In our constant goal to discover and give our community a glimpse of the fascinating and original stories of the startup ecosystem this week, we had an Interview with Sanat Pai Raikar, to learn more about his inspirational journey along with his ideas for the future.
1. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey as an entrepreneur.
Sanat is a professional quizmaster with over 20 years of experience conducting quizzes for corporates and colleges. He has been an avid quizzer since childhood, leading the quiz clubs during his college days at NIT Trichy and IIM Kozhikode. Sanat led the NIT Trichy to the quarter-finals at University Challenge India, hosted by Siddhartha Basu on BBC World. In parallel with corporate life and a career in analytics, Sanat, along with his wife Nirupama, started Quizarre, to provide quality quizzes, crossword, and puzzle content to companies and publications. Quizarre has provided content to, among others, Gulf News and Encyclopedia Britannica. Sanat has written the definitive article on ‘Quiz’ in the Encyclopedia Britannica. He also published a quiz book ‘Three’s A Quiz’, written from memory, in November 2021. In 2022, Sanat took the plunge to work on being a full-time professional quizmaster.
2. Why did you choose entrepreneurship over a job?
No workplace is stress-free. But after 15+ years in the high-stress high-growth analytics world, while also bringing up a child for the last few years, I figured that if one has to take so much stress, one might as well take it to do something loves, and on their own terms and time.
3. Describe the services that you offer to your customers and in what way they are unique?
In today’s post-pandemic world, employee engagement is a key challenge. Employee engagement needs to be done in a manner whereby employees do not feel the burden of additional meetings, while at the same time the engagement needs to be fun. Quizarre offers quizzes and puzzles as an avenue for employee engagement. It differs from standard quiz sites which focus on topic-based factual quizzes, in which people lose interest quickly. Quizarre provides trivia-based quizzes which are fun to solve and rely more on deductive thinking rather than one knowing or not knowing the answer off the top of their head.
4. How do you handle the pressure and manage stress?
It is still early days as a full-time entrepreneur for me, and for now, the focus is on marketing the services to potential customers. I am already working with a few startups and MNCs, conducting quizzes for their teams on a regular basis. Stress management is an ongoing process – it involves prioritizing properly and eliminating tasks that are not important in the long run. The focus needs to be maintained on the goals and key metrics to avoid distractions and burnout.
5. How many hours a day do you work on average & can you describe/outline your typical day?
I work for 9-10 hours a day on creating new quiz content. New content is in the form of both quizzes I am conducting for current customers, as well as ongoing quizzes I post online (5qdaily.in) and my next quiz book.
6. In your opinion, what are the keys to success?
Focus on the process and not on the product. Do something because you love doing it. The results will follow.
7. What advice would you give to someone starting out as an aspiring entrepreneur?
Being an entrepreneur and creating something new is very fulfilling, but think before taking the plunge because it’s not everyone’s cup of tea.
Website – http://quizarre.in/