Whenever you are down and upset think “If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.” – Rohit Gadia on entrepreneurship and CapitalVia.
What does entrepreneurship really mean? Does it mean having a lot of money, setting/ changing an age old a business and working on improving it or struggling very hard to move a start up to the next phase? Well, it can be both though both entrepreneurial needs are different. What’s common among them is the self-confidence and the zest to pursue your dream. And as someone rightly said Rome was not built in a day…the same goes for an entrepreneur and his company. It does take a lot to be a successful entrepreneur and to achieve all this at the age of 27 is definitely something. Yes, we are talking about Rohit Gadia, an inspiring entrepreneur.
Rohit who hails from a small town and started his career part time by selling SIM Cards and also working for HP as Business Process executive, now owns a 500+ employee investment advisory firm CapitalVia.com. In layman terms CapitalVia is a pure play research company focusing on Technical Analysis that provides real time financial markets recommendation (Trading Signals) to its customers for intra-day and short term trading on real time data. When he started in 2008, he was barely 22-23 years of age. Today, after 5 years of constant hard work and determination the company has an annual turnover of 13 crore and branches across India and abroad. Infact it aims to double its revenue to 35 crore by the end of this fiscal year and open more centres across the country.
We caught on with Rohit Gadia, CEO- CapitalVia Global Research Limited, and spoke to him about his challenges on the road to success, his company and what entrepreneurship means to him. Read ahead.
Pi: How did CapitalVia come into being? What were the factors that led into its establishment?
RG: Basically CapitalVia is the founding to the vision that India needs to have professional traders like the other developed countries. I was a passionate trader since my college days and have made all the mistakes which a trader should not. I initially lost a lot of money depleting my savings by 10 times. Over a period of time I learnt trading techniques and then there was no looking back. The interest in analysing the dynamics of the market led to the establishment of CapitalVia. We started our expedition with a very small room which barely had space to accommodate 10 people but now it we have grown extensively to a 32,000 square feet office. This inspires us to remember where we come from and where we intend to go.
Pi: ·What are the challenges you faced while starting your venture CapitalVia?
RG: When CapitalVia was going to establish its existence, we faced significant challenges that could have brought our moral down but we ensured it didn’t affect us so badly.
Our first challenge was to change the human psychology towards day trading. We dreamt to create an industry of professional traders in India which didn’t have a concrete existence. Also one of our biggest challenges was to select the location where we could get the team of grounded people, to be called as CVians, as we believe resources are the key to any successful business.
Pi: How has CapitalVia fared in the last 4 years?
RG: In a very short span of 4 years we have grown exceptionally by delivering performance, growth, customer satisfaction, product development, process enhancement and creating a Brand. We have been self-funded during the entire growth and expansion of the organisation and have been consistently delivering revenue growth of more than 100 per cent in the last 4 years. CapitalVia was the winner of Red Herring’s Top 100 Asia Award 2011 and were also among the top 5 finalists for Analyst of the Year – Asia 2011 category awarded by World Finance.
Pi: What is the company presently working on?
RG: We are working on a “Customer Education Programme” to educate traders about professional trading, as we profoundly believe that it is actually an art and demands a lot of professional approach. We also believe that our clients have that approach but are sometimes biased by market sentiments. Hence our motive with this programme is to help clients do Unbiased Trading.
Pi: What is CaptialVia’s future plan?
RG: We plan to create a professional stock market trading environment in India based upon our technical research input. We also plan to build CapitalVia as a trusted brand in the next 3 years and build physical presence in top 20 Cities of India and build markets in Singapore and US in the next 15 Months.
Pi: How has the market changed over the years?
RG: The trading industry is moving towards an organized way of trading from previously unorganized markets. Now people have started trading more on rationality rather than rumours. There was a time when traders used to expect returns of 100 percent a month but now perceptions are changing and returns of 4-5 per cent a month are keeping them happy. This huge change has come after 8-10 years. With this there is more liquidity in market, more volatility and more securities to trade.
Pi: The country’s GDP has significantly gone down. What does it hold for entrepreneurs?
RG: With the Country GDP has gone down it might bring few of the entrepreneurs at the back foot and they will be more cautious in their decision making as risks are high. This might also discourage new entrepreneurs as they will not be very confident looking at the growth, economic and political situation in the country. With the GDP down the confidence of entrepreneurs on government and economic policies will come down. This will also further delay their decision of expansions and hence it will further hit the GDP growth of the country.
The need of the hour is that the Government, its economic policies and entrepreneurs work hand-in-hand making a hit back possible. Fundamentally it should have been the other way round. In developing nations like India, Economic Policies should promote entrepreneurs and confide them.
Pi: What is your message to young entrepreneurs?
RG: Keep moving with two powers; one is Human, the other being technology, because when an entity runs with Human Intelligence and Technology, it can win the world. The full-fledged technology and the aptitude of people jointly deliver wonders and accelerate growth.
Whenever you are down think: If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.
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