The undying hunger to succeed is all one needs to change the stars. Puneet Gupta’s story.
Puneet is the Founder and CEO of AstroTalk – one of the best and most trusted Indian digital platforms for astrology and horoscope consultation.
After graduating from PEC University of Technology, he worked in multiple organisations in Mumbai, such as Nomura Services India Pvt. Ltd., and BNB Paribas India Solutions Pvt. Ltd., with a burning desire to start a venture of his own. His first most notable and successful venture was CodeYeti Software Solutions, founded in 2015, which served more than a hundred clients, including Yamaha and GreenPly. Though the company had an annual turnover of half-a-million dollars, Puneet pivoted the entire business to AstroTalk in 2017. Ever since, Puneet has been on a rollercoaster ride to success.
Pinkbull Investors is an Investment Management firm which is metaphorically ‘your financial intelligence’. “Money Stories” is our series that features interesting people talking candidly about their financial & professional lives.
WRITTEN BY PINKBULL INVESTORS ON DECEMBER 4, 2020
Hailing from a middle-class family, one would expect me to have a typical background with a father who is a stickler for education and a mother who is more lenient in disposition. However, my case was quite the contrary. Everyone from the maternal side of my family was well-educated with a stable government job, including my mother. On the other hand, my father was a businessman who had barely managed to graduate from Class-X. Needless to say, when it came to my education, my parents were poles apart in their opinions! My father cared the least about my schooling. He wanted me to concentrate solely on his business, spend more time at his shop and become a cloth merchant like him. My mother, at the same time, wanted me to complete my education and settle down with a stable government job. As far as I was concerned… I wanted to do none.
Working at the shop bored me to death, and I was close to being miserable in studies. I rarely scored good marks, which meant I hardly had any friends. There was this clear groupism in school where the students who scored well had their own group where I wasn’t invited. I was also a misfit when it came to mixing with the boys who were bad in studies like me, since most of them were spoilt brats hailing from rich families. Due to financial constraints, neither could I participate in school competitions like the good boys, nor could I go out for video games and parties with the bad ones. Therefore, I simply chose to lock myself up in a shell and stay aloof.
I still remember, how each time I’d go out with my grandparents, we’d cross this sweet shop across the street, and they’d tell me that if I didn’t study and work at my dad’s shop, I’d land up washing utensils like the ‘halwai’ there! All I wanted back then was to do something different and better. What? How? I didn’t know.
During family discussions on running the business, I’d sit quietly in a corner, conjuring different business strategies in my head. Though people would rarely listen to what I had in mind, it was the only time I felt I belonged somewhere.
Each time I’d go out with my grandparents, we’d cross this sweet shop across the street, and they’d tell me that if I didn’t study and work at my dad’s shop, I’d land up washing utensils like the ‘halwai’ there! All I wanted back then was to do something different and better. What? How? I didn’t know.
The first turning point in my life occurred when my Class 8 results came out. I had barely managed to pass with a meagre 54%, and that too only because I had been comparatively good in Math. For the first time, I saw my mother breakdown because of me. She had nearly fought with the family to get me enrolled in Bhatinda’s best school, despite all financial constraints, so that I could secure a proper education. When I had failed to live up to her expectations, she felt she had lost the battle. Her tears were enough to jerk me into my senses. I turned a new leaf and decided to take charge of my life. Fortunately, my section was changed and I met other students like me. I made new friends, started studying and became determined to make it big in life.
Post school, I qualified for IIT, but chose to study in Punjab Engineering college after being misguided by someone I knew. However, this wrong choice couldn’t dampen my spirit to do something extraordinary in life. My friends in college, unlike me, weren’t risk takers, so no one was ready to join me in my entrepreneurial ventures. I decided to go solo.
I spoke to an institution about preparing their question papers for them and began to earn enough to finance the last few semesters of my education. Soon, I got through Nomura in Mumbai and my lifestyle changed. Blinded by a good salary and financial independence, I started enjoying life, spending money in 5-star dinners every weekend. Before I realised, I had forgotten my dream of beginning my own venture.
During family discussions on running the business, I’d sit quietly in a corner, conjuring different business strategies in my head. Though people would rarely listen to what I had in mind, it was the only time I felt I belonged somewhere.
Eventually, I started dating someone. She came from an affluent family and had lived her entire childhood, abroad. She was the first one to give me a realitycheck and pull me out of my reverie. Once, after an argument, she curtly said, “My father drives a Mercedes and your family has not even seen a car. You should feel lucky that I still love you.” That broke my heart. I was slapped right across my face and made to realise that I was a pauper, despite my hefty salary package. The most important girl in my life had shown me how easy it was to lose someone just because you couldn’t match their social status. Once again, I became adamant to chase success till I found it and won it. I realised that I wouldn’t be able to go far with these regular jobs and in a fit of impulsiveness, put down my papers.
