TheCconnects: Can you tell our readers a little about your professional journey & how did you come to your current role/position?
Ashok Mishra: I completed my undergraduate in computer science in 2018 and started my professional journey as a software engineer in OYO Rooms. After a couple of years at OYO Rooms, I switched to Roomi, a US-based company.
I belong to a family of astrologers and Spiritual coaches. My great-grandfather and grandfather were renowned astrologers. My father is also in this profession, providing services to his clients all around the world and helping them in different aspects of their life for the past 3 decades. I am deeply motivated and understand the values of astrology, yoga, meditation, and Ayurveda. I believe that a holistic spiritual lifestyle is the best way to live a stress-free and calm life. But at the same time, I have felt that this sector is highly unorganized and accessibility of expert astrologers is a big challenge.
TheCconnects: Who has influenced you the most in life and why?
Ashok Mishra: The person who has influenced me the most in my life is my father. And the reason is the way he worked in his life is really motivating. In the last 30 years, he has served more than 40000 people. I get influenced by the work he always did to serve the community instead of making it a business. He never kept a fixed price for his sessions. He used to accept whatever people used to give him, he never asked for a fee from anyone. It was very easy for him to make a lot of money by selling stones and all but he never did this. So I learned a very valuable lesson from him to just focus on serving the community and try to provide real value in their life. Once you can do this, everything else will follow you automatically.
TheCconnects: What are the biggest challenges you have faced in your life & how did you overcome them?
Ashok Mishra: I have seen ups and downs in my life. Due to some major health issue my education got disturbed for months in my 10th standard but I didn’t lose hope and somehow completed my 10th and 12th then I prepared 2 years for the Medical entrance exam and I failed there and in last did my graduation in computers from distance education and getting job was challenging for me so I really worked very hard and somehow got my 1st job at Innov8 and after that, I worked for OYO, Roomi and now my Startup But I think the biggest overall when I look back at life so far, the biggest challenges have been in terms of establishing my company Spirico. Daily facing new challenges so it’s all about learning, doing, and growing.
TheCconnects: What lessons you have learned from your professional career?
Ashok Mishra: I think the lessons that I have learnt are all about being very flexible and exploring everything. From my personal experience I can say that don’t lose hope in your life I have failed many times and I accepted my failure and learned valuable lessons from every failure and moved forward in life and second. From the entrepreneurship point of view, I would say that having a very high sense of optimism to the extent of irrational optimism is required because what you are doing is something that has never been done before and hence you need to have a huge sense of optimism that I will be able to do it. And always be ready for lots of failures. You will try 100s of things and most probably 99 ways will fail and 1 way will work for you so never fear failing in the entrepreneurial journey.
TheCconnects: What do you see as the biggest challenge for brands in the digital space?
Ashok Mishra: As far now the challenges I have seen are that it’s really hard to build trust in users because users will share their personal life issues with the astrologers and for this, they need to trust the platform and astrologers. At Spirico, the privacy of the client is the topmost priority. We are the first in the industry who brought an appointment booking system with astrologers and we use to share the birth details and questions of users before the session so that our astrologer can prepare and read the chart before the session.
TheCconnects: How your product/solution can help to resolve the pain points of your customers?
Ashok Mishra: Due to a lack of proper guidance, mental health issues and depression are growing globally. According to WHO, globally, more than 300 million people face challenges related to mental health and depression. Through our product, we are helping people to take the right decisions in their life. In this stressful lifestyle, our spiritual coaches guide them in dealing with their life problems, stress, and depression and help them live happily and calm. Through Spirico we are making this world a happy place.
TheCconnects: Do you have any advice for those who want to become a chief executive officer?
Ashok Mishra: The Chief executive Officer is position that requires a lot of balance because you need to manage many functions and be aware of your finances. You need to be always motivated and always keep your team highly motivated to build the Product. You need to ensure that you communicate the vision to your teammates and among all of this I would say the most important part is that you should make sure that you are extremely transparent with your people. As Chief executive Officer you will fail many times, but it’s all about how much you have learned from your mistakes. You must bring the people with the right attitude into your team and build trust in the team.
You can connect with Ashok Mishra on Linkedin here
