Peepul’s Suresh Kumar Gunasekaran on the power of community

Suresh Kumar Gunasekaran, Founder of social networking platform Peepul, believes fostering a spirit of community among entrepreneurs benefits not only the ecosystem but also the larger society.

Gunasekaran shared his insights during the leadership talk, ‘From Vision to Reality: Lessons Learned on the Entrepreneurial Journey’ at the third edition of Tamil Nadu Story

“I learned early on that I must be happy for and support the growth of others. And I have seen the power of doing this in my own life,” said Gunasekaran.

He spoke about a time when Peepul received $5 million in funding and a young entrepreneur sought the company’s help to fund his app. “We saw that most of the features he wanted in his app were available in ours. We thought why not integrate his ideas into our app? Once we did, we ended up with 20,000 customers from his community and raised a revenue of Rs 20 lakh per month from this integration,” he said.

He also took the audience into the journey of Peepul’s early days in a small office with 30 people and spoke about what a struggle it was to pay their salaries during the initial days. “There were days when we had to pawn my wife’s jewellery to pay their salaries,” he said. “I did all the work, from cleaning the toilet to opening the shutter to the office. You may not get your idea funded the first time, but if you persist, and keep working hard, funding will come, as it happened with us,” he said.

Pepul began its journey as a social media platform. It later evolved into a platform specifically catering to career development and job opportunities.

Last month, Peepul secured funding of $4 million in its pre-series A round, which it plans to use for advancing its two key products–Pepul, a B2C platform; and Workfast.ai, a B2B SaaS platform.

Gunasekaran noted it was important to enter a business with passion rather than for profit, to keep it sustainable. “Believe in yourself and always be willing to share your skills and resources.

“It will all come back to you multifold,” he said.