Agarwaltimes - Meet Indian couples who tied the knot and began their startup

In the good old days, if they fell in love in B-school, got married and kicked off a career, the choices were predictable — if it was an MBA in marketing, it had to be a role in a consumer goods multinational (think Hindustan Unilever or Procter & Gamble or Nestle); if it was finance, the husband-wife duo inevitably found themselves at rival investment banks on Dalal Street.

These days, it's a bit different. Many couples who met in school or college — not just B-schools — are taking the long and invigorating walk down the aisle of entrepreneurship. And, they reckon, if we can live together we can work together too — at our own, carefully-nurtured fledglings.

So goodbye Job Street, hello startups. "The more ambitious among the youth, who also are endowed with confidence in their abilities, choose the path of entrepreneurship rather than highpaying jobs," says professor Prabal K Sen, chairperson of the Entrepreneurship Development Centre at XLRI, Jamshedpur.

If they're starting up together, it's also because the wife is an equal partner in the business, not just a sleeping one (at a few of the startups profiled here, the wife is the CEO, calling the shots). "There were ventures earlier too with the wife as a partner, but she would be a sleeping partner as wives traditionally are in family businesses," says professor MS Rao, chairperson of Center for Entrepreneurship at Mumbai's SP Jain Institute of Management and Research.

If couples see virtue in venturing together, it's because they know each other inside out. As Michael Lazerow wrote in Inc: "You should start a company with someone whose strengths are your weaknesses, and whose weaknesses are your strengths."

He should know. Michael and Kass Lazerow are a serial entrepreneur couple who've blazed a trail of sorts in the US — first they started up Golf.com and sold it to Time Inc; next came social media marketing platform Buddy Media which was bought by Salesforce.

Then there are those couples who are kicked about starting up but who value their own space. The solution: venture out in separate directions. But that's another story; turn to page 20 for that. First we bring you the couples who are in it together. Read on:

When Head and Heart Meet

Anand Chandrasekaran, a neuroscientist, doesn't like to be pushed around. Ashwini Asokan, a product designer who worked in Intel for 10 years, is all about deadlines.

While she hates being methodical, Anand is a perfectionist. Such contradictions haven't come in the way of a 16-year-old relationship — five years of courtship and 11 years of marriage.

They met for the first time when they were undergrads — she was doing her BSc in visual communication and he was pursuing his BTech from IIT-Madras. They got married in 2005, and all of nine years later started Mad Street Den (MSD), an artificial intelligence based company.

The startup raised Rs 9 crore ($1.5 million) from Reservoir Investments' Exfinity Fund and GrowX ventures in January this year. MSD's flagship product helps in visual search for online portals.

A user, for instance, can upload a photograph of his favourite outfit and find similar recommendations on the portal. The product caters to several industries, including gaming, ad tech, analytics, and market research.

So far, what has worked brilliantly for the couple is a clear demarcation of roles. Anand looks after the technology and Ashwini handles design. "I am the heart and he is the brain of MSD," says Ashwini.

She also has some strong views. Tell her that married couple can't do business together and she retorts: "It's bullshit".

And if you dare say that geeks can't fall in love be prepared for a similar answer.

"Intelligent people don't believe in bullshit." Now, there's nothing artificial about this brand of intelligence.

Venture Made in Heaven  

Perhaps the biggest wedding-day nightmare for a to-be bride is to find herself in an alien city without a makeup artist. Mehak Sagar Shahani, who was set to tie the knot with a Hyderabadi boy, worked the phones and did frantic online searches but didn't meet with much success. Finally she opted for a beautician recommended by a friend. The results weren't pretty.

"My wedding day makeup made me look like a joker," recalls Mehak. Thankfully for her, it didn't matter to Anand Shahani, her to-be husband. "Love is blind," says Anand, bursting into laughter.