I had three months’ notice period to serve – the only time to figure out my modus operandi. Back in my hometown, my grandfather was a noted Ayurveda practitioner. People would come from different parts of Punjab to avail his treatments. However, due to the absence of a doctor’s degree, he had to run his business on a small-scale. Eureka! I had hit on the perfect business plan.
I went back home with my own strategies of globalising my grandfather’s business. I thought, ‘let’s hire some doctors, set up a factory, get the licence and make this big!’ I assured my ‘Dadaji’ that I would make the initial investments with the money I had saved. He refused point blank. No matter how hard I tried, he made excuses of all sorts and made it clear that he wasn’t ready to budge from his comfort zone. So, that was it! After 4-5 days, I gave up.
The next phase of my life was the most difficult one. I thought of going back to giving tuitions like good old times, to make a living. Meanwhile, I planned to open my own institute, eventually investing all my saved money in it. I gave these free sessions where one could come and try out a class and then pay the fees.
The most important girl in my life had shown me how easy it was to lose someone just because you couldn’t match their social status. Once again, I became adamant to chase success till I found it and won it.
Though a lot of students would come along with their friends, I eventually realised that none of them were serious about cracking the IIT competitive exams. Those who were, would go to Kota or Chandigarh, and not stay in Bhatinda. This meant that it would be a good 3-4 years before I could make a student achieve a rank and gain myself a reputation. I was so desperate to become successful, that I couldn’t wait for so long for my business to bear fruit. I quit, losing all my invested money in the process.
An idle mind is a devil’s workshop. With nothing to do at all, I was haunted by depressing thoughts of my break-up and how everyone had started judging me as an absolute nincompoop. Nearly five months had passed with me being unemployed and I started believing that everything had been lost. I stopped communicating with my family, shifted to a room upstairs, locked myself up and spent hours blankly looking at the walls. Depressed to the point of being suicidal, it didn’t even strike me that I still had the chance of going back to a normal job. A friend of mine came to know about my situation and started motivating me to get out of the rut I was in. He encouraged me to apply for jobs and get back into the rat-race. But in the corporate world, people don’t really look forward to taking you back, once you’ve taken a break. I wouldn’t get shortlisted, or even if I did, I wouldn’t clear the interviews.
I eventually found myself a job at a start-up that would pay me only half my salary for the first two months. They wanted me to join the very next day, so I bought myself a flight ticket, spending Rs.11,000 of the only Rs. 17,000 that I had left with me. As if my luck couldn’t go worse, the start-up refused to reimburse the amount till I had worked for them for a few days’ time.
I didn’t have money left on me and I didn’t have a home. Through a friend’s reference I found accommodation in a 2-BHK which already had 6 occupants. There was no extra-bedding and I started sleeping on the floor. I didn’t have enough money for food and I needed whatever money I had left for conveyance. So, I would skip breakfast and drink the tea available at office with almost half a cup of sugar, to make myself feel full. I would eat lunch at a place thronged by labourers for a plate of 6 puris and as much as bhaji one wanted, available for only Rs. 15. That would be my wholesome meal of the day. At night I’d drink a glass of milk and go off to sleep. Sometimes, I would buy a loaf of bread and have it over two days.
I lived like this for a month, until I received an offer from BNP Paribas. Life finally started getting back on track after 1-1.5 years. The first thing I did after getting the new job was to treat myself to a good meal. I started earning once again, but this time, I started spending it judiciously. I was determined to again save some money, quit and start my own venture.
I’d spend the day at work and night planning about my endeavour. Meanwhile, an old friend based out of Mumbai messaged that he too planned to establish a start-up and was keen to join hands with me. He was from IIT Delhi and qualified in Computer Science, and I was looking for exactly a person like him because I was terrible in coding myself. We planned things out and soon, I decided to resign.
I didn’t have enough money for food and I needed whatever money I had left for conveyance. So, I would skip breakfast and drink the tea available at office with almost half a cup of sugar, to make myself feel full. I would eat lunch at a place thronged by labourers for a plate of 6 puris and as much as bhaji one wanted, available for only Rs. 15. At night I’d drink a glass of milk and go off to sleep.
The moment I wrote out the resignation, I panicked. My past came flashing back to me and I got cold feet. My colleague, Heena, saw my face and asked me the reason behind my nervousness. She was an astrologer and predicted that it was safe for me to leave the job since things would work in my favour, this time. Though I was sceptical and made fun of her, I listened to her advice and quit.
