Born in the small town of Saharanpur in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, Mr Qutub moved to Australia to study an MBA at the Geelong-based Deakin University in 2012.
“Initially it was very hard as I had to manage my fees and living here was expensive. Even though I got a scholarship for the first trimester, I needed money to survive so I took some odd jobs like delivering newspapers and cleaning jobs at the Avalon airport,” the 33-year-old said.
Highlights:
- Born in the small town of Saharanpur, Aamir Qutub, 33, now runs his own IT firm in Geelong with almost 100 employees
- Mr Qutub started his business from a garage with $2,000
- He has invested in eight start-up companies which he claims have a combined valuation of $30 million
“But later on, I took an internship at an IT firm as I had good web designing skills as well. After a while I was offered a job as an operation manager in the same company,” he said.
He worked directly under the general manager, who resigned leaving a position vacant in the company.
“By then I had managed to learn all about the operations so I was appointed interim GM and then my company made the role permanent as GM seeing my performance. I was 25 years old then and probably the youngest GM in the firm,” he said.
Aamir Qutub is the CEO and founder of Geelong-based company Enterprise Monkey, a multinational digital organisation. Source: Supplied by Aamir
Mr Qutub, a mechanical engineering graduate from India's Aligarh University, had developed a strong interest in coding and developing apps from his college days.
In 2014, he decided to launch his own IT company so he registered Enterprise Monkey Proprietor Ltd which he started with $2,000. The IT company aims to assist organisations with eBusiness solutions and enterprise applications.
“I started my IT firm in my brother-in-law’s garage in Melbourne and hired four people in India. I spent long hours at bus and railway stations distributing my business cards and pitching my company to people and I finally found one person who gave me a chance to explain my plan," he said.
“It was initially hard to find clients. But then the business started to grow and we were making money. However, I soon went under debt after taking a loan of around $100,000 from private lenders to maintain the cash flow as there were no profits,” he shares.
Aamir Qutub has also helped develop the Entrepreneurs Geelong Network, a group of around 200 entrepreneurs. Source: Supplied by Aamir Qutub
"The situation became so bad that I decided to quit everything. At that time I had almost 20 employees," he added.
Mr Qutub decided to give it one last try and revised his entire business model to figure out where things went wrong.
"I was mentored by a friend, Scott Brown, who introduced me to neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) which is a psychological approach that involves analysing strategies used by successful individuals. This helped me and things started to get better. I re-invented the whole system, paid off all the debt, and started to earn profits," he said.
Today, Mr Qutub is a recipient of several awards including the Australian Young Business Leader of the Year and Indian Achievers' Award for Business Leadership.
Mr Qutub is also a co-founder of Pivot Summit, an international digital conference, and Entrepreneur Geelong Network, a group that has over 200 members.
He also received last year and claims to have invested in eight start-up IT firms in Australia with a combined valuation of $30 million.
As of now, Mr Qutub wants to inspire and give confidence to others that successful entrepreneurship at a young age is possible.
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