Anand and Mehak met during their internship at GlaxoSmith-Kline Consumer in Gurgaon in 2008. They tied the knot in 2012 after four years of romance. An alumnus of XLRI, Anand was working as marketing manager for Abbott Nutrition in Delhi; Mehak, who did her post-graduation from the Delhi School of Economics, was working as a risk manager at American Express in Gurgaon. One fine day they decided to bid adieu to corporate life and work out something together. Result? Wedmegood was born in February 2014. A wedding portal, Wedmegood has a pre-screened curated vendor listing to help couples find the best professionals — photographers, makeup artists, decor guys, jewellery brands and catering firms. Rather than charging a commission, the startup works on a fixed fee model.

The one-year old startup, which had one round of angel funding last year, has started making a profit, say the Shahanis. Now that's a shotgun startup, if ever there was one.

Long and Sweet
After getting married in 2011, when Abhinav and Radhika Khandelwal went to Switzerland for a two-month vacation, they started missing something. It was not homesickness which was making them feel terrible. It was the absence of Indian sweets!

That's when the idea of Sweets Inbox germinated. However, it took them three years to roll out their startup. Sweets Inbox, which they claim is India's first portal for sweets, doesn't have a manufacturing unit. It sources traditional sweets and namkeens from different parts of the country by tying up with vendors in over 10 cities. The plan is to expand to another 50 cities this year.

Abhinav's parents were not happy when he decided to leave a lucrative job in Pune. After all, he had a BTech in computer science and had worked for eight years. It was not easy for Radhika too as the architect and interior designer was getting into something very different from her vocational calling. However, their passion to start something of their own helped in pacifying their parents.

Work is hard, as is arriving at a consensus at work. "Abhinav prevails in most of the instances as somehow he has a better reasoning at the workplace. But at home things change and I have the last word," says Radhika. Irrespective of the pros and cons of couples working together, the husband-wife duo feel it's the best model, for business and for a relationship. "It brings you further closer to each other," says Radhika.

Party Hearty

Atit Jain and Madhulika Pandey first met in October 2012, when they were working together at tech firm Applied Mobile Labs. Food (Madhulika is a foodie) and movies (Atit is a movie buff ) brought them together.

In January 2014, they decided to leave their job and start Gigstart, a marketplace that brings entertainers — anchors, stand-up comedians, singers, dancers, makeup artists — and party planners together. The revenue stream is primarily commissions and the startup gets roughly 20 orders a day.

Early this year, Gigstart raised $255k (Rs 1. 6 crore) from Rohit Bansal and Kunal Bahl (of Snapdeal) and GSF. The startup may be onto something but, for their part, the couple is still in courtship and plan to get married this year. Will wedding bells raise alarm bells amongst the investors?

"We are professionals and it's not a family show," says Atit. The investors too realize that both the partners are adding value to the business and are not there for the heck of it, he adds. To be sure, they are biggest votaries of a couple-run business model.

"It's made for each other and mad for each other that's the biggest plus of this model," says Atit. Apart from business, what keeps them together is frequent 'skirmishes'. "We never fight. It's just a little argument," says Atit, as Madhulika gives him a stern look.

And They Live Appily...

Mrigaen Kapadia didn't go down on his knees to propose to Nupur Kapadia, who he married in 2008. In fact, he never proposed to her.

"I am still awaiting for an official proposal," laughs Nupur, who first met Mrigaen when they were colleagues at Datamatics in Mumbai.

While the courtship lasted for one year, romance is still on and has survived the tumultuous entrepreneurial journey. "Love has cemented our business," she says.

It was not easy for the husband-wife duo when they took the plunge in April last year to co-found Mobifolio, a startup that makes mobile apps. Both were working at Capgemini, had high-paying jobs and all was hunky dory.

Except that the routine corporate job was not giving them satisfaction. So both pooled their financial reserves to start Mobifolio.

"There was never a plan B for us. It had to be this or nothing," says Mrigaen. Mobifolio has started making a profit, they claim, thanks in large measure to their latest blockbuster BreakFree, an Android app for smartphone addicts.

The app makes users aware of how addicted they are to their phones and helps reduce the same.

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