NASSCOM EMERGEOUT Startup 28: Akash Takyar, LeewayHertz
Wednesday April 28, 2010 , 5 min Read
Akash Takyar finished MCA from Indraprastha University, Delhi in 2007. He started his career as a freelancer while he was doing BCA. While attending classes in the day at college, he used to work with his customers around US at night! He was also awarded the Indira Gandhi Priyadarshini Award and company he founded LeewayHertz was recognized by NASSCOM to be among the 50 emerging companies.
LeewayHertz is a software development and technology consulting company with offices in US and India. Its core areas of focus are iPhone and iPad application development. The company has more then 100+ apps up and running on Apple appstore today. Being one of the earliest developers to register in iPhone developers program, Leeway is continuously expanding its range of services and going further with capability to build apps for Google Android, Blackberry, and Palm Pre.
Akash took the entrepreneurial journey pretty early even while in college. It would be interesting to know his views on entrepreneurship as he talks to Indian Startup EMERGEOUT initiative by NASSCOM.1 Why did you take up entrepreneurship journey?
Akash: Taking up the path of entrepreneurship was never easy nor it started smooth. There were challenges and difficulties lined up for you when you start on a new plan. I started my career as a freelancer from my college days itself. At the end of my Masters I already had 3 people working for me. I made a decision to continue exploring the entrepreneurial path rather than getting into the industry as fresher and working for someone else.
2. What keeps you going (how and where do you find your motivation levels)?
Akash: The IT industry itself is a reason to keep us going and motivated. If the opportunities are considered well, there is no escape from growth. The passion to provide best application service for all the mobile platforms keeps us willing to achieve more perfection and competency for what we do.
3. What is your advice to wannabe entrepreneurs in India?
Akash: As I said, the path is full of opportunities if taken in the right direction, the goal should be to remain tenacious to face discouragement throughout the journey. To add to this view, there is one famous saying which we follow in our team, "I didn’t fail a 100 times but I found a 100 ways to do it wrong."
4. What success means to you and your organization?
Akash: We believe success is a matter of choice. If we are satisfied, we are successful. If we are still working hard to achieve updated goals, we are looking for more satisfaction.
5. What are your learnings from the failures?
Akash: In every business, be it a service or product, the relationship between a client and organization will always matter. The most important objective for any organization is to maintain the best possible relationship with its customers.
Akash found entrepreneurship to be a tough path. It is obvious because a young entrepreneur especially with no work experience would have found it difficult to navigate the initial phases. But his tenacity of not giving up and taking failures as learnings has helped him see light at the end of the tunnel and get recognition for his work.
We are almost drawing to a close. It was a fascinating journey for us in YourStory to partner with NASSCOM to bring out the views of entrepreneurs everyday from April 1. Each entrepreneur proved to be unique and the spectrum of their ventures spans many domains. We had seen different breeds of entrepreneurs and their views were equally diverse and distinct. But all share one same story – success. Success did not come to any one of them by a stroke of luck but they earned it by practicing entrepreneurship through its rough and tumble.
For those of you who didn’t have the opportunity to read it everyday, here are the links to the earlier 27 views on entrepreneurship.
1. Kishore Mandyam of PK4 Software
3. Ajay Sharma of Shristi Software
4. Pallav Nadhani of InfoSoft Global (FusionCharts)
5. Manoj Srivatsava of Hanu Software
7. Sushil Chaudary of Mann-India
9. R. Swaminathan of Matrix Business Solution
10. Suresh Sambandam of OrangeScape
12. Prasad Guntupalli of Attra
16. Yadu and Naresh or Robust Designs
17. Ananth Seshan of Fifth Generation
18. Shoma Bakre of EmPower Research
22. Rohit Singal of Sourcebits
24. Srish Agrawal of A1 Future 25. Bijal Mehta of Arctern
26. Sanjay Vijayakumar of MobMe
27. Sanjay Prasad of MindRiver
No doubt, this endeavor of NASSCOM would significantly infuse energy into a budding entrepreneur and bring in those at the edge of entrepreneurship to try it, test it, and taste it.
--Contributed by Venkatesh Krishnamoorthy, chief evangelist, YourStory