HooLiv, Founder Chinmoy Mishra's Interview

We invited Chinmoy Mishra, Founder of HooLiv for an interview with Most Popular Stories to know more about his entrepreneurial journey.

HooLiv intends to provide students with a modern form of CoLiving and improve their quality of life by focusing on three crucial aspects of Comfort, Convenience & Community.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey as an entrepreneur

I am a travel enthusiast and a complete foodie. I love to cook as well. Born and brought up in a quaint town called Rourkela, Odisha. Post graduating from NIT Rourkela spent a better part of my life in the US. Once the entrepreneurial bug bit me, left my job to pursue my masters at Babson College, Boston (2006 – ‘08), considered to be the mecca for entrepreneurship. At Babson, I was awarded with Babson fellowship and Global student leader award and in 2018, was also honored with the prestigious Rising Star Alumni Award.

In one way my entrepreneurial journey started in 2006 with me quitting my cushy life and joining Babson. I had joined Babson with an intention to move back to India and start my own venture. That dream got fulfilled when I launched my first venture “AllizHealth”, in 2013. After a very good run, in 2018, AllizHealth was acquired by Singapore based Symple Wellness Pte., generating significant returns for our shareholders and founding team.

Why did you choose entrepreneurship over a job?

I would attribute it to a combination of factors. For one, the easy nature of my work life had pushed me a sense of complacency and as well all know complacency breeds mediocrity. It frequently pushed me to question myself and find a purpose behind the treadmill of existence. This is when I decided to do something about it and use my talent to make a meaningful difference.

I believe, the rebellious streak in me and the non-conformist attitude, made it relatively easy for me to take the entrepreneurial plunge. One could always say, you don’t choose entrepreneurship over a job as entrepreneurship is a calling and once you start to think along the lines of being in charge of your destiny, there is little that can hold you back in any job.

What was the vision behind it?

The vision behind my current start-up HooLiv is to provide students across the country with hassle-free affordable housing and coliving options. Student housing is one of the most unorganized sectors in India. The current housing options come with their own set of challenges ranging from unhygienic living conditions and lack of privacy to bad food and limited infrastructure. Our vision is to transform these accommodations and provide our students with a standard of living that they so deserve.

Describe the services that you offer to your customers and in what way they are unique?

HooLiv is providing comfortable and hygienic coliving options along with convenience with respect to contracts, meal options, skill gap based training and work towards building communities where students can not only share a common space but also ideas and intents. It is unique in many ways, from focussing exclusively on improving the accommodations for students at Tier 2 & 3 cities to providing various skill gap training ranging from spoken English courses to job interview skills training, HooLiv is not just a place for students to stay but also learn, collaborate and improve their employability quotient.

It is definitely unlike traditional PG’s which are primarily just providing a place to sleep and also unlike some of our competitors focussing on Tier1 cities where the student expectation with regards to amenities is very different.

What difficulties which you have faced or you are facing?

As with any startup, there is always a constant struggle w.r.t to working capital, finding the right talent, resource retainment, etc. But, the issue which all business is facing at the moment is the extraordinary situation due to COVD-19. The popularity of CoLiving was just peaking cash-strapped millennials were starting to warm up to it. So, in this respect, COVID-19 could not possibly have come at a worse time.

The key values we highlight in our HooLiv, coliving setups, such as collaboration and community, are in some way, fundamentally antithetical to the tenets of social distancing. So, it goes without saying that quarantine measures and an emphasis on social distancing will hit the co-living sector hard. A venture such as ours have to find a way around the same and going forward, inculcate a lot of good hygiene and social distancing practices in our day to day operations of properties.

How do you handle the pressure and manage stress?

As entrepreneurs, pressure and stress are part and parcel of the journey and how we cope with the same goes a long way in deciding the future of our ventures. Everyone has their unique ways of dealing with it, some listen to music, others go for a run, reading books, etc. But, for me, I think a lot of it taken care of by virtue of having an incredibly supportive family.

I am so grateful to this support system and the way they soak up all my stress and encourage me to move forward and not shy away from any challenge is just incredible. If I am stressed, I just have to speak to my wife or discuss it with my family and I always know they will have a solution for me.

What is one strategy that you believe has helped you grow as a person/startup?

Always being curious. Curious about what is happening around the globe, what our competitors are up to, what are our clients and customers saying about us, what do our employees think of the company and so on.

I believe, the day we stop being curious is the day we stop learning and if we stop learning, we would never innovate. In every interaction, whether it is our investors or customers or even the office help, I make it a point to listen and learn. We can learn something good from each and every individual provided we are curious and humble enough. It also enriches interactions and makes the other person feel special as well.

What advice would you give to someone starting out as an aspiring entrepreneur?

At Babson, one of our professors use to tell us, “make ambiguity your best friend”. As an entrepreneur, you would be dealing with ambiguity almost every moment of your life. You would never know what’s in store in the next hour, forget in the next day or two. Irrespective of the stage and scale of our ventures, ambiguity follows us like a shadow even on a cloudy day. Do not try to fight ambiguity or make it go away.

Embrace it for therein lies the real fun of the starting up. So, my two cents to entrepreneurs would be to choose the wiser option and make peace with ambiguity. In fact, ambiguity goes go a long way in making us fleet-footed, makes us agile and builds our ability to make decisions quickly and on the fly. Don’t fret over it, accept it.