As I opened the glass door stepping into the cafe, I found myself in an incoherent environment of chatter mixed with music in the background and people giving their orders. Not exactly a surrounding I would choose to have a conversation, but here I was. Although we hadn’t met before this, I didn’t have any trouble finding him. Sitting at a table of four, completely out of the space was Bhavin Bhavsar who was dressed in a swanky black t-shirt.
I placed my laptop backpack beside the chair and took my place to listen. Stories of different people can be like a labyrinth, starting from different points, where all of us have some common path in the structure. But it’s the choices we make at the crossroads that matter. I was here to explore his.
“My father came into the room and wrote on my wall, ‘you won’t be able to become anything in life’.”
Bhavin was a weak student. He used to frequently fail post his 6th grade. He tells this with a struggle in his smile. His father didn’t do this out of spite, but out of worry, as he wanted his son to become something.
“I used to get promoted to the next grade on grace marks. I don’t know, I just did not want to study at the time.”
Bhavin was born in a small village in Kapadganj in 1982. He has spent all his life in Ahmedabad. His father is a government official but started a small cable business when he was young. Bhavin used to frequently handle his father’s cable business. He a commerce graduate who used to get KTs in college, suffice to say his parents weren’t believers of the fact that he would great in his life.
“One of my friends gave me a call one day and asked me to try and work at an internet marketing firm. This was Bitscape. I just had to prove myself, work hard so that the words my father wrote would never see another day’s light.”
Kartik Shah, the founder of Bitscape taught him and employed him. He entered the world of SEO marketing when the word itself was in the shadows. From this point on Bhavin jumped from jobs learning and earning knowledge. The failing child had disappeared only to be replaced by experienced digital marketing professional.
Apart from a being a professional in digital marketing, he loves travelling. When your work is your hobby, you don’t feel the stress or the pressure because you’re enjoying. He has visited Singapore, China, Hong Kong, Thailand, UAE, etc.
Bhavin started his own firm in 2005 by the name Treatseo. He had achieved a great deal with hard work and dedication. But that kid remained who didn’t study at the right time.
“I was sitting with one my friends, who also happened to be my client. He had come in from USA and we saw a young child immersed in his cell phone at a restaurant. Looking at this kid, Mayur Mcwan, my friend, had the idea to start a platform where we could engage kids right on their cell phones, giving birth to Crawded.”
Mayur Mcwan, the founder, along with Nitin Patel and Bhavin, started Crawded where they want to provide free education to kids using this platform. He had found a way to make permeating education to students where they would be more than willing to participate instead of spending their time on unproductive activities. A place where they can connect to students of their grade from other cities or boards.
“Within a month, we found a local investor, who was so impressed with the idea that he helped us with the condition that we should keep the platform free for all.”
Kids signing in on the portal can participate in quizzes designed by the teachers to play to earn loyalty points. As of today, they have over ten thousand students on board. They have visited a lot of schools to give demo sessions and organize workshops and got amazing responses.
Before leaving, when I asked him how his parent’s felt about his success he responds with,
“They didn’t believe, that they would see their son who used to fail become such a successful person. They are more than happy. Their son is married, has a 7 year old, and realizes the importance of studies so much so that he is helping other kids in the process.”
Some people would have taken the comments his father wrote negatively.
He let those words hit him, affect his way of thinking, not to drown in the ocean, but to learn how to swim. You can’t change the past, but what you can do is be patient and work until you’re presented with an opportunity to do the one thing will help you achieve the same ending to the story that you always needed.
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