“Try to achieve happiness and satisfaction by converting your passion into profession and nothing on this earth can stop you,” defines how the youth come up with passionate start-up ideas as said by Piyush Kumar - a student of third year engineering at BIT, Mesra.

The most trendy and enthusiastic part of every engineering college in India has been the games like Call of Duty or Counter Strike. While most of the students were enjoying their time playing these games, Piyush Kumar’s entrepreneurial mind was churning on the business idea developed from these games. Hence in March, 2014, Piyush with two friends of his gave a thought to starting a venture to sell games inspired merchandise and this gave birth to hangoutstore.in. To give this venture a countrywide reach, they have come up with ambassadors across India for this online store.

Although just a year old venture, it has rocketed up its reach to people across the world and knocking off its way in the E-commerce merchandise field but not without leaving behind a story of courage and keeping up the spirit to find solutions. In just 2 months of the inception of Hangout Store, Piyush was left alone with his startup as the two friends quit. They might have lacked trust over this venture, but Piyush had already dreamt the success of his idea and was in no mood to quit it anyway. 

There came Shivam Mishra to be the guiding light for the sailor of dreams, Piyush. “I just can’t recall when our friendship began, it’s been that long,” says Shivam, now the managing partner of Hangout Store. They revamped it up and started anew.

“We started with our own expenses using which we managed to get good sales, and today, we have got cash credit from bank which makes us feel blessed along with the support from family,” says the duo. Sharing the same mindset has worked as a back bone for these young entrepreneurs.

“Everything was shaky; but today, with passion and hard work we have achieved the goals before the time set for them,” Piyush expresses. From July 2014 to March 2015, Hangout Store holds the revenue of 50 lakhs with over 7000 customers which now makes the managing partners look up to raise their first angel round of funding  through an experienced angel who will be beneficial in their future endeavors. They are in search of a business coach who can mentor them after which they will be rolling out their expansion plans which range from having few kickass gaming apps to some great portals for gaming enthusiasts.

Having brought the venture to some level like this, one needs sheer craziness for business and ideas along with being lazy for everything else other than the development of the company.  This will not come out as a result without being pushed into the pool of challenges, but today, their lies only one big challenge in front of Piyush and Shivam which is to get hard working and reliable vendors who respect the importance of time and money. “We would have made around 25-30% extra this financial year had our vendors shown some respect to time and money,” says the brain head entrepreneur of 21 years, Shivam Mishra.

They believe that quality should never be compromised for any reason which is another factor that helps make Hangout Store its place in the market of stores offering gaming and anime inspired products with very less competition.

Hailing from very small towns of India, Shivam and Piyush are fun loving entrepreneurs who know that success is temporary. “We must definitely have the realization of what he has achieved and should definitely be proud of it but ego should never touch us as it has the power to erode our personality,” they say.

Both Shivam and Piyush have weird ways to think of new ideas. “While Piyush loves to see some good videos on new innovations, I surf internet for written facts and acquiring more knowledge about different businesses across the globe,” mentions Shivam to which Piyush promptly adds, “Whenever anyone of us gets an idea- we just contact the other one without looking at the time or venue.”
On being asked about the factors prominent to run a successful online store they share their views on how each aspect has to be understood and made perfect.

1)   Quality: In any business, good quality leads to a returning customer as well as a credible market.

2)   Pricing: you can play a bit with pricing depending on the quality offered and the market targeted.

3)   Delivery, availability and marketing are as important as quality or pricing. Hence, any mistake at any point can lead to destruction of whole channel.

They believe and live to regularly stay in touch with and talk to the customers and collect their feedback. They also roll out special discounts from time to time for their valued customers by cutting self-profit margins to almost zero levels just to serve and bring happiness.

“Keep rocking and always try to make the world a better place,” mentions Shivam.