In an exclusive interview with Insights Success magazine, Rohan Shravan, Founder & Director of Inkers talks about his overall journey and the current industry scenario.
IS: Kindly brief us about yourself, your initial journey since the beginning of your career?
Rohan: I was born to a lower middle class family, so since the beginning I knew that there is no alternative for hard work. I had a curious mind, so instead of playing with toys or musical instruments, I would rather open them and learn how they worked. The journey for me has been nothing less than spectacular, and full of highs and lows. I started my first business when I was in 8th grade, and since then always wanted to be an entrepreneur, solving complex challenges. I also believe that the plan B should always be to not have a plan B, and have stuck to it. For example when I wrote IIT-JEE, I did not fill in any other form. It’s risky but works most of the times, and requires intense dedication.
IS: What drives you every day to work? Or what is your motivation which pushes you to enhance your performance?
Rohan: I have a vision of how the world would look in 2040, and believe unless I am doing what I am doing I might not see that world. I have a wish list of things I want to do before I go away, and that’s the biggest motivation for me. I also look at time differently. When you look at a week not just as 7 days, but close to 2% of the whole year, you feel an urge to work on things immediately. One month and close to 9% of the year is gone!
IS: Kindly talk about the most memorable moments along with the challenges you have been through?
Rohan: We were unknown when we started Notion Ink. We knew we have what world wants to see and it will impact everything. I took the risk and went to Las Vegas to attend, uninvited, CES. A day before the official launch, NVIDIA’s CEO Mr Jensen Huang was practicing Tegra 1 launch. Unfortunately none of the devices, which his ODMs had made, were working. Some had touch panel issue; some were not booting up, etc. Only device which was working was in my hand, our first device known as Adam. I proposed it to him, and he used it to launch NVIDIA, introducing Adam from Notion Ink as the next generation of computing device.
We had shipped Adam to 88 countries, including people on US’s naval ship USS America LHA6. And our 6th device was ordered by Apple Cupertino (when Steve Jobs was alive) before Apple iPad was launched. These are some of my favourites.
IS: How does your family contribute to your success? Talk about your family values, the culture which has strongly impacted your professional journey?
Rohan: Many times you have to make a choice, work or family. And unless you have a family which understands this, everything might break. Fortunately my family understands this. I saw my mom and dad as entrepreneurs, and learnt from them that no one would treat their work or child as they would. They would leave at night to put posted about their business on the walls to promote it. I saw them following a disciplined regime and saw how wonderfully it worked. They worked hard and taught me, that whenever you will take a shortcut, it will come back to haunt you one day.
IS: How has tech domain transformed over the years?
Rohan: Time passes by fast, so we don’t feel much difference, but everything is connected and getting smaller and faster exponentially. Things which were impossible just few years back are in our hands now. What is getting difficult is to stay relevant. These new technologies are being built on decades of engineering, and to make something background is must now. We are increasingly going towards autonomous machines, and that I find threatening to a large segment of population. I feel we do not realize that at the speed at which we are moving, we might not be relevant to contribute back to the society anymore.
IS: How are you foreseeing the future in terms of expansion of your business, the advent of new technologies and increasing players in the market?
Rohan: Inker is doing tremendously well. Everyone today thinks they are doing AI, but AI is not easy, and most are actually using the term to re-name data analytics. When we compete with our competitors, we see a clear edge, and have been able to impress our customers across the globe. Competition is fierce, especially from Western countries, and consolidation has already started happening. I feel privileged to be able to work with an extraordinary team which has allowed us to keep an edge w.r.t. the competition.
IS: Where do you see yourself in future? Or, what is your ultimate professional objective of your life?
Rohan: Since childhood, I have hated the fact that machines are forcing us to learn to use them. I find machines using us and not the other way round. I see myself solving this to make sure machines do the actual work, and we humans can start focusing on explorations and discovering’s. Ultimately I want to teach as many people as I can, all I know. I see myself as retiring to become a professor and inspire students to look beyond what they think is possible.
IS: Share your views on the current tech-enabled business scenario in India.
Rohan: India has not yet crossed the digitization phase. We have a habit of skipping things. We skipped landline telephony and jumped to wireless/mobile. We skipped manufacturing and jumped to services directly. We might also skip building roads all together and adopt flying cars (hoping this becomes true one day). I feel same thing will happen w.r.t. tech in industry. We will skip digitization phase, and directly adopt AI/ML enabled machines and related technologies. But this is a big concern. These modern technologies will usher us in an age of productivity and low costs but will also take away mundane, repetitive jobs, and India is full of such jobs currently. We are under-estimating the amount of re-training which Indian workforce would need within next 5-6 years.
Rohan Shravan: Delivering Enriching Tech-Enabled Solutions
