“No Absolute Standard Of Success,” Nearbuy CEO Ankur Warikoo Tells IIM-B Students

Ankur Warikoo, internet entrepreneur and angel investor and CEO of nearbuy, a daily deals and local commerce company addressed the students of the one-year full time Executive Post Graduate Programme in Management (EPGP) of IIM Bangalore on the growing internet start-up ecosystem in India and on dealing with success and failure.

“There is no absolute standard of success. Successful individuals try to determine what success is every day,” Warikoo said, touching upon the academic and professional decisions he made over the years and referring to entrepreneurs like Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and Elon Musk. He was delivering a talk as part of the EPGP Seminar Series at the B-school campus on May 4, 2016.

Referring to the challenges and opportunities in the eCommerce sector, he said, “Things may not go your way in life. A smart individual is one who knows when to pursue something and when to stop. Time is the biggest sunk cost of life. Do yourself a favour: check out when you need to.”

“There is no absolute standard of success. Successful individuals try to determine what success is every day,” Warikoo said.

Urging students to take up entrepreneurial activities and become wealth creators, he said their one-year at IIM Bangalore would prove to be the most decisive year of their life.

While growing up, most children are told that participation is important; it is not necessary to win, he said. “We have been trained to accept failure as a norm. Do not get comfortable with failure. Because if we give up too soon, we don’t strive hard enough to achieve success.”

Incidentally, Warikoo, who holds an MS degree in Astro Physics among his qualifications, has not allowed failures at various stages of life, to affect his career growth.

His website ankurwarikoo.com has a PDF document titled My Failure Resume in which he says, “It is so easy for us to take our failures seriously and consider them the end of the road. I am the biggest proof that self-doubt exists, and I am equally the best proof that one can overcome it – it’s just a battle that never stops.”

He says he was inspired by Johannes HausHofer’s CV of Failures and was sharing his “with the hope that people realize their problems and challenges are similar to everyone else’s. What may be different is the reaction to it. Or their acceptance in the first place.” Warikoo goes on to list his failures under various heads like the schools he did not get into, the corporate roles that eluded him, investors who said no to his proposals and other failures.

Warikoo was the venture partner behind Rocket Internet Gmbh, which supports internet start-ups in over 20 countries, co-founder at Accentium Web and management consultant at A.T Kearney. An alumnus of ISB, Hyderabad, he is Visiting Faculty and speaker at leading Indian Business Schools. Previously Co-Founder at Accentium Web (Gaadi.com SecondShaadi.com), he also holds a Master’s of Science from Michigan State University.