Nishkarsh Sharma – From Rags to Riches

“Dad started out a family business to make the ends meet. The business flourished initially but it started declining with time and it became difficult for us to sustain; we got indebted with a lot of loans. Paying the school fee was an added challenge. Every exam someone from the accounts department would come and ask me, ‘Why is your fee still due? I can’t allow you to write exams. ‘Frustrated and tired of the humiliation I would often question my parents as to why we have to live such a constrained life, but never got an answer.

All the advice I ever got was ‘Dad already lost everything he had due to this business, no matter what, never enter into that field, go for a stable job.’ Going through the same turmoil every quarter, I stopped paying heed to my academics. While dad worked hard day and night to make money for the school fee, gulping down my results was the hardest part for him.

Noticing my surly, one day he sat me down and said ‘Look, you know about our condition, if you want to get any better then start focusing on your future or else you’ll become a vagrant.’

He had tears in his eyes while he talked to me that day and it was at that moment when I made up my mind to never put him in a spot like that ever again and have a stable future. And, from almost flunking in 9th standard, I worked hard and topped my school in my 12th! It was all vernal until the second year of my college when I realized that engineering wasn’t my thing.

I started exploring other fields like marketing, tutoring. I started my business with 3 other partners but guess what, we went bankrupt within a year. There even came a point when mom asked me ‘should I ask dad to arrange a job for you? ‘I didn’t give in and, here I am today – successfully running the company Digital Dukaandaar and a podcast (The Nishkarsh Sharma Show) sharing my stories and experiences – all secure both emotionally and financially!

But, none of this would’ve been possible if I didn’t want it bad enough; woh kehte hai naa kisi cheez ko puri dil se chaho toh puri kayanat tumhe usse milane ki saazish mai lag jaati hai!”