Entrepreneurship is an impressive word, a word that is filled with optimism and the prospect of joy. It is the persistent progression towards an innovative solution to a key problem. Also, it is the constant hunger for making things better than before. To be a successful entrepreneur one must have a passion for learning from a customer, employee, and failures. A dream does not become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination, and hard work to become a successful entrepreneur.
One such successful entrepreneur is Swapan Rajdev, Co-founder & Chief Technology Officer, at Haptik which is one of the world’s largest conversational AI platforms. He oversees the entire engineering function at Haptik which includes product development, scalability, and future vision from a technology and product perspective. Apart from this, he is consistently working on new and innovative ways to make Haptik one of the best places to work at.
An Entrepreneurial Journey
Like every other entrepreneur’s journey, Swapan’s journey has been a roller coaster ride filled with up and downs. From being featured in the app store as in one of the best apps in the country to running out of money, he has experienced all kinds of high and lows. He truly believes that to become a successful entrepreneur one needs to have a mentor or an advisor who can guide through the challenges that entrepreneurship throws. Apart from mentors, podcasts, and books have helped him to learn a lot over the years. “The hard things about hard things” by Ben Horowitz is one such book that helped him to become a better leader.
Swapan holds a B.Tech degree in Computer Engineering from University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. He started his career with Accenture, where he worked for three years as a technology consultant. Later he left the coveted job for a startup called Radius intelligence in the Silicon Valley. He was one of the first few who were involved in building business tools for marketing and sales professional at Radius. He is passionate about developing innovative mobile applications. His biggest success so far has been ‘snake classic’ which was ranked fourth on the app store in 2010.
The Start of Something Big
Swapan has been building Chatbots before the term was officially coined. He scaled them to handle more than two to three million requests a month, at a time when the concept was novel across the world. Swapan decided to start Haptik by leaving his job in one of the best cities in the world.
‘While talent can win games, teamwork wins the championships’
The main reason behind Haptik’s success is its dedicated employees and that’s what differentiates the entity from any other company. He has invested every ounce of energy into Haptik, to convert his dreams into a reality.
One Stop Shop for all Needs
Under Swapan’s leadership, Haptik has been able to distinguish itself from any other player in the market because of its underlying tech backbone. Haptik is one of the world’s largest chatbot platforms, building applications for consumers, publishers, and enterprises. The company has worked across various chatbots use cases such as commerce, customer service, utility, and lead generation. Haptik’s partners and clients in India are Coca-Cola, HDFC Life, Samsung, Sharekhan, Edelweiss Tokio, Goibibo, Amazon Pay and among many others.
The company recently received the ‘AWS Mobility Award for Deep Tech in Mobility’. The company has been able to build a complete end-to-end platform that helps with the building bots, getting key insights into how bots can take over a chat through the use of an analytics tool and a chat interface for humans.
Some Valuable Insights from Swapan’s Desk
Swapan believes that money, success, and status as motivating factors can only take you ahead but there will be a time when none of these will feel exciting enough, compared to the challenges which one has to go through. The only way a person can keep himself motivated on this journey is to build something he is passionate about. He further says, “Being truly passionate and believing in what you are building is the only way anyone can achieve meaningful success”. The ability to accept failure, learn from it and move on is what has helped him to grow.
Self-introspection is one exercise that has helped him to grow into a better person and a far more tenacious entrepreneur. It is the small steps he took every day that led to his path to become a successful entrepreneur.
Wise Words for Budding Entrepreneurs
While advising the budding entrepreneurs Swapan says, “Surround yourself with smart people, at work, and in your personal life. Ensure that you have people in your life whom you enjoy being around. Read and have conversations around multiple domains and subjects”. He further says that being able to bring in concepts from different domains into one’s core area of expertise is how most of the best companies in the world have distinguished themselves.
Moving towards Bright Future
Talking about the future Swapan says. “In five years, I hope that Haptik, along with me, grows into a global player and we build things that help make someone’s life easier each day. The impact of what we are building is what I want to see grow, and as that grows I know I will have to grow along with it”. Swapan believes that technology will play an immense role in the company achieving its mission of becoming the world’s largest chatbot player in the next five years.
Source :-The 30 Inspiring Entreprenuers to watch in 2018
Swapan Rajdev: An Entrepreneur Building Complex Application with Simple Design
