How Hironmoy Gogoi From Assam Fought With Depression And Built A Successful Enterprise ?

In my recent podcast, I had Mr. Hironmoy Gogoi. He’s an entrepreneur, author and a motivational speaker. He’s currently working with Gaon Ka Khana GKK which is a national award-winning food-tech startup in Assam.

GKK was created with a motive to impact the rural livelihood across north northeast and this concept was awarded as the Home Run Business Of The Year 2017. Today GKK is one of the most popular ethnic food brands of Assam. The founder was awarded the student entrepreneur of the year 2016 by Entrepreneur Magazine. In this podcast we discussed his entire journey of building the startup from the motivation to start this startup, to the challenges faced, how did he grow the startup, the business model and much more…

Ricky : This is something very unique and not many people are working on it when you started it so what is it one incident in your life that inspired you to do the startup ?

Hironmoy : Okay there were two situation behind the creation

Situation 1: I lost my elder brother when Iwas 15 years old and few years later I lost my mother when I was 18 years old so both these tragic incidents hampered me a lot and naturally I went to depression. I was completely blank about my life what to do. I thought to do something for the women out there. There are many brothers there are many other remaining moms who are you know under financial crisis who are in lack of you know getting the appropriate guidance to do something. There are many women out there in India not only in Assam across India who want to do something of their own. They have skills and good intention but they don’t have the ideas how to do from where to start what to do how to sell so I thought why don’t I just you know go ahead and build that platform from which I can help those women groups or other persons to do something or to create something of their own and in their processes this will be a tribute to my mother

Situation 2 : India is blessed with a lot of you know varied cooking techniques we have different cultural traditions we are very rich in that sphere and there are many natural resources in India but we the young generation are not aware of many products many ethnic procedures of you know techniques of making products and hence we don’t know the proper utilization of those resources. So if I talk about the northeast we have very you know variety of rice we have various kind of rice. People here are very much rich in terms of cooking and in terms of creativity so I thought instead of looking for a job instead of you know working uh nine to five under a lot of pressure for a job I should do something on my own so that I can ensure the basic information of this natural resources and in the process I can inspire a lot of people and also I can create secondary employment generation across the state.

So these two situations inspired me or motivated me to do the creation of GKK.

Ricky : Yes it’s a really inspiring story of turning your depression into motivation and the thing which gives you the power to work for the women who do not have the opportunity to go out. Now, considering you are starting from scratch and you are starting at a very small age there might be a lot of challenges and hurdles which came into your path and how did you come over them ?

Hironmoy : The first thing is obviously finance that is the common challenge for anybody who want to do something of their own uh the second thing is the appropriate manpower. When you have a great idea when you have a great mission that is not sufficient. Aim is something different but you need a road map and to proceed in your roadmap you need your own army you always need a great team to accomplish a great goal in life. So as I started in rural areas obviously the people out here are not that skill oriented. These people are not industry ready the way we get in cities when we do startup or any kind of work in cities we get industrial ready applicants. They are quite advanced but people out here are not aware of the actual corporate scenario or the kind of working structure that we implement in a startup company.

Ricky : Can you tell us something about the business model or how does GKK work, who are your customers and who are your producers ?

Hironmoy : Our customers are mainly the people who have a strong taste in consuming ethnic food products from Assam. Our business model is that we are manufacturing ethnic food products from ourselves. We have pork so we are trying to, you know, add our own fusion style to the pork and how we can manufacture those ethnic products and we can drive it towards the urban market, we can take it to the retail store as well. This is how we are working and we also have a small outlet in Sivasagar. We used to accept the online orders people used to place orders through our facebook page and now we have also collaborated with Swiggy through which we received our orders from different offices from different you know banks and other dealers and all and we initiate that delivery of those products. We serve you know healthy foods uh without the use of excessive masala or food colors and all these are healthy food and we deliver it to the people.

Ricky : Okay that’s really great. GKK is currently revolving around the traditional Assam food so how do you guys plan to scale it up and are you planning to bring it to other parts of the country and spreading the knowledge about the other traditional foods of other states as well and what are your future goals ?

Hironmoy : Actually our main product is about pork. Pork is the main signature product that we have right now and we are focusing at pork only and as I can see about the numbers I think there are there are you know many people who consume pork across the country so that’s a plus point for our business and regarding the expansion yes we do have certain plans for expansion. As i say that India is a blessed country if we talk about culture tradition if we talk about our food habits and different types of you know cooking techniques definitely we have plans to expand and in those scenarios to grab the consumers of different states of different areas we have to collaborate with other cooking techniques as well these are those are popular across India.

