A 12-year old young boy who has dreams, and ambitions has to give up on his education because of his family’s financial difficulties. But he doesn’t give up and continues his education and teaches himself coding and learns business. He develops software for clients and that’s how he founded his food-tech startup, Foodcubo, and goes on to build different businesses. This is the story of Rohit Kashyap.
Foodcubo is now a defunct food-venture, however it still remains Rohit Kashyap’s first business.
Rohit Kashyap, a young entrepreneur from Patna, Bihar began his journey at 14 by founding Foodcubo, a food-tech startup in 2016. Despite leaving formal schooling after class 7th, he didn’t let it prevent him from opening his horizons for a better future. He went onto Quora and became an influencer on the question and answer portal and started blogging about entrepreneurship. “In less than six months I got a good user base, with 10 million views on my content. People were interested in entrepreneurship and startups, but they faced a lot of problems while starting up because of lack of proper mentorship”. He has also cleared the CA foundation and ranked among the top 1000 in the ICAI Commerce Wizard. He also won several science and maths olympiads.
At the tender age of 17, he launched Maytree School of Entrepreneurship to mentor aspiring youth looking to set up their business in rural and semi-urban areas impacting thousands of students across India. It is a virtual academy that has mentored more than 1,200 students worldwide and incubated more than 50 revenue-generating startups. It has helped startups like MagTapp, AryaGocab, and Bhavesh Pharmaceutical to grow from scratch. Maytree charges upfront Rs. 5000 and above for its group mentorship and one-on-one mentorship programs and accepts an additional fee if a startup needs more help and collaboration in the future. Maytree, by 2023, extended its mission by partnering with various state governments. The organization has led flagship Entrepreneurship Accelerator Programs in collaboration with district administrations across states including Chattisgarh (Raipur, Dantewada, Jashpur, Durg, Surajpur, Dhamtari), Meghalaya (Ri-Bhoi, East Jaintia Hills), Bihar (Gaya, Chattrapati Sambhajinagar), Odisha (Bhubaneshwar), and Jharkhand (Ranchi, Jamshedpur). He was awarded the Karmaveer Chakra award and was recognized as one of India’s youngest startup founders.
According to Rohit, “92% of small business owners agree mentors have a direct impact on the growth and survival of their ventures. However, 90% of startups shut down within five years of their launch due to lack of mentorship and planning”. He also added, “This is the problem we are trying to solve by providing quality mentorship from founders and top executives in the ecosystem. We are also actively working with startup India and other government departments to help our mentees”. Maytree is bootstrapped with around 14 people to run the academy, with around Rs. 40 lakh having been invested into it so far. The young entrepreneur says he would also welcome strategic investors, who can support his aim to help more than 50 startups reach at least $10M valuation each, in the next 5 years. “The academy also takes a small equity in some startups that varies from company-to-company”, says Rohit. “We have around 700 paid customers, more than 50 tie-ups, and share equity partnerships in 13 startups. We will own only up to 0.5% equity depending upon the assistance we provide”.
A truly inspiring story about a young boy who beat his financial obstacles by letting it stop him from gaining knowledge and creating a better life for not only himself but for the youth all over the country.
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