Why I chose to build instead of taking a job

People sometimes ask what I would have become if I had taken a job. I honestly do not know. I never seriously considered it.

When I joined the Executive MBA in entrepreneurship at IIM Ahmedabad, the classmates around me were weighing offers and designations. I was weighing something else: whether I had the patience to build a business slowly, from very little, without anyone to blame if it failed. I decided I did. I am still finding out whether I was right.

Very little, to begin with

The first business I ran turned over less than ₹50 lakh. That is a small number in my trade. It meant every rupee had a job to do and every customer mattered more than I could tell them.

What I learned in those years has stayed with me. Nobody owes a newcomer their trust. You earn it one delivery at a time, and you can lose all of it in one bad week. So I tried hard never to have that week.

The climb

The years since have been good to us, better than I had any right to expect. Today the group, Orama Techno Labs and the Mansha Group, is estimated to close the financial year 2026-27 at a turnover of around ₹500 crore.

It was not a smooth road. A fast rise attracts opposition, and we faced our share of hurdles. I learned to keep my head down, keep my word, and let time do its work. It did.

The people who believed

No one builds anything alone. I have been lucky in my partners. Ashneer Grover is my co-founder in a startup venture. Ambassador Dr. Deepak Vohra, former technology advisor to the Prime Minister of India, has been generous with his time and his counsel as a mentor.

But the people I think about most are the first few suppliers and buyers who dealt with me when I was nobody. They took a chance on a young man with a small balance sheet. Everything since rests on that.

Naman Manmohan Agrawal