As we know, the effects of the pandemic have caused a significant setback to many businesses around the world. But even in this chaotic situation, some stalwarts managed to walk out of the storm successfully. This story is about one such Multipreneuer – Manish Chauhan.
Manish Chauhan was from a middle-class family in Bihar. He was always keen to do something worthy and more significant than a typical job. In January 2013, he met Durgesh Mishra at a start-up event in Gurugram. Both Manish and Durgesh were passionate, full of ideas, and keen to implement something huge. After meeting a couple of times and an extensive exchange of ideas, the duo decided to start their own business: Panache Softech.
In his starting days, Manish was handling all the chaos and pressure all by himself. With the arrival of Durgesh, things got better. It became manageable to finish off tasks and coordinate with clients when things were unpredictable. When asked about what led him to create his own business, he said, “I was not convinced about working for someone else when I could create opportunities for India’s youth. It led me to start Panache Softech in 2013.”
Multipreneuer Manish Chauhan – Founder Panache Softech
On asking why he chose to create a technology-based business, Manish says technology never goes out of trend. Being an engineer, he was sure that tech solutions would always have a great demand because of their problem-solving nature.
In the beginning, team Panache was tiny. The company believed that a close-knit team was more efficient and productive. But currently, it has grown to 25 working employees. The company believes in going slow and is thoughtful when it comes to expanding the team. The company claims to have made a revenue of INR 3 crore in FY19. It also claims to serve almost 100 recurring clients every month, contributing 80 percent of its revenue.
However, Manish had a hard time finding the right people to build this team. It took a lot of work to find initial clients as well. Hence the most significant challenge Manish faced has been finding the right set of people to build his team. But six years down the line, his company is more secure than it ever was.
Panache Softech believes in bringing value through its services. At Panache, the thought process is that as long a company can provide value and growth to its clients, it will grow successfully. Some of the core values that run through Panache Softech are integrity, credibility, honesty, and over-delivering!
However, as universal in its impact, Softech’s businesses did get affected due to the pandemic. The company went on quite a halt with no new business coming in for three months straight. But Manish always believed that smartness lies in managing what you have rather than running after what you don’t. The company thought that serving their existing clients with more focus and running their business well through this challenging phase would significantly contribute to their success. Hence, they followed that and marched ahead.
Alongside running Panache Softech, he also collaborates with PIMS (Professional Institute of Marketing & Strategy, PIMS Noida), which is also his educational venture and is doing great. He has collaborated with over 15 colleges and universities to conduct informative seminars and workshops to let students understand the scope of digital marketing. He is also running a Digital marketing agency with hikemytraffic.com and an email marketing agency through the parent company.
So far, Manish has trained about 5000+ students in both offline and online mode. He plans to add more courses to empower the youngsters and provide excellent and employable candidates to recruiting companies as per their requirements in the coming years. The average course fees he mentioned were INR 35,000.
It was the journey of Panache Softech from its very inception. Furthermore, while many entrepreneurs leave their dream behind when the times get tough, Panache has proven itself to be a dark horse in displaying successful entrepreneurship.
However, this success story of Panache Softech was not an easy journey for Manish. But what kept him going ahead was his persistence and self-belief. He faced many obstacles, but he didn’t give in and kept overcoming them with his hard work. His tenacity made him rise like a star in the software technology industry.
In Manish’s own words, “Nothing comes easy. Be it a job or business, and it takes hard work. There are obstacles because, in the beginning, you are just a one-person army. You are selling, marketing, recruiting, but with time it all becomes more stable. What kept me going were my intentions to make it big.”
He also mentions that his family supported him unconditionally. He was at the receiving end of Nothing but sheer support from his family and friends. He believes that besides the support of one’s family, it is the inner fire that keeps you going. If you believe in it, then you will find a way to all your problems.
What makes him unprecedented on the journey of entrepreneurship is that he had known himself and his dreams when he was in his twenties. He took risks at the right time to experiment with his ideas and make them prominent and successful. And on managing risks, he thinks that if he had not been successful at running this company, he would work for some time in the corporate while working on his ideas alongside.
For Manish, the definition of success is very transitory. He believes success is when he is happy, and his client believes in him for what he does. That’s what success is for him. He often says that work is a part of life. If it doesn’t give you happiness, it won’t grow.
Some qualities of Manish that made his dream come true and walk out of the chaotic pandemic are persistence, self-belief, honesty, and integrity. He was persistent and honest about what he wanted and worked hard with patience toward his goal. Manish truly believes that no matter how further away your dreams seem initially, you must keep the wilderness to chase them.
Currently, Manish is going along with the vision to expand his company and open an office in the West. Let’s wish Manish a successful journey ahead and hope that he keeps inspiring India’s youth to achieve their dreams with his fabulous and inspirational journey.
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