An exclusive interview with Shubham a core member of the start-up ‘Campus Street’ let’s see how is this start-up helping students in their day-to-day life. 

1. What is your good name? and can you name your startup and give an overview about it?

Firstly my name is Shubham, and the name of the startup is Campus Street, basically, our startup is for college students to empower them, I would like to tell the readers that when Covid-19 hit the world in 2020 there was a college in Delhi University named LSR (Lady Shri Ram College), a student who belonged to that college committed suicide, and the reason behind that was she wanted to study further and explore in life but her parents couldn’t financially support her. She stated that either I will study or else my life has no meaning. And her parents could not afford her sibling's education too. Coming to the point this case came to our notice and there must be many unseen cases that haven’t reached us, so the students for education purposes completely rely on their parents or guardians. So we try and help the students to get their own expenses done by themselves and become independent.

2. Are you alone handling the work or is it team work for the startup?

Definitely yes it’s a team work, I think it is not possible to work single-handed, like in the initial level one can but talking about startup, so it includes a combination of activities which needs to be divided amongst people, like for technical, the promotional, management and all of it. The team count, for now, are two core members, but it also depends on the requirements as per workload we increase our members. So basically it keeps fluctuating. 

3. What is the most challenging part while working in a startup?

Basically, everything is challenging in a startup, even if you are thinking to start a startup in the initial stage that’s challenging too. There are people who are still planning to do a startup and do not want to work for some company they want to self-build their own startup with their own ideas. But often when people try to work on a start-up only a few will implement their idea and execute it, others fail to execute their ideas. I think that initiating and executing a startup is itself a challenging part and team management is also a challenge that needs to be taken care of.

4. What motivates you to keep going with your startup?

Self-motivation would definitely be my answer because whenever you come up with an idea for startup people will never motivate you for it, and if you belong to a middle-class family sometimes it’s hard to get support from your family members too because if you initiate a startup sometimes it’s easy to get boosted in the startup but sometimes it takes a longer time and then that is the period your struggle kicks in. As parents think instead of wasting time in a startup as a student you should earn after your education. Initially, in a startup, there is more input of money and less output. Also, students have to face family pressure and peer pressure. So all that keeps you motivated is self-motivation which keeps you going because even if you got a team but no motivation in the work that becomes hard then. And I feel that the person who leads the startup should be motivated to keep the team motivated to keep their startup alive.

5. What are your personal goals which you expect from this startup?

Majorly focusing on the goals we want to achieve is for the college students we are aspiring the students to be ‘Studentpreneurs’ which is a combination of students who want to be entrepreneurs. We want the students to earn from their college years itself. Sometimes in all the earning processes students forget their passion. Later on, students keep running in the race for jobs and forget about living. But we don’t want that to happen and we give students a platform who can earn and follow their passion too along with their education.

6. What are your greatest achievements through this startup?

Achievements through our startup are that we have reached almost 130+ Colleges with 300+ Students. And our team has made an incredible journey where we had started from zero and now we have reached out to the students who need us. We have definitely reached the execution stage from the initial stage and we are growing in the process.

 7. Describe your working style to me in a few words.

Right now we are working in online mode due to the Covid-19 situation it wasn’t possible to connect the students in the offline mode. But yes we are planning to conduct some events in the offline mode for the students ahead in the future.

8. What are the risks one has to face in a start-up what is your personal opinion on this?

Risks associated with a start-up are if the start-up will succeed or not. Suppose you have started working on a start-up, but what if you fail or it doesn’t work out the way you have decided this fear or risk is always going on inside your mind. But yes if we succeed that is surplus. Everyone has a plan after success but very few think about the failure they have to face after denial. I have observed, that companies do not hire people who have previously worked in a start-up because they think their idea or innovation can be stolen, they have a misconception that the people who previously worked in a startup can work on their ideas, and modify them and might work on it by themselves, which is a complete falsehood. That’s why I feel it’s hard for a person to get a job for those who have worked in a startup earlier.

9. What do you think are the advantages of a start-up?

Our main motto is to empower students, and it’s our vision to accomplish that for the success of our team and our start-up. I feel there is no fixed goal for any start-up, it is a step toward the ladder of success, while in the journey you learn a lot of things. Advantages can be like one can do multi-tasking and work on many things at a time in a startup.

10. Along with that what are the disadvantages of a start-up?

I have observed that students do not initially come up to work in a start-up, this is because there is not a good amount of pay scale in the initial stages of a start-up. , basically, I’m talking here about those start-ups that have no funding due to off-cutting. But if you are working in a fully funded start-up you definitely get a good salary. So yes in the initial stages there are risks and disadvantages associated in the process but you can overcome those with your skills.

11. What is the purpose behind this start-up?

There are 40 million students enrolled all over India for higher education, and our goal is definitely to reach out to those 40 million students. We want to reach out to all the 40 million students. We want to give students a platform a source for their individual earnings from their college times, be independent in bearing their own expenditures, along with that follow their dreams and passion too.

12. Are you available on any social media sites?

Yes, we stay connected to students through our social media accounts I’ll list our Social media handles for the students who want to visit them Facebook Instagram LinkedIn Twitter Koo .

Students can register and stay connected to Campus Street via this website: https://web.campusstreet.co.in/register

Click Here for More Interview