‘Every invention in technology is a luxury at first, and then a necessity’ is what Mahendra Dobaria says on technological inventions. Mahendra, 32 , was born in a farmer’s family in a small village in Bharuch district of Gujarat. Today, he runs a start-up on home automation in Surat. His company named ‘Almighty’ is a venture working on making life easier.

Mahendra started building early. By the age of 13 he was not just reading EFY magazine, but also tinkering into the mechanics of it. Electronics were his passion from the very beginning. By 14, he was learning programming languages. And from there his journey of learning hasn’t stopped.

Coming from a farming background, Mahendra made up for his lack of resources with his work ethic and enthusiasm. He wasn’t a typical A grade student, nor did he gain any degrees in electronics. He dropped out of the diploma program since to him theoretical cramming made no sense.

His journey towards his start-up wasn’t an easy one. His financial background kept him in check, and so he worked as a construction labour contractor for 3 years. Investing all his money into his start-up was a huge risk, a risk he was ready to take. Mahendra started out alone, employing people in his company only after 2014. Today, they are 5 people, all equally passionate about their work. His first employee Vishesh was somebody, who he taught, for a college project. Later this mentorship turned into a companionship of work.

Talking about the start-up, Mahendra says the biggest obstacle was lack of understanding from the people. The inventions in the beginning looked only as a luxury to everyone, also the products because of the high quality material imported from Germany, Italy were certainly not cheap. Though slowly and steadily, technology is catching up and Mahendra certainly has a positive outlook on people accepting the changes.

With all the struggle, the only thing Mahendra believes in is that the journey of entrepreneurship is trial and error. If you consider the errors as failures, you stop trying. He is certainly an example on how your background doesn’t define what you choose to become.