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Vivek Kumar

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Vivek Kumar

Founder & CEO at Qlicket

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Company Profile

Qlicket is a technology startup that was founded in autumn 2011 and is focused on monetizing and deploying WiFi hotspots in India. We have a new and highly disruptive business model to make public WiFi free in India by leveraging our patent-pending ad technology. In the last year alone, we've entered agreements that give us access to display our 100% guaranteed engagement format at over 250 locations across 50 different cities in India. We're running campaigns for some of India's best companies, and we've now built our own WiFi hotspot using customized hardware and software that provides users with a much better public WiFi experience. Techcircle has described us as "one of India's 10 most promising tech startups."

My way to connecting the right dots

I like to regularly ask everyone, ³What are we missing that others might be seeing?² I'm actually quite comfortable with making mistakes, but only if we are learning from them. We have a saying at Qlicket: "You can make a million mistakes; you just can't make the same mistake twice." I personally feel that if we aren't making mistakes, we aren't taking enough risks - and thus, we're probably not innovating quickly enough. I believe the key is finding people whom we can trust and who are better at their jobs than I or someone else at Qlicket would be at doing that particular job. If we hire well, then the people whom we hire are the ones who can actually begin to identify the right ways to connect the dots for us.

My way of motivating troops

I don't know if it's unique, and my teammates can probably chime in better than I can about this point, but I'd say finding ways for people to feel ownership over the work they do and to have a sense of empowerment and autonomy. (To some degree, that autonomy is something that must be earned by performing at a high level.) I think that the most talented people want to feel as though they have room to grow and can have impact at an organization. We also offer stock options to every full-timer at Qlicket.

Difficulties faced

I'm not sure there is a whole lot that I would do differently. I think to us the journey is as much a part of the experience as the end goal. We honestly try to be really thoughtful about almost everything we do at Qlicket, and we try and learn from the things that don¹t go as well.

Most critical decision

We once had to let someone from our team find another opportunity. That was a tough decision to make -- and even more difficult to execute; however, in the long-run, it was probably in the best interest of the Company and of that person.

Advice to young entrepreneurs

Focus more on solving problems that interest you the most, rather than on trying to become an entrepreneur. The highs as an entrepreneur are higher, but the lows are also lower, so work with people whom you consider not only your co-founders, but also your friends. Also, be open to feedback on how you can get better.

Key thoughts about Entrepreneurship

We enjoy working with organizations and people that ask us, ³How can we help make this even better?²