Having Mittal as a surname may come off as a burden to a bright 27 year old willing to make a mark in the global market. However, Kavin Mittal is determined to not let his father’s fame blur his own .Master Mittal is the founder-CEO of Hike Messenger and the son of Bharti Mittal, the head of Bharti Airtel, India’s largest telecom company.
BI India chatted up with this young and enthusiastic entrepreneur to know what gets him going.
BI: Your biggest lessons as an
Kavin: I think the biggest lesson is you've got to keep your ego in check. I believe the success of a company is directly proportional to the learning curve of the founder-CEO. My learning curve in the last three years has been literally vertical. What did I know about building a messaging app? Nothing. You've to stay ahead of the curve, and the curve is moving so fast that there's less time in figuring out how this stuff works.
Second is you need to have a strong mind. Perseverance is very important. One of the biggest reasons why startups fail is perseverance. Not very long ago Hike was all set to shut down. Back in Jan 2013, this was before we raised our first round of funding. Germany became very big for us, but India was still zero. By March we had 3 million users as targets, and we had zero in India that Jan. We were freaking out. With our back pushed up against the wall we launched talk-time rewards, which incentivized people to get friends on Hike, and the user-base went from zero to 5 million in 3 months. If we didn't have the determination to make this a success, it would not have happened.
Third is a healthy body and a healthy mind. It's been a very stressful period, the last three years. You go through ups and downs. More downs than ups, and it's very important to be fit to actually stay in a state of mind to make good decisions, even in the worst times. I only have 24 hours a day, I could really use 48 hours. But the only way to expand this is to work out, stay healthy so that your 24 hours feels like 48 hours.
BI: Your father, Sunil Mittal, is a self-made man, and he's had life lessons galore. How often do you go to him for any kind of advice and how often has his advice made any impact in the business you're in?
Kavin: The simple answer to that is that every great successful entrepreneur has great mentors. I have a mentor who happens to be my father, whose experience in life happens to be tremendous.
BI: Who are the people you look up to in the business world as role models, as people you can emulate and learn from?
Kavin: You know there's a saying - you're born original don't die a copy. I love that. I think you can borrow from people you look up to, but never try to copy. You got to be your own person. Of course, I've looked up to Steve Jobs my whole life. I was very inspired by him. There are very few people in the world with five big breakthroughs.
The second one has to be Niki Lauda. I'm a big Formula One fan. If you've read the Lauda story, it's a much more real version of the Rush movie. Hats off to the guy, the way he changed the sport, the accidents that he had, the perseverance that he had after that. Came from a very wealthy family, still went his own way.
There are a common set of qualities in these people. They have a very, very clear state of mind and they want to change the world around them.
BI: What are the biggest challenges young entrepreneurs in India face today?
Kavin: To sum it up in a sentence everybody seems to be looking for a quick fix. Everybody wants to go from start to finish tomorrow. It does not happen. Building businesses and products take time. You'll go through more downs than ups in your life while building a startup. Don't build a company to be successful and famous. If you do that you'll face a quick death. Start a company if you're inspired by an idea.
BI: Are there books that have left an impression on you?
Kavin: The most recent one is called The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. He's a great guy. Talks about life as a journey, his startup and so forth. It's like my Bible.
The other one is a book that I've read again for the second time. It's called Zen Mind Beginner's Mind. It stems from the Zen Buddhist philosophy that I personally follow. It's just changed the way I look at the world completely. When you realize the world around you is simply an illusion of your mind, it's a very, very powerful thing. These two books have had the biggest impacts on my life in the last 3 years.
BI: What is the one thing that really makes you happy after a hard day at work?
Kavin: Sleep *Laughs*. Just getting 7 hours of restful sleep will make you the happiest person on the planet.
BI: Given your sweet tooth, won’t some Rasmalai and Rabri also make you happy *laughs*!
Kavin: I really like the Magnum Almond. I can go through three or four of them in a day. I avoid them like a plague. You have to build a life that offers you balance. I work out really hard so that I can cheat and eat some Chocolate, and because I eat chocolate I have to work out. It balances itself out in many different ways. You have one life to live. 90 years is not a lot of time, and I've already almost gone through one-third of my life. Time flies by, each year becomes a smaller part of your life. So each year goes by faster.
BI: We read a lot about people like Elon Mask. Where are we lacking in India. Why don't we have people like these? More than 60% of software engineers in the US is Indian!
Kavin: You can see the first wave of Internet startups in India happening today. There are a lot of people working on ground-breaking technology in this country. More importantly it's the environment, the mindset. In Silicon Valley it's OK to have 10 failures. Here you have half a failure and they'll put you in a pit and shame you. You really should see failure in a company as a comma, not a full-stop. You have to allow people to iterate and fail, and that's the only way to grow.
BI: You think the push to startups will only come when we're more open-minded?
Kavin: I think it's already happening in such a big way. However, there are still people who fear failure. Fearing failure is a good thing as long as it drives and motivates you. It should not be the dominant thing. The pressure of success is so high that that itself can detriment a lot of people to talk about ideas. Hope we can provide inspiration to the next generation of companies. Look at Ritesh Aggarwal from Oyo Rooms for instance, a very smart guy. This is happening and we hopefully will see more of this sooner.