Aditya Gaurav CEO & Founder of Knowasiak Professional Interview

I tried my best to take out time after my school to build my own first website within two months I ended up making the first website of my life in 6th class. Slowly, as I was not so good at sports, I spent most of my day time at home in my room only, building and brain-storming on everything I wanted. I started to get global exposure for my work on my website theasiak.wordpress.com I reached a stunning 450,000 page views a year, and now it’s closed, But, People started knowing me and commenting and recognizing me for my website. I continued with my studies and gave all my remaining time to building & learning new things.

In 9th class, I was elected by my school & Mumbai railway division to become the team leader of our team of 25 students comprised of students from 9th to 12th class, we painted India’s first tricolor suburban train in 6 days, and I received recognition internationally for my work of spreading awareness about Swachh Bharat.

In 9th only, I got elected by my school to go on a long trip to Kerala and meet Kerala’s Chief Minister, Mr Pinarayi Vijayan. I became a volunteer to help Kerala with its flood crisis in 2018, where I represented the Maharashtra railway division.

In 10th I made my own Social Networking Website, known as knowasiak.com People started using it from 115+ countries, currently, it’s India’s one of the best social networking websites.

Along with creating knowasiak.com my own social networking website, I also started that time work on one more startup known as Cognac – The Metaverse Game. The game reached great heights at the same time when my social network website was booming, and the game achieved 5th rank in the whole Asia, and it truly helped me show my coding and management skills on a global level. Then I achieved the status of becoming the first person in India to get the most prestigious, Bharat Atma-Nirbhar Award at the age of 17, this award is being given by the govt for more than 22 years, in the whole India’s history, I became India’s first person to receive this award at the age of 17, the most small age in pan-India.

To be precise, I never wanted to spend my childhood as a normal teenager, when my friends were usually outside roaming, I’m mostly in some meeting or building something new, even today it is the same schedule for me.

Now, on google.com more than 3,700, three thousand, and seven hundred people have written about me, and have appraised me for my work in my companies. This gives me confidence and will to do more great things and work endlessly. Thank you to all my supporters who have written about me, and known me for my work.

TheCconnects: Who has influenced you the most in life and why?

 

Aditya Gaurav: Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar has influenced me the most, as he taught me many things related to life as when to take which action? How to fight with problems? and How to get ahead of everyone and get what you want even if there is chaos going all around. Focus on the best what one can do and can achieve by doing smart & hard work at the same time. He has taught a lot of things according to his stories and teachings, it’s clear why he was so successful in his career, and also he played an important role in chasing freedom for India. He thought of the future from every perspective and took steps that were necessary and not based on emotions.

TheCconnects: What are the biggest challenges you have faced in your life & how did you overcome them?

 

Aditya Gaurav: The resources for me were mostly short of money and my family also sometimes struggled to provide me funds for my projects that reaches thousands of rupees. So in that case, not all resources were there for me, and also sometimes I didn’t have a pc, with me in recent years, so I used my cousin’s laptop & my relative’s devices to continue working whenever I got time.

All in all, I would say, that there were mostly missing resources but then also I had to will and courage to get them and find ways to complete my work somehow. And although my father, was there, he left our family when I was very small even before I joined the school, he left us. So I had to face many more things than I had usually had to go to the district court with my mom since I was a kid, see documents, see fights, and violence & It was a hard time.

My father attempted to murder my mother on numerous occasions. The government didn’t support us; instead, they were usually paid by father. I have seen many struggles with my family since I was in elementary school, including starvation, a patriarchal society that blamed us instead of our father for his wrongdoings.

We went through a lot of depression and humiliation because we didn’t had any support from dad. Dad abandoned us when I was three years old, and he never returned or provided us with any financial assistance or social support. So there was a financial problem, but my maternal family did everything they could to assist us and provide us with the essential resources we required. A deep hearted thanks to my Nanaji – naniji,

Arun Nanaji, cousin uncle & aunt, Mr Jagdish & Mrs Kekai, who were always there for us in every situation, they stood with us even when we needed food in the evening due to starvation. The other major challenge I faced was of starting a Game Development startup, It was very hard, not too many people in India do game development, and rarely anybody does it, among them also most of them are 2D developers. It was back in 2020, starting a 3D game development startup, almost every step was a challenge to me in this big deep tech industry.

In the 2020 lockdown, my mom arranged money, so I can buy a server computer to start game development on a better scale. I managed to form this startup after I completed my 10th, Lockdown started so I had time all day, So what I did was to continue learning about game development for 16 hours each and every single day for a whole year, that’s how I studied and overcome the challenge of creating my own Game startup named Cognac – The Metaverse Game.

