Dakshin Lakshaman

Tell us a little bit about yourself (background) and your journey as a entrepreneur, please;

I’m Dakshin, I’m currently a 16 year old residing in India, my entrepreneurial journey started when I was a 14 year old. India is a diverse country but one of the few things in which we aren’t diverse is career choice, most parents or the children themselves believe that becoming an engineer or a doctor is would be the perfect choice for their children or themselves similarly in many other countries parents believe that their children should study well and work for a good company or the children themselves believe the same, I’m not against this idea but I’m against the idea of making the children have no expanse of career options. My journey started like this, my family has 3 generations of doctors and I really respect their occupation but growing up in an environment like that gave me a mind-set that being a doctor would be the right choice for me and at the same time I used to have many crazy ideas, sometimes I wanted to become an astronaut and sometimes I wanted to become a politician, I also had this though that I want to have fame and I want to have a ton of money (which I believe is not wrong when you work hard for it), luckily I have an open minded mother who inspired me and helped me engage in everything and from that engagement I explored a lot of fields, by the end of 8th grade when I was 13 I had explored swimming, debating, public speaking, acting, robotics, 3D and game design, VR development, graphic design and many more, by 9th grade when I first attended the largest design and programming based competition for people aged 16 and younger called the National Design Championship, I designed a drone called Drone To Deliver Medicines which was what I believe the rebirth of supersonic jets, my design proved to have a higher wind resistance than any other drone that was presented at the same competition but unfortunately due to the lack of a team and better designing skills I had bagged the runner up title but that’s what they say right? You must learn from your failures, I picked up my designing skills later and at the same time I was involved in MLM and Network Marketing for which after a while I lost interest but during that period of involvement in MLM and Network Marketing I got what I believe is a partial entrepreneurial mind-set and then came the idea to use my graphic and 3D designing skills to make some money but I didn’t know who a proper entrepreneur was at that moment and hence I had become a freelancer in which I failed as never was I able to get a client and nor did I have the right experience so because of that I started studying more about entrepreneurship from which I got the true entrepreneurial spirit, from which I also understood that entrepreneurship is when as entrepreneur one creates businesses that changes the lives of people or species for the better this is when I got back on track at the age of 15 and used my public speaking skills which helped me convince teens of my age who had competed with me in the same National Design Championship to join my team and from that initiative came The Legacy Org, the first time I with a team as a company helped another business with their new logo from which we made money and though it wasn’t much it gave us the at most pleasure which encouraged us to do more and create value for businesses and the people involved. Then came the second company called Luxuriya Fashion And Lifestyle for which we had initially thought that if we could create some fancy dresses and sell them with fancy prices we could make could money but never could, we slowly understood the struggles and the processes involved and hence we had to drop the very 1st designs we made and from that mistake we learned that we must be innovative and create an impact here and from this we came up with proper business plans and designs that we’re sure is to make an impact as it releases in 2023 and similarly we came up with another idea for this company which was to make NFTs but then we believed that NFTs alone can’t make any big impact and from this came Utopia – India’s and Multiple Countries 1st Digital / Virtual Fashion and Lifestyle Experience which’s our full scale Metaverse under development, we recently presented our company and all that we’re going to do as a company at Latitude 59 which is one of the largest start up and scale up events in the world for which we got a great response making it one of the proudest moments for us. And now came Payir Corp which is an initiative towards the betterment of every species on Earth and the betterment of our planet Earth itself for which we’re researching and when we complete our research and launch this initiative we expect to have an impact on everyone and every species like never before.

Why did you choose entrepreneurship over a job?

Like I mentioned before I’m from India which is the most diverse country in the whole world but one of few things I which India is not diverse is the occupation that one would opt for, it’s mostly medical science and engineering here there’s always a similar case around the world. Growing up in a country like this and especially growing up in a family with 3 generations of doctors I needed some kind of vastness of career options in my life, luckily I have my mother who made me engage in everything I could from that I had explored swimming, public speaking, debating, acting, graphic and 3d design and as far as I can remember I had never wanted to work for anyone which relates to scenario of occupation options around the world, most of the people would like to work in some company, organization or hospital but why won’t people these people think about owning the company, organization or hospital? And I took the decision to search for this answer, All that I could find is about the mind-set of people which is basically job security but truth is that being an owner of a company, organization or hospital would be hard initially and when one gets the breakeven point there’s no stop which allows them to have a lifetime of financial security, this was the initial reason for me to choose entrepreneurship over a job but now being an entrepreneur for 2 years changed the answer which is to change lives of people for the better which’ll eventually build the lifestyle that I desire and create a legacy.

What gets you out of bed in the morning i.e. what’s your source of motivation?

