A Scintillating and Endeavoured Entrepreneur
An entrepreneur with negligible business know-how, Yokeshwar Nandakumar found a challenging endeavour loaded with obstacles in bringing his idea to life. He got into the business of India’s first Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality Gaming with Gozo Virtual Experiences which was a gaming cafe. Yokeshwar was always passionate about gaming and had a deep indulgent love for food. As a person who always cherished exploring something fresh and new, his entrepreneurial appetite kept growing and he subsequently enjoyed the challenges that came his way and cherished overcoming them because he believed they would carve new learning experiences and would help him later on in the adventure of his life. He envisioned changing the cliche that video gaming takes away physical activity from a person’s life and this paved a way for virtual reality gaming where a person can run on treadmills, box the opponent till one can, drive a vehicle with real-life steering controls etc which would promote not only the fun derived from gaming but the aspect of physical activity as well.
Minerva is his current venture which is a SAAS platform that focuses on AdTech and bringing Augmented Reality to the mainstream marketing industry. “I look for inspiration in everyone I meet and see on a day-to-day basis because each one of us has a story and it can inspire us in different ways. My goal and vision have always been to use my strength and knowledge to make a better difference in society and inspire others.” Starting up a new business was painstaking and ridden with challenges where he claims that bootstrapping the company with everything one has and managing the team whether it be market or sales, requires one to be the jack of all trades. To top it all off, the COVID pandemic was hard to handle and Yokeshwar had to shut shop as many other businesses did. His will, determination and hard work kept him going while he claims that a little luck to go by was always needed as well.
Yokeshwar Nandakumar has been passionate to innovate and create something new, something afresh. When it comes down to futuristic tech and innovation, India has always lagged behind and so he was determined to develop India into an integral player in tech and software. People like him have always been the need of the hour when other nations have developed into multimedia and tech giants where gaming education is not only upcoming but an already strong alternative. Being in the rat race is not something that defines Yokeshwar as he believes that his competition is himself and not the people who surround him. For him, money has never served as a motivation to strive because he knows how wealth will not act as motivation for a long time. He believes he will get tired of working if it is to solely earn money, so he always carved himself a way out of this vicious cycle where he along with his family avoid getting sucked into this black hole of greed and competing with others to feel satiated, which will meanwhile help him created a difference in the society as well.
On the professional front, Yokeshwar has been the youngest team member to become a mentor for coaching new interns in his organisation and also had the opportunity to travel to the UK at a very early stage of his career. He was also nominated for the Top 50 Tech Visionaries 2019 by InterCon Dubai and Internet 2.0 – Outstanding Leadership Award 2022. “A leader is one who not only has a passion of his own but also motivates and inspires others to have a passion and follow it” he exclaims. Further, he adds that being a leader is about creating the right opportunities and direction for the team to succeed both personally and professionally. He measures a good leader by the extent to which they help create new leaders rather than the number of followers they have.
Lastly, Yokeshwar Nandakumar shares from his experiences that one learns throughout the path of their life through their own experiences and people try to pull one down no matter how good someone tries to be. People inflict damage due to the differences in caste, religion, language, skin, colour and sex but the most significant act is to keep working towards the set goals and let actions do the talking because the power to stop someone is only within the person himself.
