A Day In The Life Of: Kapil Arora, A Bootstrapped Entrepreneur Who Takes Startup Lessons From Shark Tank
Every week, we get in touch with some of the brilliant minds from the industry who are working in emerging tech areas like big data, data analytics, artificial intelligence, machine learning and the internet of things etc. and try to step into their shoes. For this week’s A Day In The Life Of column, we caught up with Kapil Arora, Founder and CEO of an AI-powered photography services company, Travographer. Arora is a morning person and he starts his day at 6:30 am in the morning. He works the regular hours from 10 am-6 pm. However, Arora said that Travographer is a bootstrapped company and he believes that having strict office hours does not always work — not only for him but also for his co-workers. Being the founder, he believes in the fact that one has to be available 24×7 in the early days — be it for clients or the team. When asked his best part of the day, Arora said, “Working with Travopreneurs and seeing them working with the same passion as I work is definitely the best part of my workday.” Furthermore, he also said that he is an absolute techie and when he sees something new happening in the tech world which is making human life easier or contributing to society makes his day. The Work Process As Arora walked us through his day, we asked him about his role in Travographer, and he said that his primary work is to bring in new clients, develop the tech and product roadmap, building and nurturing the team and ensuring that there’s enough money in the bank to pay the bills (a big priority when being bootstrapped). “But being the CEO, I think one has to get their hands dirty with almost all the things and gradually get talent that can do it better than you and then delegate,” said Arora. Talking about the role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Travographer, he emphasised on the fact that AI is impacting human lives in ways that could have never been imagined earlier. Travographer is using AI to redefine how leisure travellers capture and preserve their precious travel memories and photos. “Travographer provides vetted local photographers to leisure travellers worldwide and ensures a unique experience through the power of artificial intelligence,” Arora added. “Having a network of 10,000+ photographers in 100+ countries and a proprietary AI-based photo retouching engine enables us to make personal vacation photography affordable to millions of leisure travellers with a quick turnaround.” In the last 2.5 years, with AI at the core, the company has captured and delivered beautiful memories to over 100,000 travellers. Moreover,  Arora and the Travographer team is also working on ways to use its AI engine to automatically sort, choose, and edit the best of the existing travel photos on phones, and deliver them to the clients in a beautiful short video or an album. Work-Life Balance When you run a company, the undeniable fact is that it is not a cakewalk to strike a perfect work-life balance, and Arora is no exception. The Travographer CEO said that stressful work-days and important meetings usually do clash with his personal life priorities as far as entertainment and dates are concerned.  However, he still ensures that he spends time with his family every day. Despite a hectic work schedule, Arora manages a buzzing social life. He has been an avid traveller since his chartered accountancy days and has made a lot of local friends who meet him quite frequently. “Apart from this, networking and social life automatically come with any sales role,” said Arora. Even though Arora is busy most of the time with Travographer and his other activities, he still tries to go for a walk at least 30 minutes a day and read a book or watch a startup TV shows like Shark Tank or Silicon Valley. The Roadmap Ahead Looking ahead, Arora is focusing on sharpening the company’s AI technology in order to deliver the best-edited photos to travellers in just 5 seconds once the photos are uploaded on the platform. Furthermore, the company is also experimenting with machine learning and AI to build a product that helps people upload and sort their existing travel photos, automatically score, and choose the best ones, get them edited through the AI engine and delivered to them in a beautifully designed album. Not to mention, he is also planning to raise funds and expand the team to increase the customer base and lead in the market.
Every week, we get in touch with some of the brilliant minds from the industry who are working in emerging tech areas like big data, data analytics, artificial intelligence, machine learning and the internet of things etc. and try to step into their shoes. For this week’s A Day In The Life Of column, we […]
For this week’s A Day In The Life Of column, we caught up with Kapil Arora, Founder and CEO of an AI-powered photography services company, Travographer.
["Entrepreneur", "Entrepreneurship India", "Interviews and Discussions"]
["big data", "Go", "API", "artificial intelligence", "machine learning", "startup", "AI", "Entrepreneurship India", "ViT", "analytics", "Entrepreneur", "R", "Interviews and Discussions"]
["AI", "artificial intelligence", "machine learning", "analytics", "R", "Go", "API", "big data", "ViT", "startup"]
Harshajit is a writer / blogger / vlogger. A passionate music lover whose talents range from dance to video making to cooking. Football runs in his blood. Like literally!
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