Arise, Awake summary

Sourabh Bansal’s story starts in a student dorm or, as it’s called in India, a hostel. It was one of those wide-ranging, late-night discussions that take place among undergraduates the world over. What, they asked each other, would they do with their lives? Sourabh leaped to his feet, grabbed a pencil and scribbled a number on the wall: 50 billion rupees. That, he said, was how much his company would be worth one day.

How was he going to make all that cash? That’s where serendipity played its part. Sourabh’s father owned a factory manufacturing quicklime, a compound used by the building industry to make concrete blocks. Sourabh had occasionally helped out in the plant for years. One day, he noticed an unusual order: a customer had purchased thousands of tons of lime to make “autoclaved aerated concrete,” or AAC blocks.

The Symbiosis Centre for Management and Human Resources Development is known as the best place to study HR in India. It was that reputation that brought Prakash Mundhra to the university, but he soon decided he’d had enough and devoted himself to entrepreneurship instead.

Increasingly fascinated by the business world, Prakash began working on his own ideas. That’s when he came across Business Baazigar, a TV show on which contestants submit their business plans and winners receive the funding they need to turn their dreams into reality. The format was perfect for an idea Prakash had been developing for a school competition: kits containing full sets of the items used in puja or “worship” on special occasions like the Hindu festival of Diwali.

Like many of the entrepreneurs we’ve met so far, Prabhkiran Singh wasn’t really sure what he wanted to do with his life when he went to university. He worked hard at the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay, but he knew the subject he was studying – civil engineering – wasn’t his true calling.

What Prabhkiran was sure about was that he wanted to work for himself, but he couldn’t settle on a business idea. That changed in 2009 after he happened to try a flavored lassi, an Indian drink traditionally made with yoghurt, water, salt and spices. The strawberry-flavored lassi Prabhkiran tried was a different beverage altogether. Inspired by the idea of creating a more modern style of lassi, he and his best friend pooled their savings to buy a mixer, a blender and some basic kitchen tools.

Every young Indian who wants to study law dreams of being admitted to the National Law School in Bangalore. Not everyone makes it through the rigorous application process, but Aruj Garg did. After a brief honeymoon period, he had a change of heart: what really interested him wasn’t law but entrepreneurship.

No wonder – business is all about solving problems, and Aruj was a natural problem-solver. Even better, he’d come up with an answer to a problem familiar to students across India: poor-quality canteen food. Realizing there was a huge market for tastier alternatives, he put together a crowd-pleasing menu featuring pizza, sandwiches and burgers inspired by the fast food chain Subway. He rented a small space near campus for 1000 rupees a month and opened his restaurant in May 2011. Its name? Bhukkad, Hindi slang for a food-obsessed person. It was a hit: within a month, Aruj was making between 2000 and 3000 rupees a day.

There’s clearly plenty of money to be made satisfying students’ hunger, but what about their need for accommodation?

Like canteens, student digs often leave a lot to be desired. Take it from Anurag Arora. When he started his course at the ICFAI Business School in Pune, Maharashtra, he was asked to pay 48,000 rupees up-front to live in a privately run hostel, as the university didn’t have its own dormitories. That’s a lot of cash for what he got: a shabby room in a run-down, badly managed building that didn’t even have hot water! Anurag stuck it out for three days before deciding he’d had enough and moving into a private apartment with a couple of pals, forfeiting his entire downpayment.