Gurugram-based Zostel was started with the prize money won in a poker game
Zostel was founded with an initial investment of $15,000, which Dharamveer Singh Chouhan, its founder, claims to have accumulated by winning a poker game.
Dharamveer, a graduate from IIT (BHU) Varanasi, says that his only intention to do engineering was to be able to start something in the gaming space. Dharamveer founded Bright Ants Gaming Studio in 2009, when he was in his first year at IIT.
“At Bright Ants, I would build social games, the likes of Farmville and Mafia Wars, focused on cricket. Two of our successful games were Iplcricketgame.com and Battle T20,” he says.
Being an early entrant in the market and having found no way to monetise the business, Bright Ants eventually had to be shut in 2011.
Dharamveer soon landed with a four-month-long internship as a software engineer at SenoCAD Research in Karlsruhe, Germany during the summers. The working hours were till 5 pm, but Dharamveer worked until 8 pm everyday and took Fridays off.
“I used the extended weekend opportunities to explore Europe,” he says. Dharamveer travelled across Europe, including Switzerland, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands.
“During my travels, I fell in love with the idea of backpacking. The experience of meeting new people was fun and unique. It was different from what I had experienced in India,” he says.
The entrepreneur recalls that once when he was touring Spain, he got lost in Badalona and had to spend the night at the beach. That experience of sleeping under the stars changed Dharamveer’s idea of travelling.
“There was a point when I realised that although I am poor right now but even when I earn a million dollars and get the option to stay in a five-star hotel, I would prefer staying at backpacker hostels and meet new people,” Dharamveer adds.
Travelling thus helped him reflect on his mistakes and gave him the confidence to take the next steps ahead.
On completion of his internship, Dharamveer came back to India and after completing his engineering, he started working with the San Francisco-based social game developer Zynga, as a games designer. Just when Dharamveer thought that his dream was coming true, he realised that the “grass is always greener on the other side.”
He quit within three months and joined IIM-Calcutta for his MBA.
“My earlier stint with Bright Ants made me realise that, while it was possible to start a business inside the campus, one had to let go off activities that happen inside the campus. Thus, at IIM, I had to quit the placements within a week of joining,” he adds.
Dharamveer soon started researching the travel industry, this time with an increased bandwidth to focus on building something on his own. “I gained confidence that I could do something in the backpacker hostel space but like other budding entrepreneurs, I did not have the money,” he says.
During his free time at IIM, besides researching, Dharamveer spent a lot of time playing poker. Additionally, he was mentored by poker star Aditya Agarwal.
Eventually, the initial $30 that Dharamveer had bet on poker was converted to $15,000 within months. He claims that his all-India rank in poker tournaments was under 10.
“Instead of giving a push to my Poker career, I decided to invest that money in building something in the travel industry,” Dharamveer says.
And with this money he started the first hostel, Zostel, in his hometown, Jodhpur, in June 2013. Today, Zostel is a community-led and experience-driven ecosystem, providing budget accommodation across 36 locations in India and Nepal.
Going ahead, Dharamveer through Zostel plans to unlock India’s potential as the ultimate travel destination for travellers across the world.
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