We launched a product which tanked in the market, but since we had a fully functional tech team, we decided to take up IT projects and provide other services. This company, CodeYeti, landed up being a success, and churned out a revenue of half a million dollars, in a year’s span.
After 2 years, my friend pointed out that we weren’t doing anything substantial apart from minting money. He wanted to leave. A lot of coaxing and a failed product later, he left us. With him gone, the business started falling apart. There was no one to solve tech issues and meet tech requirements.
I contacted my astrologer-colleague who had predicted that though my business would kick off well, it would go through a troubled phase after ‘a year and half’. She was quite happy that her prediction had come true! I told her that my present company would shut down in 4 months’ time and offered to start an astrology-based venture, jointly with her. Now, she was expecting a baby. It was quite natural for her to refuse. However, somehow, I convinced her by showing her the bigger picture of how she would be able to help several people through her predictions. She agreed and AstroTalk was conceived in 2017.
I wouldn’t really say that AstroTalk was profitable in the initial days. I wasn’t earning anything, but I was making enough not to bear losses. We got a lot of customers to get a proof-of-concept, but there were issues with sessions, due to large overheads. It took me around 1-1.5 years to keep reworking on the product and create one that was a good market fit. 2018 was again a period of struggle where I could only afford freelancers to work for me. However, post 2018, we began scaling, hired more astrologers and employees, and finally began to see some profits.
I wouldn’t really say that AstroTalk was profitable in the initial days. I wasn’t earning anything, but I was making enough not to bear losses. We got a lot of customers to get a proof-of-concept, but there were issues with sessions, due to large overheads. It took me around 1-1.5 years to keep reworking on the product and create one that was a good market fit.
Though we got a lot of customers through Heena, the concept of an astrology app was still alien to the majority. Moreover, they didn’t want to go for an online session which would be available to them 2-3 days after booking. I admit my product wasn’t up to the mark.
So, I started speaking to customers and working on their feedback. We changed the product entirely. We gave our customers instant gratification, where one could recharge, click the call button and connect to an astrologer within 30 seconds. We had a list of astrologers. If Heena was busy, customers could talk to someone else.
When we relaunched AstroTalk, we hardly expected any rise in revenue. The product went live at 8:00 pm and within a couple of hours, recharges began to flood in. I was convinced that there had been a technical glitch when I noticed a recharge of Rs. 14,000. But that was not the case. Things had changed overnight.
We didn’t stop renovating there. Initially, we only had a video facility. Based on customer-feedback, an audio facility was incorporated which saw 93% of our customers shift from one medium to another. When we launched the chat feature, 60% of our call-customers shifted to texting. We realised, not only did people treasure their privacy the most, but also valued the opportunity to be able to speak to us at their own convenience. As a result, the initial drop in business during afternoons and nights saw a reverse graph. There was a massive surge in business!
I don’t let the success of AstroTalk fan my pride. CodeYeti was also a half-a-million-dollar worth company which disintegrated into dust. So, with AstroTalk too, things might change tomorrow for better or worse. I just believe in being honest to my job.
Since then, we have been constantly launching new features. Not all of them work out, but we keep trying and adding new ones. Astrology is not something people, especially the younger generation, consume immediately, despite our frequent tryst with it, due to our parents, grandparents or marriages which require the matching of Kundalis. We tend to believe such predictions don’t come true and I was no different.
Hence, youngsters don’t usually consult astrologers when they have a career or financial issue. However, it is when they face some relationship issues – when they can’t woo a girl of their choice, or when they are unable to get married, or when they are facing post-marriage conflicts – that they rush to us. If you don’t have a job, you know you must work hard, but how do you convince a person you love? You can’t control that person’s brain. Almost 90% of our customers come with relationship problems. Once these issues get sorted, they consult about money, house, career, etc.
I don’t let the success of AstroTalk fan my pride. CodeYeti was also a half-a million-dollar worth company which disintegrated into dust. So, with AstroTalk too, things might change tomorrow for better or worse. I just believe in being assiduous and honest to my job.
The way AstroTalk is growing in terms of finances, I’d say we are very stable currently. However, ask me about my day-to-day life and I’ll tell you that I’m struggling every day with every new product feature or customer issue, more than before. The quantum of challenges has increased, manifolds. Am I tensed? Not at all! Come whatever may, I am prepared!
AS TOLD TO KARAN BARMECHA & POONAM DASH. ILLUSTRATION BY ABHIRAJ DAS GHOSH.
WRITTEN BY PINKBULL INVESTORS ON DECEMBER 4, 2020
