This story was originally published by : YourStory | Author: Malavika Velayanikal
Success come with the zeal and enthusiasm accompanied with passion. Above all there could be nothing more exciting and satisfying than earning in the very field you have lived or living for.
School dropouts and college dropouts making a mark in respective fields, be it Bill Gates, Steve Jobs etc. Here we come across an Indian whose story has more twist and turn that could set a precedent for many computer geeks.
Shashank Chourey is from Indore who fell in love with computer like many of the young college going teens. His parents aspired him to become an engineer which again is a common phenomena witnessed across the country.
He got so much addicted to computer while playing games that he got himself into the field of hacking and coding and made similar friends online. He soon found a job that paid him $50 to hack an email account.
As per the website YourStory, Shashank continued this in the first year of his engineering. He hacked into more than 40 Indian government websites and more than 100 big corporate websites which included NTPC tenders, the Delhi Government official site and many such others. Additionally, he tracked viruses and vulnerabilities, wrote algorithms and worked as a cyber security expert with Indore Police. He was also active as an Internet Security Expert on the IRC(Internet relay Chat) network which is an anonymous network where the identity of the person with whom one chats is not clear.
They hire people, find information and is even used by agencies like Interpol, FBI and CBI. Being on IRC was less productive and money making was difficult. College too didn’t appeal to Shashank and he dropped out of college in his second year.
This profile which is attractive now didn’t have much weight in India way back in 2007-2008. In order to add up to the resume, he worked as a web security consultant with a corporate company which would also expose him to its culture. He would hack into the website of the clients of his employer and sell them their services. This produced additional revenue to his employer. He worked in the same company for one and half year, got three promotions and quit the job as a project manager when got a better opportunity. But this step proved too risky and he never got a salary with the new company. When he quit the that firm, he had INR 5000 with him in the name of working capital.
On 23rd February, when Shashank left the job he was left with no degree at his disposal but the experience and enthusiasm at his disposal. On the same day he made up his mind and worked online. He got data entry assignment for $18 on the same day. Even at that point, the only thing that traversed in his mind was the ‘start up’.
His friends soon left him for better jobs but by then he had sound establishment. In October 2009, he started India Info-tech with a small team and small investment. He realized that he has to work in the service industry as offering product would have required big money and infrastructure. Shashank worked on SEO services and made his own unique process flow which enabled him to handle large assignments simultaneously. His managerial abilities and planning helped them finish big projects with only a small team. He worked tirelessly to make sure that their clients stayed with them.
In February 2014, it was already five years since he left the job with only Rs 5000 in hand, Shashank was making 5 crore annually and that was the biggest achievement.