Ricky : Okay that’s really great. Since you are an entrepreneur and you have quite a good amount of experience of being in this industry what do you think is the best part and the worst part about being an entrepreneur ?

Hironmoy : I think the best part of being an entrepreneur is that I’m working for something which will help a lot of people to earn and to spread positivity because we are problem solvers and we are solving a specific problem. I think that there is no such kind of worst part but yeah there are a lot of difficulties and challenges that we as an entrepreneur have to face and one of such is that we need a lot of patience. It’s not like a job where we will get a fixed amount of salary every month. If we do a job then there is nothing that we have created we are working for someone’s dream or someone’s product but when you do even a small startup and at least you will be proud of yourself that okay I have created something of my own, that is the satisfaction and it is not just money it is the passion to solve a lot of problems in this world. It is the passion to empower lives across the world or across the country that drives an entrepreneur towards this difficult challenges

Ricky : Yes it is really insightful. Where do you see yourself in the next 10 years. What are your goals and do you see yourself working for the same startup or what are the other new ventures that you are working on currently ?

Hironmoy : I think I have always suggested a young generation to focus on one dream because by doing so you get a lot of time you know to study and to do research about that specific field in depth and by this way you can upgrade yourself in a very good manner but I don’t know how I’m unable to focus at only one dream because when I’m now growing old and now I have identified my other interested areas my other passions for example I have developed my interest in singing, I have developed my interest in writing song, I had developed my interest in a writing book, I have developed my interest in doing public speaking and at this moment I’m not just earning from my startup. Now I’m professionally working as a lyricist and professionally working as an author and professionally working as a public speaker so to do something great you should not be dependable only at one revenue source that’s what I think my personal opinion I believe in creating multiple revenue sources because that is the only way to transform your life, to transform your value in quicker span of time or in you know short duration of time. Regarding the venture I don’t have any other certain plans as of now to do entrepreneurship apart from GKK I think yeah if you can focus at only one thing then you should go about you know you should do that or you should go for it but if you are very passionate about three or four fields then you should not miss that opportunity as well because if I miss it now then there will be a stage in my life at a later time when I will feel regret that why I have not taken a chance

Ricky : So you also told about being an author and you are working on it continuously and you were also awarded the title of the youngest author to write a book about entrepreneurship so can you tell us something about the book which you have written. Share some ideas or some key points from that book ?

Hironmoy : During my schooling days you know many times I was being criticized because my English was very poor so I decided one day I will publish a book of my in this language so I accepted the criticizing as an opportunity for me to respond back with actions so then you know i think two years back maybe a one and a half year back I published my first book in English. That book was about how to do a startup that book is not very advanced level it was the basic guidance that a student should know what is a startup how to do a startup what are the key how to face them how to solve problems so I know I took a force to include the experiences that i had gained in my early days of entrepreneurship in that specific group so it was a great experience for me to publish that book and mainly the satisfaction comes when you accomplish a particular goal in your life because it was it was also a goal for me as I took it as a challenge to respond back to criticism so it made me happy after publishing them.

Ricky : Thank you for sharing your knowledge from that book. If you have one piece of advice for someone who wants to be a future entrepreneur or wants to start his own company in the future what would that be ?

Hironmoy : I think I just want to add that initial attempts are just your practice session, it is the repeated efforts that gives you success in entrepreneurship and even in many areas of life initial attempts are just like your practice session so we should not keep our expectation with our initial attempts we should not compare the product that we have created with just six months of learning with a product that that has been created with years of learning so if we do that then definitely we get depressed and we may give up so many people across the world they give up when they are very close to their success. The last thing that I would like to add is that the young generation is full of energy and is full of possibilities but it depends on us where we are investing those possibilities and powers. If we are investing in a negative direction then we will not be able to achieve the maximum level of success in our life because time is also a factor so this is the best space for our life and this is the best time now the world is changing, inventions are happening people are changing, mindsets are changing and we we are a young generation we have everything in hand now and we are full of possibilities we have we are full of power so at this specific stage if we can stay determined to the specific goal of our life then one day the world will need us.

Watch the entire podcast on YouTube to get a better insight :

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