Marwari rebel

by Radhika Pancholi

Alok Kejriwal's office is unusual for a CEO's — no powertoned walls, no hi-tech wizardry, no natty trappings. It's done up in MTV yellows and blues with Kejriwal's desk bang in the middle. No power glam for the CEO of con tests2win.com, thank you, he prefers "a flat enterprise."

This self-confessed "Marwari rebel" believes in running a company that's the very anti-thesis of a Marwari business. He should know, for that's where Kejriwal started his journey.

The entrepreneurial bug hit the "pure Mumbaikar" early. "I started out helping my grandfather in his transport business at age 15," says Kejriwal. That's when he got his first feel of the city's pulse.

"The business would take me to the docks often, and I fell in love with the sea," he reminisces. "I realised the advantage that Mumbai has over other Indian cities, including Delhi. Mumbai is the gateway to the world. Because of this, it has an international professional outlook as well as people who think globally."

By the time he graduated from Sydenham, Kejriwal knew that business was his calling. "Like a good son, I joined my father's hosiery business at age 21," says Kejriwal, who went on to turn his family's conventional socks manufacturing facility in Lower Parel into a hi-tech production house.

It was around this time that the internet started making inroads into India. "An entrepreneur is restless, he needs new challenges. I had already done whatever was needed in my father's business. The challenge was gone and I was fed up with the red-tapism in manufacturing," reveals the contest freak.

He hit upon the idea of an online contest portal because "even though I loved entering contests, I felt that the process was defective. I didn't want to fill out a competition postcard and I was too lazy to go post it," says Kejriwal.

"That's when the lightbulb flashed. If you want to play contests, make them easy to participate in. The internet was ideal." Kejriwal's grandfather helped out by lending him space in Girgaum.

It was run down, but it was a start. "I wanted MTV's Cyrus Oshidar to be creative director of my company.It took all my powers of persuasion, including making him a stakeholder in the start-up, to get Cyrus to come aboard."

That's how Contests2win's first contest — the 'Pants Down Contest' — went online. It was for Jockey underwear and became a big hit. Soon, Contests2win had 500 clients aboard.

"Then I got a surprise, a pleasant one," he says. "I got the first venture capitalist to invest, and that too without going looking for one." After that, there's been no looking back for Kejriwal who has since founded two subsidiaries — mobiles2win.com and media2win.com — along with building a successful mobile2win business in China.

And his mantra? Quite simply, "You can't demand respect, you earn it."