Hi everyone
I usually hate talking about myself, since there's so much failure that one suffers before something good and to really understand anyone, there's so much beneath the iceberg that you have to understand, which is beyond the scope of an article. What it usually reduces to is rather than learning from the individual, it becomes something to admire and respect. I want people to learn how a journey unfolds, and just constantly keep pushing themselves, results being good or bad, don't really matter.
This is me, making a 'Z', cause it stands for our start-up \z/
Anyways, I shall talk mostly about the good stuff here, spread some positive energy and share stories from my Life, which honestly make me believe that your weirdest and craziest dreams can come true.
You will read about Gaming, entrepreneurship, Poker, Writing and some more entrepreneurship.
Year 2001
Trebutchets, Paladin, Elite Teutonic Knight, Scorpion, Onager, Imperial Age
If these word bring a smile to your face, welcome to the memories of 'Age of Empires II'
I spent not hours, days, or months, but Years playing games! Primarily strategic games, but everything else as well. I was always a smart kid, so I used to study a lot as well trying to find answer to questions, 'Why is this game good?', 'How do we make games?', 'Who made Quake 3 Arena?', as a 12-13 year old Kid, I was kept busy with these questions. Eventually, when the dust settled, I realized you need thousands of engineers to make just 1 game. So, I had decided I wanted to be a Computer Engineer when I was in 6th std.
I then moved to a boarding school, my favorite game was Command and Conquer: Tiberian Sun before my gaming declined at my boarding :D
This is an Ion Cannon in C&C: TC ! It really fucks you hard!!
Year 2004
So, I joined boarding school because it was one of the best in India, still ranks 7th and had a program through which you can get admission into one of the best Undergrad colleges in the Country. Life looked planned, as much as I could as a 14 year old kid.
For the next 2 years, I became much more independent, and eventually left the school when I was 16, the town was really boring and as a growing-male-teenager it was not a place I was looking forward to for next 6 years,!
Year 2006
I studied Physics, Chemistry, Maths, and then there's a crazy exam in our country which is kind of Holy Grail for parents and society. It is supposed to decide your future.
Around 400,000+ people give the exam for getting to around 6,000 seats. This is called as IIT-JEE!
It is rumoured that each time you speak out loud 'IIT-JEE', there's a kid in some remote place(probably, Kota), who will have his creativity and hobbies killed, one day at a time. Anyways, coming back to positive side. I played a lot of Dota 1(it's another game which can suck your life pretty damn good.)
Year 2008
I reached IIT-BHU, and as I always wanted to be an Engineer, went on to learn probably everything myself required for a Web-Based game in 2008. PHP, MySQL, Front-end Web, Photoshop, SEO, and everything else. I created this: IPL Cricket Game
After this, I made a proper Company as well and started making applications and games in 2009-2011 while I was studying in my Undergrad at IIT-BHU and being 19 years old.
This was the beginning of Era of Apps with iPhone opening up a whole eco-system, Facebook followed and developed their own Canvas platform for people to come and develop apps, remember Mafia wars, Farmville?
This was the first time, a small team could probably think of competing with the Goliaths and becoming equally successful. Zynga built apps on Facebook that went viral primarily due to spamming rather than quality. Zynga seemed like a great place to me initially.
Luckily, for me Zynga came to campus for recruitment, and through some miracle I was offered a 'Game Designer Offer', not Programmer, Engineer but Designer, I loved making games and this was my dream! So, it did came true, only by then I had realized that Zynga cared very little for gamers and much more for quick $$$, sad place to work for creatives. I did not join Zynga, but interned with another start-up in Germany, great chance to explore another continent.
Year 2011
You're 21, and you get a chance for 3 odd month Euro Trip, you do not say No!
I travelled to Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Netherlands, Austria, France and Spain. It was mind blowing experience, backpacking across these countries really helped me broaden my horizon and since then I have pretty much always decided to follow my heart rather than whatever goes around.[Leave comment if you interested in detailed story]
This is 2011! 5 years, So, I am allowed to be stupid :D
Jumping pose in Switzerland
Berlin
Antwerp, Belgium
Werfen Caves, Austria
After all the backpacking, it was not possible for me to do anything that I did not want to do. Like a normal job, etc.
I wanted to bring the backpacking culture in India, but with my endeavours with earlier start-up I knew neither do I have the money, nor the team to pull this off.
