Co-founder, Hobby In A Box

A child who grows up to be an engineer, gets an MBA and bags a corporate job — these are what make the dreams of a quintessential Indian parent. Manveen Kaur had made her parents proud by ticking all the boxes, and then she changed. It happened when she took a four-hour long journey to Kolkata from Jamshedpur, only to get raw materials to make a fancy candle. That experience made her realise what she really wanted to do. After her current business partner Nishant Nayak pushed her to come-up with a business plan around the concept, she presented ‘Hobby in a Box’ at Nasscom Product Conclave – Kolkata Edition 2015, where it was declared a runner-up.

Hobby In a Box is a do-it-yourself (DIY) e-store, which sells kits for everything from jewelry, purses or even mini gardens to decorate your office or home. They also conduct workshops and have their own online tutorials.

For Kaur, taking the entrepreneurial path wasn’t easy. “My mother didn’t talk to me for six months, and my relatives wondered what was I doing with my life. Nobody took arts and crafts seriously,” Kaur says. “Eventually, my start-up started generating revenue and my relationship with my mother improved.”

When Kaur started her venture, she was already in her late 20s. There was pressure to ‘settle down’ even when she was struggling to steady her business. Her suppliers too didn’t take her seriously, thinking that she was running hobby classes from home, while she was building a tech-driven e-commerce platform.

Her advice to budding entrepreneurs: “Persevere.”