By: Mahafreed Irani, TNN
After the daily grind of school and tuitions, most kids prefer to wind down by harvesting virtual strawberries on Farmville.
But some would rather make money. Meet a new breed of teens who are already CEOs of their own companies. Their success shows that you don’t need a fancy MBA to be an entrepreneur, only broadband and some out-of-the-box thinking.
Mohnish doesn’t take a break after college. He starts work at 5.30 pm when his target audience in the US wakes up and logs on to the internet. Nagpal makes money online by telling others how to make money online. His blog: Sensonize.com.
One of his posts, for instance, gives tips to teens who can do with some extra money. It lists blogging , affiliate marketing, paid surveys and writing articles for directories as some of the ways of making money. “Very few people know that you can even earn by tweeting,” he says. With a steady five-figure income, he doesn’t have to worry about pocket money. He even bought himself a six-gear mountain bike recently. “Every time someone clicks an advert on my blog, I get paid for it,’’ he smiles.
This year, Nagpal, who first earned Rs 5,000 off the internet at 13, started Limespace Networks, a website-hosting company that caters to 35 customers . A student of commerce and IT at MMK College in Mumbai, the teenager, who wants to retire at 25, doesn’t think about the future much. His wish may well come true. He has already made it to a list of top international bloggers aged 21 or under on Retireat21.com, a forum for internet entrepreneurs.
If you don’t find 13-year-old Monik Pamecha in his room at his Santa Cruz home, look for him at his Wi-Fi-enabled terrace. For, when it gets noisy, this blogger likes to escape upstairs, sit on the water tank and dash out posts to his subscriber base of 16,000.
The self-proclaimed geek runs technology website etiole.com, a networking site for “geeks” called iluvtech.org and URL shortening service hop.im. Pamecha’s sites are so popular he’s regularly visited by PR executives of gadget companies who deliver their latest products at his doorstep in anticipation of a review on his five-year-old blog, Etiole. The blog has 26 other authors who he has recruited from around the world. Each gets paid from the advertising income generated by the website traffic they attract. Apart from reviews, Pamecha posts technology tips. One of his posts is on “five places where you should not keep your iPhone” .
Not content with three websites to his name, Pamecha, a student of Lilavatibai Podar School in Mumbai, is all set to launch a media-sharing website. But he says he couldn’t have achieved so much without his father’s support. Manoj Pamecha bankrolls his son’s ventures, buys him gadgets and advises him on how to take “calculated business risks” .
Founder-CEO of Rockstah Media, Farrhad Acidwalla has converted his Dadar Parsi Colony house in Mumbai into a workstation for his web development and media company. Staying up all night on his Mac Book Pro is a habit he’s acquired after three years of juggling business and homework . Acidwalla earned his first cheque at the age of 13.
“I created an aeromodelling and aviation website that attracted a lot of attention and sold it later,” says the HR College student who has a long list of clients including corporates. “I have just bagged clients from the education industry in UK,” he says.
Today, the self-taught web-developer works with a team of web designers, developers, search engine specialists and social media marketers to build and promote websites. He swears by his company’s slogan, “creating awesomeness” , and looks up to fellow web-based businessmen like Ayush Software’s Karamveer Singh, Kratee’s Annkur Agarwal and Mouth Shut’s Faisal Farooqui. “Being young is an added advantage as I can come up with many innovative ideas,” he says.
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Bulls & bears rush to cut market exposure
Even as the market remains divided about whether this is the right time to lock-in profits, the buzz is that some of the leading traders and operators have already trimmed their exposure to stocks, of late. Grapevine has it that Rar(e)ing Bull and Old Fox cut a portion of their stock positions a couple of weeks ago, before short-selling in the market.
Indices fell around 8-9% in the past two weeks of October. It is also speculated that they covered their short positions early this week. Pink Panther, who has been officially banned from trading in Indian markets till 2017, is also rumoured to have created huge short positions in the market.
IFCI back in favour after stake sale talks revive
Financial institution IFCI, which was in limelight in the later part of the previous bull run, is once again finding favour among traders and operators. The stock, which has gained close to 16% in a week, closed at Rs 51 on Friday, up 2.5% from the previous close. Talks that drove up the stock in 2007 have resurfaced now. Speculation has it that the government is looking to revive the process for selling its stake in IFCI soon.
Traders, who had bet on the stock aggressively in late 2007, when it was at its peak, are unlikely to forget the stock plunge after IFCI, in December 2007, called off the process for the stake sale to a strategic partner, after the Sterlite Industries-Morgan Stanley consortium demanded management control.
AMC plans listing as its asset base swells
A FINANCIAL services major, which is planning to list its asset management company in the near future, is striving hard to ramp up its asset base. According to fund industry sources, a swollen asset base would help the financial services
The fund house, as per industry grapevine, is also keeping distributors in good humour by handing out extra commissions and freebies for bringing money into its schemes. The effort appears to be showing results, as the fund house has gained appreciably in both equity and bond asset bases, of late.
Contributed by Nishanth Vasudevan, Apurv Gupta & Shailesh Menon
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Src: Economictimes.Indiatimes
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