Year 2012
So, after IIT, I joined IIM Calcutta for doing a Masters in Business (CAT: another big exam in our country, some 200,000+ people try for 1,200 odd seats)[You can read about my endeavours in my blog: http://blog.dharamveer.in]
Year 2013
Playing Poker: Since I was not really into a job, I had lots of time in hand at my MBA. I was a good poker player, but I had to learn from the best to improve. Luckily, a pro named 'Aditya Agrawal', helped me out and started playing online Poker using $30 from my account. Guess what!
This graph is till end of 2013, I played recently this year and phew! I lost big!
After winning the Poker tournament, I felt empty inside after a month, there was no motivation to keep on playing, since money did not motivate me enough and I had bested a field of 8000+ to win $10,000+ from a $11 tournament. It felt selfish somehow to continue playing poker.
I now thought to myself, I have enough to give a shot at bringing backpacking culture to India. I quit Playing Poker on a regular basis when I had around $14,000 with me. I talked with my family, told them I had the money and needed their help to put a backpacking hostel on one of their properties.
I also started talking about this with all of my friends. I was still 1 year away from completing MBA. A few of them liked the idea and 7 of us came together. 2 of my close friends quit their jobs, while I was studying and I promised them I will never take a job post MBA, and we will be together for sure.
Of all the learning I had with my previous endeavours, I knew we needed a good name and an available 'Domain Name'
The word 'Zostel' stood out and we started building India's first branded Backpacking Hostel Chain 'Zostel'. All of us pooled in all the money we could from family, friends, beg, borrow, steal, we did everything that we could.
We launched on 15 Aug 2013, so we just celebrated our 3rd Anniversary couple of days ago. Yey!
We have grown pretty big in India now. India has an image of being a bit unsafe for travel, there are a lot of scams, but with Zostel we aim to cure India of all the problems and make sure in the next 10 years India is safe, and easy to experience for everyone from anywhere.
Building a culture is very challenging, but with the help of a great team and passionate people all around, we are building on the right path. Here are some pictures of Zostels across the Country today.
Zostel Manali
Asia's Highest Hostel @ Zostel Spiti : 3,750 Metres
View from Zostel Spiti @ Night
Zostel Gokarna
This is the common room @ our 1st Zostel in Jodhpur
If you have had your jaw dropped with ZOSTEL! Checkout Facebook, Web
We had a great journey till now, and hope for a greater journey ahead of us. We were covered in several media houses etc.
It has been a humbling journey for me, on a side note we also started another business ZO Rooms, and scaled to close to 650 employees and are now down to again 15 at Zostel. [Big story for some other time]
Importantly, I have done several mistakes in my small life(26 years till now), but I have learnt and always lived very happily, confidently and followed my heart. I am very proud of one thing that I have achieved, I have made friends for life, I see a lot of people around specially in MBAs etc. who are networks, not friends! For me Life begins with friends and will end there someday. It is upto us to fill up the middle with following our hearts and contributing what we can for humanity.
I used to write earlier on Quora, I had 5,000+ followers, but I couldn't continue and got busy with Zostel. Also, the platform started to suck big time. I am very new to Steemit, been a quite observer last few weeks.
I hope it was fun to read this story-blog, but there's a lot more to me, good and bad, that probably we can chat if you are up for a coffee in San Francisco or bay area. I am always up for meeting interesting people for no apparent reason, but just to learn from them. I believe there's something to learn from every human.
So, before I go all philosophical. Let me tell why I am here, my belief is that people can make a living doing what they want to do rather than what the society deems fit. It's just that these roads are not marked on map, and you will have to hike this mountain yourself creating your own trail. Here, is where I see huge potential in Steemit!
I believe Steemit can be in several ways! It can also be used by several creatives for showcasing their work in different forms, for pushing the boundaries,
One of the craziest way is to write your own Comic, Graphic Novel. So, I am writing a Sci-Fi Graphic Novel! Which will be released exclusively on Steemit! Hurray!
This is a 3 part novel, and part 1 will be released tomorrow morning San Francisco Time!. So, follow me and I will show you how much I suck at creativity, but still doing it to motivate others and hopefully pay for all the coffee that I will have meeting great people from here :D
Cheers
Dharamveer Singh Chouhan
P.S. Forgive for all the typos and grammar mistakes! I am just a human :)