Good question. The only motivation to get up in the morning is my life, I believe that one must “live life to the fullest”. one of the other main reasons to choose an entrepreneurial lifestyles for me is because as an entrepreneur I love what I do, I love everything about my life and this makes me excited to get out of the bed every morning as early as possible and sleep as late as possible, as an entrepreneur I’m able to learn something new every day, implement whatever I’ve learnt, I have the ultimate freedom to create what I want and live my life the way I wish. My mum is also one of the major sources of motivation as she has inspired me to pursue whatever I wish to and she has brought me up in such a way that every moment of my life has been interesting, besides being a mother to me she is also a visionary in all the companies as her ideas and suggestions have never failed us making me want to get out of bed and wanting to gain more from my mum and spend more time with her.

What is your brand’s USP?

Our USP is very simple in our all our 3 companies which is basically “only if we could provide better value to the lives of our clients we could develop” this statement itself acts an assurance that we’d be providing the best of anything we do and hence our products and services are built in such way that it’ll keep up this promise. Our products and services itself acts as a USP, those who have experienced our products and services irrespective of whether they’re our investors, directors, C-Suites, employees, partners or clients know that our products and services will create massive impacts for sure and in terms of The Legacy Org we’re already providing our services and our clients love it.

During this COVID-19 crisis, what are the measures you have undertaken to continue your business without disruption?

From the very beginning we had been a full online business and when most businesses failed due to the online adaptability factor we were succeeding, one of the most important things we did is that we developed businesses which were just starting out and we also made business adapt to the full online version which made us succeed during the Covid-19 crisis as well, in fact the crisis was never a crisis for us and it turned out to benefit businesses like us.

What are the three most important lessons you have learned while building your start-up?

This is the best question out of all. To keep it short I’d say the best one is learning from failures, if you have gone through the above mentioned then you would’ve noticed that I myself have made some mistakes and failed in some places and we as a company have made mistakes and failed in some places but we learned from it and corrected ourselves, this is something that the people around you, schools or colleges doesn’t allow you, if one is not allowed to make a mistake or fail and is punished for that then there’s no chance for innovation or improvement, in fact calling such things as a mistake or failure is wrong according to me just like the great Sir Thomas Edison said “I didn’t fail a 1000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1000 steps.”

The next thing is proper knowledge before doing anything, if one would have the proper knowledge about anything the stress is less and the work is less.

And comes the team, there must always be a team and this team must be ready to go through anything for the about to come success. There must never be any competition in a team, we’ve always been taught never to help anyone in exams by our schools, academies, institutes or colleges – in their world it’s called “cheating” in our world it’s called “cooperation”.

What comes first for you - money or emotions?

Obviously as humans we work by going to job, run business or freelance to put food on the table which is not possible without money, there’s this funny quote “Money is like a hand wash solution, it kills 99.99% of all your problems”. I believe that no emotions must hinder an entrepreneur as he or she runs a business for which he or she must take decisions, every moment of an entrepreneurial life is based on the decisions hence when an emotion enters there it spoils the decision. I believe both money and emotions don’t come first as the impact that we’re to create is what matters and when this impact is done without any emotion (which I believe is the right way to do) the money will obviously follow.

How do you handle the pressure and manage stress?

Firstly choosing Entrepreneurship for me was because I love what I do as an entrepreneur hence there’s no pressure or stress. Secondly, even if one arises what I’d be doing is taking a break from what gives me the pressure or stress, the way I’d do it is by hitting gym and spending time with my mum, and rarely by attending fun online meets or watching stand-up but at the end one must remember that there’s no point in escaping from that pressure or stress as it’s his / her responsibility to solve the issue and move on.

What is one strategy that you believe has helped you grow as a person/startup?

There’s no strategy for one to grow as there are a ton of strategies and some would work for one and won’t work for the other but a strategy that I’d highly recommend is the Blue Ocean Strategy.

What advice would you give to someone starting out as an aspiring entrepreneur?

Wow! This one good question. So as an Entrepreneur I’d highly recommend anyone who’s starting out to check out blue ocean strategy and then comes this….please don’t make the same mistakes which I did which is basically starting out without properly knowing everything, I believe that one must research and study everything that they’re going to do in their business and those things related to the same, the next thing one must not do is to depend on a team or someone to do things for them even though you (one) might be the boss. Bootstrap as much as possible, don’t find investors for the money but find them for the potential that they might bring to your company, also be prepared for everything, remember that every single moment you waste is going to have a very bad impact on you and also try to be sustainable in everything that you do. Another thing that I’d add to anyone who’s starting out is basically try to be flexible, the flexibility I mean is to change your methods if it doesn’t suite you but never change the goal, also there’s a chance that everyone around you from your parents to your best friends – mainly the closest one to you might have a huge backlash for what you’ll be doing and they might want you to change your path from an entrepreneur to something else (Never have I directly experience this but I did experience this indirectly and I’ve seen a lot of entrepreneur friends lose their paths because of situations such as these) but don’t listen to them keep going, find entrepreneurial communities such as Yes Fam Entrepreneurs (https://chat.whatsapp.com/BsCMYnwq0PA3aTeyvPPEMr) where I’m in too, attending entrepreneurial networking & socializing events and start up & scale up events will help you a lot. If you’d like to know more or want any help please do reach me or my companies with help of the attached links.