Tejas Pagooah: Awarded the most entrepreneurial attitude

21-year old Tejas, a student at the University of Mauritius, a multi-disciplinary designer and a developer, has been awarded the title of Most Entrepreneurial Attitude. Since he set foot in the business world, this committed young man has amazed by his track-record.   Tejas Pagooah, also known as Nirvan, is the Chief Technology Officer/Director of a creative digital product agency, Graphics Temple. This company specialises in crafting products from websites, applications, logos, graphic products, digital arts, video ads and e-commerce solutions for businesses, start-ups and big brands across the world. Awarded the title of Most Entrepreneurial Attitude, he dedicates this award to his hardwork. “Life can be complicated sometimes. It feels great to be awarded the Most Entrepreneurial Attitude in Mauritius! Managing a business with both local and overseas clients and being a full timer at university, can be challenging and we have to deal with lots of hurdles. The key to everything is a bit of sacrifice where your desires, time management and above all, sleep are concerned. I only get around 20-25 hours’ sleep a week in order to have things running smoothly at both ends,” he confides. Business at the age of 16 At the age of 16, Tejas stepped into the business world. “It all started with my interest in learning programming and breaking/tweaking stuffs at the age of 13. I am a bit old-school but with an entrepreneurship mindset. To be honest, I am a late bloomer because nothing was easy in life. I started everything from scratch. I learned the hard way,” he shares. His passion inspired him to launch a digital product agency leaning towards web development, programming, problem solving and graphic design. Once somebody told him: “Make your work your hobby and you’ll never work your entire life.” On the graphic design side, he focusses into logo design & professional corporate identity development. “Over the years, I managed to acquire expertise in the fields of design, web design and development, print design and branding with the majority of my time spent designing and helping start-ups launch in e-commerce, corporate or SME. “Outside work, I try to broaden my horizon through new experiences while taking every opportunity as a challenge. When I am not coding, I would spend cook, shoot pictures and try to innovate things at home, catching up with administrative work. I love cats, animals, and social work,” he shares. Graphic Art in Mauritius According to the young businessman, graphic design or digital art is on the right track in Mauritius. “We have great human resources but we do not seek perfection in what we do. The world needs people who are dynamic, versatile and creative,” he says. Projects involved in His main projects are related to web development and design, meaning E-commerce platforms, corporate sites, blogs, logo design, and graphic work. He was a speaker at the Developers Conference 2015 (annual) held at Voila Bagatelle in 2015 by the Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community. He was also involved with the Linux User Group of Mauritius which advocates for open source. His zeal and hard work has made his company go international. “I have many international clients, French, German, and UK clients. I am currently working on something really interesting,” he adds. Challenges Tejas argues that many entrepreneurs have a misconception that a company/business is like any organism, and it has to survive, it breathes, it needs food. In short, this means that in order stay alive, you need to feed it. “You cannot keep your company dormant if you want it to stay alive and make a profit. You need to have cash flow. This is the very problem I had at the beginning, to cope with studies while running the business. I have lots to manage as a full timer. And being the backbone of my company, I have to deal with clients every day. As usual, after every product launch, there are bugs and you need to attend to those issues. In the beginning, when clients started piling up, I would skip lectures to work from home or the university library,” he shares. It was very hectic as he had to balance his studies and work. “When you do something, you do it correctly and perfectly in order to minimize errors. I am not really an accounting person, so doing balance sheets and the financial aspect were not really my cup of tea. So, I had to hire an accountant. Well, these are the major issues I had since I started my business,” he reveals. About Graphics Temple Graphics Temple Ltd was founded in 2010 as a small digital product company by a bunch of developers fluent in coding, design and development. It is basically a creative digital product agency that focuses in crafting digital products from websites to gigantic graphic products. The clientèle ranges from start-ups to global brands. “During the last decade, we have worked on various projects/companies including airline systems and flight simulators,” says the young businessman.