In talks with: Prachi Garg – Author, Traveller & Entrepreneur

Prachi Garg, An author, traveller & a successful entrepreneur. She started www.ghoomophiro.com, an enterprise where the team organizes corporate tours based on the customers’ requirements, budget and provide them bouquet of options. This initiative was taken up by her during college days. Recently ghoomophiro expanded its portfolio for women solo travel. She has also delivered workshops on entrepreneurship at major B-schools (FMS/IIMs/Miranda House/IMT) and her start-up has been covered by yourstory/IndianExpress/Femina/idiva. She has been featured as top 10 Indian women, who made big online, and women’s web saw her as incredible women entrepreneur. She also authored book Superwomen, the book that talks about the journeys of women entrepreneurs, and the book has been constantly topping the non-fiction charts at various bookstores.

From Being an MBA student, how did the idea of becoming an Entrepreneur came into your mind?

I always wanted to do something of my own always, and this is where during my early career days, I kick started “Managing Minds”, though it was a failure as I think, I was not mature enough to understand the intricacies of startup ecosystem. While I was in college during MBA, my entrepreneurship itch started again and I thought to leverage my college network, ecosystem and time to strategise ghoomophiro. I think MBA college is indeed a great platform to experiment with your startups as you get lot of exposure and time to get your idea executed. In fact, to validate my business idea, which I didn’t do with Managing Minds, I took ghoomophiro to various B-plan contests and won prizes too;-). This in short boost my confidence and I took the plunge.

As we know, you recently launched a new book & it’s something different this time. Tell us a more about your recent book Super Couples.

SuperCouples brings out the lovely stories of enterprising couples. The couples who chose to be cofounders in their respective startups. After all, when great minds come together to produce something built on conjoined dreams, the result is eminently successful.

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In the era when both relationships and start-ups are fragile, these young wonderful couples took up the challenge to break the stereotype. The book talks about the ups and downs of their relationship, startups and how they sailed through. Best part is, startups covered in the book are from varied spectrum ranging from health care to digital agency to e-tellers and so on.

What pushed you to write about couple entrepreneurs? This is something new! How did you get the idea?

Running a successful business with your soul mate has always been idyllic and intruging for me. I always used to wonder how the couples keep a pace between their personal and professional life especially when you are together all the time and can determine your mutual career destinies instead of spending many hours apart working for someone else. This pestered me to speak to these wonderful couples across India, who planned to be partners in crime in everything and realised to build a meaningful life together by co-creating something that brings joy and fulfillment. However, this interaction through their journeys brought some key takeaways for successful partnership and had been enlightening for me, which I thought to pen it down in Supercouples

Also Read: How This Guy Helping Bhopal Startups To Grow And Predict Their Future!

For me, it is more like Married to your work, and at the same time get the chance to spend quality time with your spouse.

Prachi Garg, Author of Superwomen & SuperCouples

First turning point or Initial/first step in your Entrepreneurship Career? Any lesson you’ve learnt from that?

My first stint in entrepreneurship was failure. Several reasons I could account for it, but most importantly, it made me a more evolved and start-up friendly person. As I burnt lot of cash there, I learnt during the process and ensured to implement those learnings in ghoomophiro, due to which my initial challenges, risks were mitigated during planning phase. Details of learnings can be found at https://yourstory.com/2016/07/failed-startup-valuable-lessons/

The best thing about Entrepreneurship? What Qualities do you think an Entrepreneur should have?

Entrepreneurship makes you diligent, open to ideas and in case you plan to self-funded your startup, you definitely become creative. I am glad that I chose to self fund ghoomophiro and probably happy to see it growing without clutches.

Reasons can be found here. https://yourstory.com/2016/06/bootstap-startup/

Few qualities that I think an entrepreneur should have include

Humility
Ambition
Persistence
Hard Work
Networking Skills
Self Belief

How your Parents took your decision of being an Entrepreneur?

Definitely big Yes!!, In fact they have always inspired and motivated me to start on my own and given me the requisite support. Whenever I have been disappointed or have low moments in my journey, they have been there to lift me up and it could be in a way as simple as, when my father will ask to plan a team event for his team via ghoomophiro.

And I strongly feel, it is next to impossible to succeed without family’s support in anything you do.because as far you are aware, they are aligned to your dreams, you can focus on the work without feeling guilty to hurt them.

As there is a saying “Make your passion, your profession”, so how did you make your passion for writing and travelling, your profession?

Yes, ghoomophiro started out of my passion of travelling, but I don’t think writing will become my profession, as I personally feel, if someday I will make writing as my profession, I might not be able to do justice with my writing.

After getting a huge love & success for your book “Superwomen”, now tell us more about what kind of response you are getting from readers for “SuperCouples”? Do they like the experiment/idea?

Supercouples has a very different target audience. It pushes the readers to think beyond the stereotypes. Reading these stories somewhere readers think through, if they can actually explore the option of having their spouses as cofounders. It tells them how balancing the act of love and profession can take them to great heights. At various book stores, Supercouples have been topping the charts of non-fiction and also on Amazon have been categorized under hot releases. This tells me, yes experiment has been little successful, though still long way to go..

Also Read: Is Snapdeal Bootstrapping Again?

What is that one thing which keeps you moving forward in this field?

Response of my readers. When your work is acknowledged and loved, you tend to keep moving. Watsapp messages, tweets, DMs, emails stating how superwomen have inspired them to start something on their own or they are eagerly waiting for my next book keeps me going.

A message that you would like to share with the readers to inspire them to dream big?

You have one life, and you should never loose any opportunity to make most of it. There shall be several hiccups your way, but never get disheartened, as these failures are the stepping stones to your success.

Rapid Fire Round: Choose one!

Blogging online / Writing Offline – Writing offline
Storyteller / Author – Storyteller
Writing / Travelling – Tricky (but still Travelling)
Success / Money – Both
9 to 5 job / Startup – Startup
Facebook / Instagram – Instagram