'We managed because my wife was working'

It was the mid-nineties and Konark Singhal was preparing for his engineering entrance examinations. But his preparations were hampered as his home town Aligarh did not have mock test centres. “We had good tutors, but no way to take mock tests and compare ourselves against fellow aspirants. For any such test, we had to travel to Delhi which was difficult,“ he says.
These difficulties came to his mind when, a few years into a corporate career, Singhal felt the desire to do something of his own. That was the genesis of MockBank, a test preparation portal for government jobs that he established with two others -Manesh Jain, who previously worked with IBM and SourceWeb, and Ramesh Narayanan, who had worked at several software firms including Sify.
Singhal had worked with consulting company Bain after doing an MBA from IIM Bangalore. And that, he says, provided some really valuable experience.“In companies such as McKinsey and Bain, you inculcate a problem-solving approach and my aim was to adapt those approaches and apply them when I start my own company.“ MockBank, founded in 2013, focuses on jobs related to the banking, financial services and insurance sector, including public sector banks, Reserve Bank of India and LIC. Singhal says they have about 150,000 users, over 5,000 of whom are paying customers. It charges customers between Rs 150 and Rs 6,000, depending on the services.
Singhal says they decided to focus on public sector jobs, or sarkari naukri as they are commonly known, because about 20-40 million people apply for these jobs every year but they were terribly underserved.
The idea also immediately attracted a major investor.At a startup event, Singhal happened to meet Ravindran Govindan, founder of Singapore-based angel fund Mercatus Capital. “The following day I met him for breakfast, and over the course of the meeting, which carried on through lunch and extended to tea, he decided to put money in my venture,“ he says.
Singhal, however, has a word of caution for budding entrepreneurs. He says doing a startup is like a rollercoaster ride, as new challenges emerge every day . He says things can get tiring at times, but he derives joy from being able to provide employment to people.
He also had to survive on his savings initially. “I did not take home a salary at MockBank for more than two years. But since my wife was also working, we managed.“