Anish Achuthan, co-founder and CEO of Open decided to embark on the journey of entrepreneurship when he was just 15 years old. This was after he read the inspiring story of Hotmail's Sabeer Bhatia. There has been no stopping ever since. From running away from home right after class 10 and living in a temple for two to three years to launching 4 fintech startups before Open, including iFuturz Wireless in 2001, CashNxt in 2077, Neartivity Wireless in 2009 and Zwitch in 2013, he has done it all.
HOW ACHUTHAN BECAME AN ENTREPRENEUR
Born and brought up in a small town near Kozhikode, Achuthan's first childhood dream was to become a journalist. To fulfill that dream, he would read many newspapers and magazines every day from the age of 7 or 8. By the time he was 10, his reading habit exposed him to a lot of things like the internet, even though he was 300 kilometers away from having internet access. This pushed him to create his first email ID when he was just 12. He thought that dot-com was a good way for him to connect as a journalist to the world. And after class 10, he went on to create a dotcom portal that was similar to Rediff and Yahoo News, which had reviews, movie reviews, etc. It was also at that point of time, in 2001, that he happened to read the story of Sabeer Bhatia and how he built Hotmail. This inspired him to become an entrepreneur. Coincidentally, he also read in a Sunday supplement about the concept of venture capitalists. "This actually made me think that you don't really have to be born in a rich family or have a lot of money to actually start a business," he said.
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