How his childhood curiosity turned him into a successful entrepreneur

"Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won't, so that you can spend the rest of your life like most people can't." believes Rahul Sharma.

How his childhood curiosity turned him into a successful entrepreneur

According to him, entrepreneurship should be about not just changing your life, but the lives of people around you, and it should be contagious, spreading, growing, and infecting others around with the Maker Keeda.  

The bubble 

"Curiosity is in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last" is a famous quote by Samuel Johnson. Rahul, always being a curious and inquisitive kid, loved tinkering with stuff and experimenting. He had been very excited about going to college from school times as he believed that implied more hands-on activities and chances to ideate and build innovative products. He used to believe that college was his place where he can genuinely build himself and his products. 

Soon after he reached college, he thought that he was living inside a bubble, all his life. Once he joined one of the country's premier and most renowned engineering colleges, he was a bit disappointed. He understood that this was not his place, and this is not how he imagined things. He completed his college life but was yet to find the place of his dreams- a place where he could experiment with electronics, make mistakes and learn during the process, a place where he could meet and network with people with different ideas and backgrounds. 

Like many, he also felt that the college, just like schools, left out a bunch of activities that are important in one's career. With seniors and professors always suggesting him to go abroad, which bugged him a lot and fueled his desire to build something that will provide others with the opportunities to grow and create innovative products to solve global challenges. He believes the most important lessons can be learned from books, courses, people you look up to, mentors, friends, actually living life, traveling, failing, experimenting, volunteering, creating, but most of all…DOING.

Also, these things don't require you to pay 100k. Thank goodness for that!

His journey

After a lot of brainstorming, Rahul, along with his peers, conceptualized and finalized his venture in 2019- HatchnHack: a place to hatch your ideas and hack them into products. HatchnHack is a tech incubator, makerspace, training, and skill development center. 

With his team, he had planned to launch HatchnHack on a grand scale and then bring in the mentors to chip in and connect with makers. But on second thoughts, they made improvisation and decided to first gain valuable insight and suggestions for improvement from their extended family of friends, peers, and mentors. For doing this, they boldly preponed the event by two weeks. The event was well appreciated and received gratitude and mutual regard for doing something socially valuable. 

HatchnHack also provides prototyping facilities and consultancy services to startups and the industry. It was intended to be a Makerspace straight out of its inception. It also served another purpose; as an educational venture where the gap between academia and the industry could be bridged. Industry leaders could mentor the youth and help them build and strengthen their core technical competencies. All this while he continues to help other startups build their products more efficiently by providing them with research and development services. 

By far, Hatchnhack has worked in association with companies Abhith India creating: affordable smart homes and industry solutions, Soch product & services providing better indoor air quality in school premises. Some other notable products include UV Sterilization Chamber, Contactless Hand Sanitizers, Neopixel Mood lamps. 

HatchnHack also had the privilege of hosting Katharina and Karen, two professors from the University of Dundee, who were researching about various Makerspace facilities around the world.  They were impressed by the focus of Hatchnhack on electronics and the flagship board- ArBD version-1, intended as an easy to interface kit for hobbyists and novices.

During COVID-19, when situations were not that easy for people, and they were losing their hopes in business and especially in startups, Rahul, in order to rotate their inventory of electronic components, also started hnhcart.com, where they sell electronic components at very affordable prices to enable other makers to build solutions alongside them.

"You must fall in love with what you do, because being an entrepreneur is a lot of hard work, and overcoming a lot of adversity. From that love will come the dedication that will get you out of bed at 4 AM because of a great idea you just had and get you to work till 11 PM and not feel tired."

This is a viral quote by Ken Field for people looking for inspiration to start their enterprises. Rahul has also participated as a speaker at various colleges like USICT, DTU, SMVDU, and NSIT  where he explained the meaning of entrepreneurship. He has also delivered workshops on topics like embedded systems, IoT, digital circuits, and STEAM activities.

Besides electronics, Hatchnhack has also been associated with beautiful initiatives like Hult Prize, Waste2Greens. Recently they have also collaborated for India's biggest Maker festival- MakerMela with Riddle. All future makers and entrepreneurs are welcome to join them to build the India of our dreams!

 The Journey

Taking inspiration from Mark Twain- the famous author who once said- "Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do" he started this initiative with the help of his peers from his Alma Mater.

Most of us spend a large part of our lives chasing someone else’s dream. The above quote has a deep meaning that we spend so much of our time looking at the life/achievement of others that we begin to imagine the same for ourselves, instead of finding our true calling. But, just like not all fingers are equal and yet each one of them has its own purpose, we too need to find our one true purpose, which initially we may think is not that awesome as others but let assure you that the most awesome thing you can do is to follow your purpose because only you can do it.

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