Ankur Warikoo is an entrepreneur and content creator who started his journey as the founder of Nearbuy, a deal discovery platform, and today he is known for his educational videos on finance, entrepreneurship and life skills.
He has also authored two books, ‘Do Epic Shit‘ and ‘Get Epic Shit Done‘ and soon launching his third book on money management titled ‘Make Epic Money‘. He says, “My life motto is DO EPIC SHIT, where DO is about action, EPIC is about a cause larger than oneself and SHIT is having fun while living life.”
With over 3 million subscribers on YouTube and over 2.5 million followers on Instagram, Ankur Warikoo is currently running WebVeda, an online learning platform offering courses on starting up, time management, communication, and content creation.
The journey that started with being a management consultant, and then starting up ventures like SecondShaadi.com, Gaadi.com and Nearbuy.com has now turned him into a successful content creator, public speaker, author and angel investor. With over 10 years of entrepreneurial experience, Ankur’s journey is truly inspiring for aspiring creators and entrepreneurs.
Success Story of Ankur Warikoo
Coming from an extremely humble background, his little self sure had massive goals for his age. Ankur, unlike the majority of the school-going kids, always knew what he wanted to do in life.
When asked about his career path, he says, “I wasn’t meant to do what I do now, I was meant to be a space scientist, I was growing up to join NASA and to become the first man on Mars.”
The year was 2002, and Ankur, at 22, after immense hard work, set foot in the US after securing a full scholarship for a Ph.D. program in Physics. Although he was always crazy good at it, his heart lay somewhere else.
After 2 years of a conflicted heart and an MS in Physics from Michigan State University, US, he dropped out of his PhD program in pursuit of his real passion.
He returned to India with zero foresight and zero certainty. But there was one thing he was certain of— he was never going to do something he didn’t enjoy. This change of heart was finally accompanied by an MBA degree from the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad.
He says it’s the best thing he ever did for himself. Post his MBA, he went on to work as a consultant at Kearney which completely changed the course of his life.
The next 10 years were spent in entrepreneurship and building his own companies and 2016 was the year when he started a video series called “Warikoo Wednesdays” on Linkedin where he spoke about his experience and learnings in entrepreneurship.
This was the beginning of his online presence. His YouTube is filled with motivational videos and tips to hack your way through life’s absurdities. He invites guests over on his channel to have warm and cosy conversations where he makes sure that a professional but fun and comfortable environment is presented to them.
His way of interaction, his word choice, and the carefulness in his speech are noteworthy. Speaking of enhanced communication skills, he has a full-fledged course called ‘The Ultimate Guide to Effective Communication’ designed to help you with the same.
Advice for Young Dreamers
For him, the most important piece of advice for people in their 20s is to figure out that thing that you’re good at which makes you happy at the same time.
He says, “In this world, we’re always told that doing something that you’re good at gives you automatic happiness,” which isn’t always the case. “I believe that every human being can be good at so many things, but they’re never able to bump into that thing.”
He advises them to experiment with every possible thing that they can so that out of all the things they tried and tested, they know what resonates with them and makes them most happy.
As a motivational speaker himself, he has managed to change the lives of so many people around the world through his speeches and YouTube videos— his words prove to be enough to light a fire inside anyone’s heart.
As a kid who was terrified to speak up in public settings, he’s absolutely grown to absolutely love storytelling. From wanting to step foot on Mars, to building others up, he’s gotten quite far, if not on Mars.
