Who is the latest youth icon for entrepreneurship?

 

 

Looking for inspiration? Meet Avelo Roy, a serial entrepreneur since he was 19. Honoured by the California State Senate, invited to speak at a White House panel for Entrepreneurship Education and to be a speaker at TEDx Talk, Roy is the latest youth icon for entrepreneurship.

His story:

I started my first startup at 19 while still a student at Illinois Institute of Technology and built it to a million-dollar valuation by the time I was 22 with patents filed in the US, UK and Japan. I have been building businesses in the US ever since. I have co-founded/invested in multiple businesses thereafter -building products and intellectual property around artificial Intelligence systems, healthcare, process automation, food science, wireless communications and graphical password.  

Besides ideation and product development, I also harbour interest in marketing and brand development. This led to my association with companies like Unilever, MoneyGram and Hertz in deploying their marketing campaigns in different countries of South America and Europe. I foster and champion my passion for entrepreneurship through my associations with organisations like Knapp Entrepreneurship Centre at the Illinois Institute of Technology, Big Idea Forum, MIT enterprise forum, Illinois Institute of Entrepreneurship Education, Chicagoland Entrepreneurship Centre and Start-up America (President Obama’s project).

Boosting the startup ecosystem

I spent some of my teenage years and entire adult life in the US. My businesses, friends, college, mentors and mentees are all in the US. I have a massive network of entrepreneurs, investors and educators from US. Currently, I have been in India for the last several months boosting the startup ecosystem here through Kolkata Ventures, an Indo-US collaboration to educate, mentor and seed-fund startups. The board consists of millionaire entrepreneurs and industry experts from US and India, who are committed to boost the Indian startup ecosystem and connect Indian entrepreneurs to all kinds of resources.

Idea of entrepreneurship

An entrepreneur is a problem solver who sees opportunity in the face of obstacles and bends the rules to transform a “No” to a “Yes” with the help of a relentless mindset. Money is just a by-product. India is fast emerging as a country in entrepreneurship. Thanks to our honourable Prime Minister and his efforts, India is coming up aggressively in this arena as compared to China, Brazil, Russia, Turkey and Israel. We are also attracting a lot of foreign investment thanks to NRIs spread all across the globe. I am also inspiring my NRI friends to do the same through Kolkata Ventures.

Entrepreneurship in India in next 10 years

I have seen the effects of startup America from 2008 to 2016. Many of my seniors who had a startup at that time and sustained through the hurdles over the years are running businesses worth hundreds of millions of dollars adding thousands of jobs to the US economy. I expect the same in India. Startups today will be the TATAs and Reliance of tomorrow. Yes we will definitely go through a bubble burst very soon as startup entrepreneurs as well as investors are not trained and educated in the science of lean start-up methodology. We see startup companies making losses in the range of thousands of crores and investors pouring in money nevertheless. But we have been learning and we will soon mature up and before we know there will be series of large and medium sized companies that will shape the future of India in the coming 10 years.

Dreaming Big

Kolkata Ventures has been an extremely rewarding experience where we have 200+ startups being mentored, educated and incubated by entrepreneurs and industry experts. We expect to seed fund more and more startups and make profitable exits from most of them. From our Launchpad programs I have realized that I love educating and so I want to do more of that.

I intend to continue my speaking tours as well as reach out to larger companies and train their middle management the mindset of bootstrapping with limited resources. I want to help them rethink product development using design thinking and I also want to share the knowledge of Vedic principles for productivity, management, work-life balance and finding job satisfaction regardless of industry.

I am also re-launching AIWA in India. AIWA is a global brand for consumer electronics that was dead for 13 years under Sony and now owned by my mentor Joe Born, CEO of AIWA. My team and I are leading the product launch, branding and operations for India and hope to make it a billion- dollar business within the next 10 years.

 

Do you have a role model in mind when it comes to entrepreneurship? Or what is your idea of a youth icon for entrepreneurship? Do share your views.....

As told to Baishali Mukherjee

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