Using this game I won all the way 5th rank in the whole Asia Continent, then I won $5000 from Pune Fest COEP for my work in this field. Similarly, working to build Knowasiak was also, a major challenge to me, as it’s a thing that normal people only know to use, and very few people in the world actually know how to build one from scratch, So it became a huge challenge to me. Before starting to work on Knowasiak I had to work in the field of web development for more than 4-5 years, I started learning about web development in 6th class, So it took me this much time all my school years went into studying all those fields and gain knowledge to build Knowasiak what it is today. After I overcame the challenge of building my social network website in 10th class, I got many recognitions and awards, I became the first person in India to get the Bharat Atma Nirbhar Award at age of 17. after this I achieved the title of ‘Most Inspiring Social CEO of the Year 2022’ internationally at age of 18.

TheCconnects: What lessons you have learned from your professional career?

Aditya Gaurav: I always advise people not to stay with these kinds of people-

1. A person who seems good, but is bad on the back.

2. People who can’t keep their words.

3. Backstabbing friends.

4. Too good-sounding person is usually bad, keep distance from that person at the start.

5. A person who wants to hire you, but isn’t interested in your future wellness.

Work consistently and always keep the quality of perseverance. Consistency is a must along with keeping the thought of working for learning and growing, and money will come itself. Work should be in such a way that is beneficial to the community around you as a whole, this helps growth. Along with time, a person should work on creating more new ideas and thoughts so the business can gain new heights while coping with the new generations and maintaining market share. The evolution of strategies and tactics is very important along with increasing your knowledge also.

Because gaining more knowledge about a particular field than others will help you to grow beyond limits and fast. A person should keep working in the field that he likes, this helps him grow exponentially but if a person changes his ways of work and fields frequently in life, then changing fields in his career won’t help that person grow in his career and that person becomes stuck.

Also, if a person tries to remain in a job role, that he isn’t knowledgeable about then he can’t achieve great heights working there.

TheCconnects: What do you see as the biggest challenge for brands in the digital space?

 

Aditya Gaurav: I biggest challenge I do see for brands is mostly, a lack of proper knowledge or streamlined guidance from a single source. Most businesses nowadays try to fall into many traps or gurus, but to be ready for the real market, they should pick one good source and try to keep up with that only, When that brand tries to put legs in two boats, they usually get drown in water. And in the end, this leads nowhere.

Secondly, many brands in the digital space are kinda new, with many of their models operating in trial and error model. So I do find this very intriguing that so many people and brands still are figuring the standard model out.

TheCconnects: How your product/solution can help to resolve the pain points of your customers?

 

Aditya Gaurav: I have two businesses, Knowasiak is a unique social networking web app where entrepreneurs and people like businessmen can talk with others freely, and make wall posts like photos and videos. At knowasiak.com we help big people get global famous and get a presence on the internet by sharing their stories, work, or achievements with the public. At knowasiak people can promote their stories and products or publicize their services, we offer a platform to all.

Knowasiak also offers people to advertise to reach the global population millions each and every month. We do offer a publishing facility where a person can easily publish his/her article on our platform to get an audience and engagement without any hard work.

At Cognac, I develop photorealistic metaverse game and I participate with them in competitions worldwide, recently Cognac – The Metaverse Game, created history when I became the first person in Asia’s largest TechFest to win 5th rank in Game development in the whole Asia Continent. The Cognac game is a nominee for the World Championship in 2022, and the best part is, that I have already cleared 3 out of 5 rounds of the world championship. So it’s more leaned towards making history by representing India abroad in Game Development Conferences and Competitions.

TheCconnects: Do you have any advice for those who want to become a chief executive officer?

 

Aditya Gaurav: I would like to go a step further in this question and by this, I mean that a chief executive officer isn’t just a man with a company to handle, it is more than that, It’s about handling tasks with wisdom and years of gained experience around the industry. It’s about matureness. Never ever get proud of what you did, because the next day somebody might do it better than you in less time. Everybody should keep their eyes on the sky and feet on the ground, every time. You should treat people always in a good way, no matter if they did bad, keep your distance from them while treating them nicely. Nobody in this world no one will care for you more than your parents.

Keep in mind when dealing with people. Age is just a number, a person should keep learning all his life to grow. It doesn’t matter if another person is rich or poor, that person is having achievements or not, that person is doing something or not, and whether that person is of any age, smaller or bigger than you. You should always keep your mind open to learn from your surrounding around you. There’s always something or other, you can learn from people around you every moment.

TheCconnects: What makes your business in the industry unique?

 

Aditya Gaurav: My business industry is very unique as there are only very few companies in these industries of social networking and metaverse gaming. So pretty much I’m dealing with very rare industries altogether. The Social networking industry demands, high and deep tech knowledge and experience, so it can only be achieved after long terms of research, study, and hit and miss of practice. Still today, I have to learn every day about web security, practices, performance, and new technologies for knowasiak for at least an hour.

Talking about Cognac – The Metaverse Game, it is also a very unique and pretty new industry as Metaverse is a new concept, learning about it is surely what most people will fear. Learning every day new things about it is what keeps my game updated as per the newest technologies and APIs. Pretty much my industry is all unique and demands high research and work time.