A story of Venturing into a work which one enjoys
Dinesh, a hard core Engineer from IIT-Kharagpur in chemicals and diploma in IT and then turned to entrepreneur in Travel sector. How the idea of getting rid of routine job and getting in to a tourism sector worked for him…!
Dinesh born in a middle class family in WB (Hawrah). As any other middle class family, the focus was always on studies so did well in schooling, and started studying in Ram Krishna Mission schools, further Studied and got in to IIT-Kharagpur in Chemical engineering and completed his engineering.
After IIT, first job was in SAIL Raurkela as chemical engineer and after two years, he felt the wave of IT in industry and he felt to get in to IT field, this made him to go back to IIT – Kharagpur to do one year diploma in IT.
Changed the career from Chemical engineer to IT professional and landed to silicon valley of India ; Bangalore and Joined WIPRO as his first job in IT. Then the journey continued for some years like any other software engineer, he also kept changing jobs every alternate years to go up in the ladder.
He worked with Macmet India limited. Where they used to build flight simulators for Indian air-force pilots. One of the proud achievement was to build India’s first indigenous flight simulator for Russian AN32 which was deployed in Yehalanka airbase . He was the part of that team. Then kept on moving from flight simulation to telecom sector and worked with Susken for short term and then Kyocera. Stayed for almost 8 years in Kyocera. During this tenure also got lot of overseas opportunity like travel to US and Japan. During his long stint in Kyocera he came closure to the Japanese culture.
The first turning point came here in his life, where he loved the company, loved his work and wanted to be there for entire rest of the career. When he was settling down and wanted to retire from this company suddenly the great recession of 2009 appeared and one fine morning the decision by company was announced that the division with whom he associated was acquired by Mind-tree in India. The Mind-tree wanted to venture in telecom and acquired this company. The coalition didn’t go well and within one year Mind-tree decided to close down the acquired division.
The life was little mess and back at cross road for Dinesh. Most of his colleagues left mind-tree and joined other telecom companies like INTEL, CISCO etc. But he chose to stick to mind-tree for some more years. At the same time tried to further build his competencies and went back to school. He did his one year EGMP from IIMB to further polish his entrepreneurial skills and same time Mind-tree got the contract to build the Aadhar project for GOI. Dinesh was part of this project team and got the opportunity to work with world’s largest software project and event.
After completing EGMP the thoughts started in mind to do something independent. Finally one day he quite the job of Mind-tree. He took some baby steps of learning sales and marketing when he partnered with one Pre-school chain and help them setting up the units across India. Than he joined a team of start-up of educational team for building an e-learning platform called ENTUZE. Prepared the contents for Commerce students for exams for professional courses like CA/CS etc. Launched the product in south Indian cities.
At the same time the thought to venture something own independently was kept wandering in his head and wanted to do something which he enjoys. From childhood he travelled across India with his parents and later during overseas assignments he used to travel across different countries. He has been always thinking whether he can do something in travel space. During this time one of his trip gave him this conviction to move out of comfort zone and pursue something which he enjoyed to do.
During this phase of his venture his wife got a research assignment in Taiwan sponsored by Government of Taiwan. While he was in India with kids, taking care of family, Dinesh’s wife was in Taiwan. During summer vacations she insisted the family to visit the Taiwan for vacation but he was skeptical and little reluctant knowing that Taiwan is only famous for semi-conductors and nothing much to offer beyond. So he insisted to his wife as whether they can go for summer vacation at any other place instead. But finally they agreed to visit Taiwan. Even getting the Taiwan tourist VISA was a nightmare for them, in-spite of the fact that his wife was working there. Finally they got the VISA 24 hrs before the flight time.
The next two weeks as it unfolded completely changed his perspective about Taiwan. They travelled across the Island and discovered that almost every weather possible on earth was available on that tiny island. It has lot to offer like, long white sand bitches, Deep forests, snow-clad mountains, some of the world’s best hiking routes and what not. Initially, he thought Taiwanese cuisine is just like Chinese but it came out as one of the best cuisine experience in life. Contrary to his previous understanding that Taiwan is in major a non-vegetarian cuisine, he was shocked to know that more than 60% of population was Vegetarian and don’t even use onion and Garlic in their food. That was the realization that when such a small island of 400KM of length and 150 km of breadth can offer such a spectacular and wide verity of nature than definitely there are many such place on earth which can be explored and open to the people for exploration. And that was the point triggered to him that he can do something bigger in travel space to unfold such unexplored places in world.
Without having any experience in travel or tourism sector he started a company called “Three Friends Travels International” in late 2016. The idea was to give unique experiences to people by either to let them discover a new culture, or people, or places with different history. He promotes the off-beat locations in India and abroad. His start-up offers locations like North-east, interior places of Assam and Meghalaya and abroad countries like Cambodia, Vietnam, Taiwan, Turkey, CIS countries etc. They offer very rich travel experience, but less explored and also bringing some uniqueness to travel to Europe trips.
He is working on this venture now since 03 years and catered more than 100 tours and few hundred to travelers making their experience unique, while they wish to travel across the world. Having the vision to build and grow the company in such a way that it will be remembered by the travelers for the unique experiences they get from each trip that make through Three friends travel. He want to explore lot of places himself and also help happy travelers to explore in the journey. The proof of concept is done and now having a good nos of satisfied customers. The efforts are to make a global presence of the venture called Three Friends Travels International.
Courtesy : Dinesh : Three friends travels International.
dinesh@threefriendstravels.com
www.facebook.com/threefriendstravels
