of how the future would unfold. The team members were also not used to working remote and we had our learning curve before we got comfortable.
Now remote work is the new normal. There is no doubt that the number of sittings hours have drastically increased. Therefore, I ensure that the team and I are not being unjust and we take timely offs. Mental as well as physical health has become a priority, which no doubt, got impacted due to the lockdown.
Q8. What would be your advice to young professionals and MBA students? How important is the role of education in our career and your own experience at B-school?
My advice to young professionals is to read books across subjects and topics. Be it history, investing, philosophy, psychology: diverse reading is the quickest way to expand your horizon. I wish I was an ardent reader 10 years back.
Role of education: Try to differentiate between knowledge and learning. While MBA gives you knowledge; experience imparts learning. And these two can be acquired parallelly. The old thought process of acquiring knowledge before acquiring learning is an obsolete concept now; thanks to the power of internet.
Get experience by doing internships at start-ups or running your blog or an Instagram channel. Digital marketing is a must have skill, use your 2-years’ time at a B-School to build on this skill. It teaches you how to build a growth mindset by experimenting, failing and learning.
Q9. How important is to pursue your passion? How can our readers connect with you?
I think it’s important to follow your passion but don’t lose touch with the reality. If you have a family to feed and EMIs to pay, don’t just blindly go after pursuing your passion. Plan well, save aggressively, start pursing your passion part time and jump into it when you see you can devote the next 2-3 years to your passion without worrying about your finances.
Readers can connect with me on LinkedIn or can send me an email to [email protected] . Readers can also connect with him @tushar-jain .
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