“In India, dining out is an event, smallest of things can ruin it, and smallest of things can make it better”– Ankit Mehrotra

When his fear of failure vanished with one examination, a spark of entrepreneurship was ignited.

This South Delhi boy’s story of an engineering degree, love for finance, days of doing odd jobs to survive and culminating into a successful investment banker is one for the movies. The young man however has been experimenting with business since his early days.

Ankit Mehrotra is a University Of Essex alumni with a degree in Engineering, a CFA charter holder and is a co-founder of Dine Out, one of India’s largest Dining out and Restaurant Tech platform operating across the B2C and B2B domain processing more than 100M diners and $800 worth of transactions across its network of 50,000 partner restaurants in 20 cities.

In this episode of The Spotlight, Ankit talks about being a young professional during the 2008 recession, conceptualising Dine Out, starting out, acquisitions and creating an ecosystem for the food industry.

Here are our key takeaways from our conversation with Ankit:

• Taking an idea from concept to business
• Common mistakes that start-ups may make
• Maintaining the vision of your business
• Understanding your niche, and
• Creating new avenues within your industry