Payback Time After Pack Up Time "I wasn't around my three-year-old son from the time he was born. Neither did I spend time with the family. But after exiting TFS, it is good to do all that." Raghunandan
By Sandeep Soni
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As an entrepreneur, it took Raghunandan Cofounder of cab-hailing service, TaxiForSure
(TFS) (acquired by bigger rival Ola in March 2015 for $200 million), sometime to accept the transition from the hectic life of working 16 hours a day to just couple of hours. Since there were a few start-ups that came out of TFS, Raghunandan spent time helping them build products, business plan, etc, and helped investors by addressing their portfolio start-ups, etc. As a payback to the ecosystem, both Raghunandan and Aprameya, Co-founder of TFS, turned angel investors for many start-ups. So far
Raghunandan himself has invested in close to 20 start-ups across sectors. "If the chemistry works out, the sector doesn't matter," says Raghunandan. Beside that he is working on "couple of ideas that are in market research phase," as he puts it.
Important things that Raghunandan missed while building the company were seeing his new born growing up and not able to learn swimming. "I wasn't around my three-year old son from the time he was born. Neither I attended any family function nor spent time with the family. I also wanted to learn swimming that I couldn't. But after exiting TFS, it is good to do all that," says Raghunandan.
While doing a start-up, there comes a time when the entrepreneur has to focus on a lot of other things instead of what he likes to do. This, Raghunandan learned the hard way, which he would not do if he has to start TFS all over again. "TFS was a product idea and that's what excited me to launch the business. So I used to handle product in the company. Over a period of time, I had to do many other things as well like managing investor relationship and team building which I had to do though I never knew those; but I also never wanted to let go off the product part. But since I was not able to concentrate on the product part, so it started struggling. By the time I realized that I had to let go off the product part, I had already lost crucial time. So as an entrepreneur, I didn't realize that what excited you to start you should not hold on to it."
