“Focus on adding value – Any business idea needs to solve a need.”

-Vivek Pahwa

So here we have our first versatile tech entrepreneur, Vivek Pahwa, who has successfully started and running 6 different web portals.

Vivek founded Accentium Web in year 2006 and in three year span the company started 6 different websites operating on different concepts. The firm is having around 40 employees and 2 branches in India

In conversation with webneetech.com, Vivek explains more about his entrepreneurial journey and about his business.

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Founder (s) detail:

Name: Vivek Pahwa (Founder and CEO)

Age: 28

Qualification: Mechanical Engineer, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and  MBA, Indian School of Business

Name: Ankur Warikoo (Co-Founder)

Age: 29

Qualification: MSc Statistics and Physics, MBA, Indian School of Business

Work experience : AT Kearney

Name: Umang Kumar (Co-Founder)

Age: 27

Qualification: Computer Engineering, RV College, MBA, Indian School of Business

Work experience : ABP Group, 9.9

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Website Detail:

Website Name:

Target audience:All internet users

Monthly visits  on website: 500,000 unique visitors across all sites

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Company Detail:

Company’s Name: Accentium Web Pvt Ltd

Source of funding : Self and Family

Number of employees: 40

Number of branches: 2

Phone: 91-124-4091113

Office Address: 21-C, Sector 18, Udyog Vihar, Gurgaon – 122016, Haryana

Email ID: contact@accentium.com

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Interview(Q & A Round):

Q: Tell us in detail about your business, your idea and how it can benefit others?

Accentium Web Pvt Ltd aims to be one of the leading players in the consumer internet space – Currently, it runs

a) Gaadi.com, India’s No. 2 Auto portal (soon to be No. 1, hopefully) where users can research their new car purchase, and buy and sell used cars. Gaadi.com currently receives over 300,000 unique visitors monthly.

b) SecondShaadi.com, India’s No. 1 Matrimonial site for second marriages – Filling a niche but important and growing need in the second marriage segment online – over 150,000 registered profiles

c) StudyTimes.com – India’s most content rich education site – helps students determine their best college choice in both India and overseas, while helping them prepare for competitive exams as well.

d) AdLift.com – Which is a services division of Accentium, where we work with companies both in India and overseas to help them with marketing their sites online.

e) Taaza.com

We currently reach out to over 500,000 unique internet users in India on a monthly basis, which represent over 1.5% of India’s Internet population. We hope to grow this to 5-10% in the coming years. Besides our users, we work with several companies and intermediaries in all of our products, adding value to their businesses, by helping them succeed more.

All of our products have differentiators – SecondShaadi is an obvious differentiator – With Gaadi.com, we have innovated in the way we present high quality auto related information to our users, and as well as innovating an offline business model where we help intermediaries achieve more success in their business. StudyTimes.com has better quality content than any education site, and that is the biggest differentiator. Our success in business model can be attributed to incremental innovations in the concept, execution or delivery leading to incremental value being created in the system.

Q: What are your expansion plans and where do you see your business 5 years down the line?

Grow traffic, revenue and profitability – We are very financially driven – I feel that if you drive your company by revenue and more importantly profit targets, everything else will fall into place. A lot of times start-ups are driven by technology / ideas / dreams of making it big. But ideas don’t pay the employees – revenues do.  The MBA really helped in bringing about the financial focus.

Q: What were the biggest challenge(s) you faced in your journey as an amateur entrepreneur till now?

I hear this question a lot – but I never know how to answer it – it has been a series of challenges, every day presents a new one – so I don’t have one that stands out, but so far, making the business model work on Gaadi.com has been a challenge which we are seeing success on now – but we are only 1 year old with Gaadi.com, so challenges are expected.

Q: What is the biggest mistake you made as an amateur entrepreneur?

Lot’s of small ones – Hiring and judging people beforehand – Doing things in a hurry starting up because you are very anxious – Overspending on things which don’t require spend – these are some of the mistakes which have actually taught us well.

Q: What you want to say to the new entrepreneurs or the one who wants to start his/her own business?

Focus on adding value – Any business idea needs to solve a need – If you solve a big need for a big set of people or businesses, then it can become big – But you can also solve small needs for small groups of individuals – but until you solve problems for other people / companies and add value, you will not make money. This sounds easy but is the key to entrepreneurship. Linked to this, the only way you can continue to add value on an ongoing basis – would be to have something others don’t – but having something that others don’t AND adds value is key – building a sustainable competitive advantage which solves real needs is the key to long term profits.

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