It all started when I was not conscious about it being born within. One thing was firm and clear within and that is “I am going to build a team – a grand team performing wonders and I would lead it with guidance from within and from above”. This is when seed of entrepreneurship career was taking birth within me.
It was the final semester of my Professional Practice with GNIIT which I was doing in TATA Sponge Iron Limited. A chilled server room which happens to be my second favourite room after the computer lab where I used to make passionate love with Sybase programming is the place where the thought started taking shape in my mind. A name was thought of and the next day on July 13th 2002, while sitting in the same server room on a Windows NT machine, I registered the domain auroinfo.com. My earlier planned and thought of partner friends were not willing to participate in business but I was determined that it must get started. Auroinfo was formed. During 2010 I had planned to start a team and I had two friends in mind who could collaborate in the path. One was Sunjib Mohanty who I thought could help in marketing as that suited his nature and the other one was Annada Padhy who i thought could help in finding opportunities as he was good in resource haunting. Sadly the former though interested to join hands opted a different path and the later denied the offer as he wanted to join jobs but later joined me and is a successful businessman now running multinational business.
Did I have enough money, knowledge or plan and agenda? No actually I had non. Only thing I had is, I knew I need to do something and the Divine is going to Guide from above and within and is going to show the right path and provide the right guidance. I remember an interesting day when we had to open a bank account for the business and the bank needed a deposit of ₹10000/- and we did not have a fourth of it but I signed and handed over a check to the banker confidently while my then partner was staring at me in surprise. Somehow I had the faith that it would be arranged and immediate next job was to call up all relatives and ask for the money. Being honest in nature, I explained them all the whole story and got lots of advice in return all claiming I was a fool to do such thing and that its going to land me in trouble when the check comes to my bank for clearance. One relative who happens to be my Aunty Sabita Mishra whom I call “big mom” came to rescue and happily gave the money without asking any questions but with a strict condition that it must be returned in time which was honoured. I can say that was my first fund raising. Well the giver being like my mother did not want any returns on the investment. Soon after she helped us further by giving away her credit card to her which I used for the business and repaid in time and this time too no personal gain to her except the only condition and that was to ensure CC bills get paid in time.
Over time the partnership broke and I had to restructure the business in May 2004. The journey thereafter was extremely slow and that was primarily because I somehow lost the inner balance that I had initially and I believe the reason behind this is because of the turmoil I faced in personal relationship due to breakage of partnership. This is also the time when the Almighty blessed in positive entities to the team like my friend Deepak Dehuree, colleague Smaranika Sahu and many more.
2012 is not just the 10th Anniversary but an important year in many other sense. In February 2012 we founded our US Office which is still operational and runs under the original name that’s formulated in July 2002. The journey from 2004 continued with not much to talk about stuff and the business kept on growing slowly until October 2012. We were focused on to Digital Marketing and somehow during that period the SEO Market crashed and many small and mid companies were wiped off. We being a small business were badly affected and we had to change structure during that time.
Now this is a time when the ex business partner offered creating a joint venture which again lasted only for two years and finally the current structured company was formed in July 29 2015. This is the most systematic of the entire journey so far which has been nothing but a long yet strong learning curve which I call an Arc in the Web where the business inlines. The new entity was therefore named ArcWeb SMAC. We can envision that we are still in the state that can be called “germination of a seed” but this long crawling has definitely made the roots deeper and stronger that can help us grow at a faster pace and reach the height this business is supposed to.
We primarily work on Digital Marketing and SMAC strategy, but the focus has been to simultaneously create a product that brings in a social impact while at the same time adding value to the business and that too took us about two years to finalize and made us launch Momma’s Kitchen. The team of ArcWeb is working hard and smart carrying dream in heart to reach a level that is unknown to the team itself. I am waiting for the time to come soon when we can speak out our success story which is still waiting to embrace us.
On this 15th Anniversary year, I bow down and pay respect and gratitude to all those who directly and indirectly helped us, motivated us, encouraged us, guided us and did things that gave us the courage to move forward year after year be it a time of growth or a time that made us stumble and fall again and again.