Knowing Each Other for 25 Years Helps These Co-founders Keep Differences at Bay "It's like four hands working at the top of the business, trying to grow it in every possible direction"
By Sneha Banerjee •
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We are living in a time when entrepreneurs are hunting for co-founders on elite job portals and social media platforms like Linkedin. Amidst this trend, we have four co-founders of an online restaurant booking platform, who have known each other since they were studying together in first standard.
Entrepreneur India spoke to Sahil Jain, Co-founder of Dineout about the dynamics of having four co-founders on board of a company. Ankit Mehrotra, Sahil Jain, Nikhil Bakshi and Vivek, all together run Dineout – an online restaurant table reservation platform that operates out of eight cities in India.
Since the time four of them graduated from the same school, they knew that some day they wanted to build something of their own. They went out and did their respective post-school courses and worked at various industries as employees for 4-5 years. Despite this, the urge to build something remained intact.
Four of them were exciting on seeing the opportunity the concept of U.S.-based Open Table had in India. Post finalizing this bit they decided to go ahead with this idea as entrepreneurs.
From initial struggles of being boot-strapped and grappling to get talent industry folks on board to now being operational in eight big cities – the four of them have managed to cross every hurdle together.
Aren't four co-founders too many?
Talking about the internal dynamics between the four of them said that from outside it looks extremely difficult for four different minds to work together in perfect harmony."The good part is that we have known each other for 25 years. We have been friends since class one and hence we understand each other very well. Working with four co-founders can be a tough task but because of the understanding we share it helps us grow the business faster," he said.
It's like four hands working at the top of the business, trying to grow it in every possible direction and that can only happen when you have a lot of trust on the other person, he adds.
Sahil was one of the key speakers at the Restaurant India event conducted by Franchise India last month.
