Anthem of the Underdog Not many young aspirants have the gut or the skill to open not one but two businesses while still in college

Relentless and insatiable are two words that describe serial entrepreneur Aditya Goel the best. Not many young aspirants have the gut or the skill to open not one but two businesses while still in college. Battling more than just pressure in the competitive sphere of business, he has emerged as a frontrunner in sectors that were previously untapped:

How did the concept of your content aggregation platform QuirkyByte come into being?

I was still pursuing my BBA in 2015 when I decided to launch an individual blog documenting my thoughts on the many movies and TV shows I watched in my free time. This page soon blossomed into a full-fledged online community for six million internet users across the globe and is now known as QuirkyByte.com.

Have you always wanted to leverage the internet to reach out to so many readers?

I initially wanted to become a software engineer. However, when an unfortunate brain haemorrhage confined me to a hospital for a year-and-a-half, my life saw a drastic change. Faced with a lot of time to think, I came out of the illness suffering from severe depression and a disheartened soul. For a passionate creator like me, an unthinking, passive existence wasn't an acceptable one and soon, I was enrolled in business school.

How does QuirkyByte work and what is its USP?

Thriving on witty analyses of fictional characters and plotlines of the most popular movies and television series, QuirkyByte garnered traffic enough to include regional cinema and vernacular entertainment as well. The website today has 150 writers and plans on delivering a content discovery platform that will be able to read a user's profile and recommend audio-visual content based on what they have already viewed and current moods.

What have you taken away from the business and how has that aided your green coffee brand Greenbrrew?

Becoming an accomplished expert in digital marketing and content management within a short year of running the website, I decided to partner with his brother and launch yet another business venture in 2016. I tapped the fitness trend this time and produced green coffee under the brand name Greenbrrew. The product now retails at 55,000 customer touch points across India and is also exported to international markets.

Does operating in unrelated sectors act as an advantage?

Leveraging a spot many in the business community think to be too tight, I learn lessons from one company and apply it to the other. A lot of people I come across have pointed out how I'm operating in domains completely unrelated to each other but I believe that every business remains the same at the core and is on an indisputable mission to become profitable.

What is the most unconventional aspect of your businesses?

I have never received a penny in external funding and have poured all my profits into scaling the ladder to success. QuirkyByte and Greenbrrew together produce a joint turnover of INR 15 crore and boast of no debt or investors to pay off. I often quote my team and me as the proud underdogs.