One fine morning in July 2010 I realized that my work was my passion and my hobby. That passion was to design brand identities and build businesses from scratch. At that time, I was working as a Principal Designer in a leading branding firm. But the hunger to head the ship fuelled my aspirations and made me quit my onward chart of growth and start living a new dream from scratch.

It was a brand new day, the memorable day I stepped into the business as an entrepreneur, a brand new day for starting to realize a brand new dream. Thus to take the world of brands by storm, my dream was named A Brand New Day. To build several other brands I decided to build my own.

Blessed are those who realise that their work, hobby and passion align together. It is the seed to branch out your own dream. You just need to awaken to the moment that the seed sprouts into endless possibilities residing in you.

Starting a business had its challenges. Personal experience aside, our experience as a firm was minimal. Due to this, it took us a while to get recognized in the market and establish ourselves as a credible agency. Resource crunch is also inevitable when working on tight budgets. Even if a small team, I was lucky to work with a great team together amongst whom we could share the workload. We were always pumped up to meet deadlines in time. During this time, I didn’t have to envision the dream and tread troubled waters alone. Priyanka Sachdev partnered with me to bring A Brand New Day, now known as ABND, to life.

We were new, competing against the grey hair in the market. But, in the span of 10 years of my career, I learnt to love branding through a perspectival journey of being into industrial design, communication design, product and retail design. I received golden opportunities of working with amazing people and I credit a lot of my insights to legendary architect, Ratan Batliboi and at EuMo under Shanoo Bhatia and Harkaran Singh Grewal. They played an important role in shaping my experiences through my career and growth. It is rightly said that the people you’re with give you a distinct direction in life. My perspectives on branding, marketing and design was thus all encompassing by the time I started pulling my own reins. Our first project won many accolades within a small circle of clients. By word of mouth, the circle continued to expand and we did not have to think over our marketing for a good span of 3-5 years. We reaped in the profits to keep building a better and larger team. My hiring practice was true to the essence and culture of ABND, skills could be picked up on the job but an enthusiasm to learn and unlearn should naturally fuel each of my team member.

Building a business is like bringing up your own child. You go through many ups and downs but at the end it is your own baby. You have more control in raising it right. You end up working on holidays and your phone keeps buzzing 24*7, but you learn to be responsible for your own dream and live it to the fullest. As an employee, one is assured of a salary but the leader of the pack has to keep the pack’s incentives before his own. That is the key to grow as a company, to grow as a close-knit family. You are answerable to the pack and for the pack. You can’t make an excuse.

When you know your work, hobby and passion are aligned to each other, reach for the sky and build your own business. There is no joy like having something of your own where you can nurture your dreams. Only true entrepreneurs know the feeling of celebrating “Own Business Day.”