Visa Guide | Start Up Story | The IndianPreneur

Name: Nirmal Topiwala

Designation: Co-Founder and Head Of Business

Company: Visa Guide

1. Awarded ‘Top 25 blogs of visa world’

1. Launched in less than 90 days from inception
2. Zero budget marketing so far, not a single penny spent from pockets

1. Portal – https://visa.guide/
2. Blog – http://blog.visa.guide/
3. Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/visaguide/
4. Twitter – https://twitter.com/TeamVisaGuide
5. Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/visaguide/
6. Quora – https://www.quora.com/profile/Visa-Guide-1
7. LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/company/visaguide/

The right question would be, what doesn’t make me sleep at night? Even though our business hours run from 10 AM to 6 PM, most of the time, you will find at least one person from the core team available at any hour of the day. At Visa Guide, we like the night time more, as it is quiet and peaceful to play with your thoughts, and most importantly, allows you to complete the pending work.

Because we are selfish. We are selfish cause we want to strive to be the best and help as many travelers as we can by giving them an online portal for getting their visas on their own. We are selfish cause we are committed to taking away the hassles from visa processes. And finally, cause when a traveler hears our name, they know that we stand for trust, integrity and expertise over anything else.

To be honest, two things.

1. The problems that we as travellers faced when we used to travel abroad. The agents didn’t have information about visas, if they had then it would be limited. Our critical documents would be passing from one hand to another hand without us knowing about it. The scarcity of accurate information and lack of trust made it difficult to get visas. There was a lot of stress during the entire process. The time involvement was too much and there wasn’t a single source that could give us quick information. We realized that these were universal issues for people in countries with lower passport index (passport strength).

2. Unavailability of a self-service portal that was legitimately working on the user side for the visa processes. There are companies working on the government side, but there was no one who could give answers about a particular scenario to the travelers. An idea was born from this, which became Visa Guide.

We are not thinking about breakeven at present, that is a thing to worry about when you are only working for money. Our goal is to sustain in the industry where every other day a startup closes its shop. However, I won’t be lying when I say that we are already making monthly operational breakeven for about 6 months now.

We are our biggest competitors (chuckles). We strive to improve ourselves every day. The travel industry is humongous, there is space for everyone who fits the bill. Our biggest competitors at present are the agents working in pockets of every corner of the world, but our idea is to be an enabler and not a disruptor, so soon you will see these competitors working with us in streamlining the visa industry. Companies like VFS and Udaan could be considered as strong competitors, however, they work on the government side and we work on the user side, so it is like the gap that we are trying to fill and create a hassle-free environment for travelers.

I think money is emotion enabler. Imagine you have a last penny left in your account, what do you feel? Fear, panic? And now imagine that you suddenly received a large sum of money in your account, what do you feel? Happy, excited, elevated? Well, the thing is, the problem is not money, the problem is how we approach money. We define the things around us with money. Money has a huge impact on how we behave, respond or react to the situation. But at a fundamental level, you still remain who you truly are. So, even though money is important, emotions are the true form which makes us human. In simple words, emotions over money.

Sipping coffee with the world’s most important people discussing the evolution of technology, business and how we can take the human race to its next step in evolution (winks).

There were a lot of learnings that we all had as a team on our journey so far, if we choose to do things differently then we won’t have those learnings in the first place, so I think I am happy to make those mistakes. But let’s assume that we already are experienced and would want to start Visa Guide again, I would definitely make sure that I start with the right set of people. That was the biggest ‘gyan’ we received, a good team can make or break your business.

I don’t think so I or anyone in the team would want to sell the company right now, unless, somebody gives us a time machine, a superpower and lifetime free travel plan in the universe (laughs).

We started Visa Guide to achieve a goal of making traveler’s life easy, we will try our best to reach that goal. In a scenario where we are on a table with someone who is interested in our company, the discussion would definitely be focussed on how we can improve the reach and bring in a change in the world. Valuation of the company may be an important parameter but not at the expense of losing the charm, integrity and the pillars of values on which the company is built.

Well, I’d say four things.

1. Patience and perseverance are what will make you survive.

2. Skills can be taught, but attitude can’t be bought.

3. Take breaks, rejuvenate, and then fight again.

4. Sometimes a step back allows you to jump forward.