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My Life
Swapnil Chugh defines himself as a dreamer. He recently founded www.serenewoods.com, an online portal to promote creativity and freedom of expression of emerging authors. Let us follow the entrepreneur through his day and discover the intricacies of a self-publishing business
An entrepreneur is not born. His dreams nurture him into one. For Swapnil, engineering seemed like the obvious career choice at first. But once through with IIT, he went on to study finance at IIM and thereafter, to work as an equity research analyst at Goldman Sachs. At the end of the road, a question lingered like an unforgotten past. Was finance his true love? A writer at heart, Swapnil gave up his job in a jiffy to do what truly felt right. He chose to be an entrepreneur, to fulfil his dream and that of all budding authors.
A dream
Swapnil’s idea was born with a dream. He had a vision to make the Sisyphean task of publishing, a cakewalk. As he says, “Creativity should not be stifled. It should be given every opportunity to take flight. Being a writer, I realised that it is often very difficult to publish works through the publishing houses. In the process, the writer in most people may also get nipped in the bud. By creating Serene Woods, I wanted to allow creativity to flourish without any restrictions.”
A typical day
“Creativity should not be stifled. It should be given every opportunity to take flight," - Swapnil Chugh
7:30 am – “My day starts at 7:30 am when the worst noise in the world, the alarm clock, wakes me up from my peaceful sleep and finally after snoozing and some more snoozing, I get out of bed for a busy day ahead. I spend 30 minutes, catching up on what the world has been up to and then take a quick shower.”
9:00 am to 11:00 am – After breakfast, Swapnil spends an hour talking to his younger brother who is at MIT and is also a key member of Serene Woods. “We discuss tons of ideas of what all we can do to expand Serene Woods, especially in the US where the market is more open to such niche areas. I answer email queries from new authors wanting to publish with Serene Woods, talk to my designer about the latest on the website and check with Akshay, Manish and Aparna (partners in crime) regarding the latest developments on their front.”
11 am to 12 pm – Swapnil connects to his printer on the new orders of books. He’s also constantly in touch with his website designer. “We continuously try to add more features based on user feedback and also to create something totally special (under wraps!),” Swapnil says with a mysterious smile.
12 pm to 2 pm - “Figuring out new avenues of marketing the site, possible events at the universities, workshops and the logistics behind executing these ideas takes up much of my time. A couple of phone calls, a couple of e-mails and a lot of hope and optimism see me through this phase of the plan.”
2 pm – “My phone calls are followed by a nice lunch, mostly a Subway sandwich and chocolate croissant (can’t do without it!) and I am ready for another phase of my life.”
Till 5 pm - Swapnil is currently involved with a finance start-up too, given his finance background. “We are trying to create a way of presenting companies to retail investors, not heard of before, which should gain significant interest among stock market enthusiasts once we go live.”
5 pm to 7 pm – Swapnil’s drive back home is usually spent catching up with his friends in different cities. On reaching home, it is a quick change and then off to the swimming pool for his daily 500 meter swim and relaxation in the pool after a hot day.
7 pm to 10 pm – “Back home, I catch up on the cricket on television, talk to my mum and then dinner, which can be either at home or going out. Post dinner, I’m in discussion with my team once again, brainstorming.”
10 pm to midnight - Before going off to sleep, Swapnil updates his cricket blog (He dreams of becoming a cricket journalist) and checks out new places for travel (He also wants to be a travel writer after 35!).
He calls Serene Woods his love, for life. His writing dreams find solace in his spirited entrepreneurship. People ask him, “Why, Serene Woods?” He says, “Take a walk in the woods sometime and listen to the leaves rustle, the streams meander and the cool breeze sing and peace will come over you and the world will turn serene. For me, that’s complete happiness!”
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