“Casual shirt with jeans and a rugged look with a beard”, this is how one would describe the appearance of this man, he is none other than Sidharth Rao, Co-founder and CEO of Webchutney, a full service interactive agency providing marketing solutions.

At an event organised by MET Schools of Management Mr. Rao addressed the issues and the challenges that one faces through his entrepreneurial venture.

The event was organised by MET e-Cell (Entrepreneurship cell) students in collaboration with the NEN (National Entrepreneurship Network). The excitement was already visible amongst the students but the speaker was much more than what students expected.

Also present at the occasion was Prof. Vijay Page, Director General – MET Institute of Management and Brig. M K Nag, Director, MET – Asian Management Development Centre along with Sunita Singh, Regional Head, NEN.

Mr. Rao straight away kicked off with the bottom line of any venture, he told students that no venture is rocket science its just pure logic, finances and profits that determine the success of your venture.

Talking about his start up days he recalled the time when he and one of his colleague at Grey Worldwide quit the job as they commonly felt insignificant about the same. They started WebChutney and were making losses in the first few years but that did not deter them as he believes that one needs to be patient always.

On a funny note Mr. Rao shared that they actually wanted to name the company ‘Samosa' which was turned down by the registrar of companies and logically so.

Enlightening the MET students on the role of partnerships in a venture, he stressed that one needs to look at the sanity of the business and should not let small differences cut its roots.

Scalability of the business was another important frontier for any venture which he explained through the growth of the company from its start till now.

Work culture he said plays an important in a firm and rightly so as WebChutney has an attrition of 5% & that too without sky rocketing salaries and perks.

His strong advise to students was to work initially for some years and then start up a venture in the relative field given they have the entrepreneurial instinct within.

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Namit Bhavsar, is a Management student – MET Asian Management Development Centre has authored this article.