An entrepreneur has shared his personal journey from operating a multimillion dollar IT firm to cleaning airports.
Aamir Qutub, 33, emigrated to Australia ten years ago to pursue a Master of Business Administration. He was born and raised in the Indian village of Saharanpur.
At the age of 25, he started his own business, which is currently worth $2 million and has 100 employees. He then went on to become the general manager of a tech company.
He once submitted 300 job applications without receiving a single interview, so his path to success was anything but easy.
He now counsels aspiring business owners to embrace their setbacks in order to learn from them and become successful.
Because everything was new to him and his English wasn’t very good, moving here was “extremely scary,” he told Daily Mail Australia.
“I had just come here, so it was difficult to get work without experience. Every position demanded prior experience, but I didn’t have any.”
Mr. Qutub made the decision to expand his horizons and eventually found employment as a cleaner at Victoria’s Avalon Airport.
After six months there, he eventually departed to attempt to launch his own software company.
Mr. Qutub would commute three hours to the university, spend the morning studying there, spend the afternoon trying to network, and pack and re-distribute newspapers from 2am to 7am.
I was worn out yet eager to see where it would lead me, he said.
Mr. Qutub secured an internship at the computer firm ICT Geelong during his final year of education, and after 15 days he was elevated to operations manager.
As a result of his financial acumen and close working relationship with the general manager, the university graduate was named temporary general manager after little under two years.
I felt a little overwhelmed, but it felt fantastic, like when the character in the Pursuit of Happiness movie eventually gets the job.
The company’s revenue increased by 30% and the number of members doubled when the interim title was dropped and he assumed the position on a permanent basis.
Then, Mr. Qutub made the decision to focus all of his energy on starting his own company.
The committed businessman put in countless hours passing out leaflets at bus and railway stops in the hopes that someone would give him a chance.
On that particular day, he encountered a man on the train who was self-employed. A software program Mr. Qutub developed helped the man’s firm avoid losing $10,000 each month.
With barely $2,000 in his pocket, he founded Enterprise Monkey Proprietor Ltd in 2014, starting operating the company out of his brother-in-garage. law’s
The largest obstacle, according to him, was obtaining customers because he was a newcomer to the nation and had no business experience.
He now employs 100 people, 80 of whom work remotely from India, and his company’s goal is to develop software tools that aid businesses in reducing costs and boosting income.
The 33-year-old stated, “I always wanted to be successful; I just wanted to pursue what I loved and I had this belief in myself.”
He highlighted that there was a true “shame” associated with failing in India and that his father had urged him to take up a government position.
“Over here it’s not about education, it’s about skill set,” the CEO continued. “In India it’s all about qualifications that you have, and normally when you finish a decent degree at university you get a job.”
It is all about earning money and being promoted in India and even the USA, whereas Australia offers a wonderful work-life balance.
While Covid had no impact on his company because the majority of his team members worked remotely, Mr. Qutub still made the decision to develop an app called Angel Next Door that would enable neighbours to request assistance when they were feeling lonely for things like groceries or medications.
100,000 “angels” signed up for it, and 50,000 calls for assistance were answered within a 5 kilometre range of where it functioned.
Mr. Qutub, whose wife and he now have a nine-month-old baby, said he advises ambitious businesspeople to accept failure.
It’s a long journey, so instead of worrying about getting there, savour the experience, the man advised.
Failures are inevitable, but the key is to learn from them.