Success story: Life is a journey with many twists and turns and many ups and downs. Sometimes you achieve all that you ever wanted and sometimes you lose whatever you had achieved. But it is about resilience and the ability to bounce back and get back into action that matters. Just like what happened with K Vaitheeswaran who started with a grand vision and built Indias first e-commerce domain. K Vaitheeswaran was inspired by Amazon the world famous e-commerce platform. Vaitheeswaran decided to make it big into the field of e-commerce and started with five partners in 1999. Till that time the internet connectivity in India was very limited and only a very few could afford it. Vaitheeswaran and his partners launched Fabmart Indias first online shopping portal that had modern features like cash-on-delivery PIN-based payments e-wallets and electronic gift cards. Basking Fabmart’s success they launched one of India’s earliest online grocery stores in 2001. In 2002 they went offline with Fabmall a supermarket chain which gained momentum and became one of India’s largest supermarket chains by 2006. Fabmall was taken over by the Aditya Birla Group and rebranded it as More. All this while Vaitheeswarans partners switched to offline ventures whereas he decided to go ahead with the online platform which was rebranded Indiaplaza. I believed in the internet’s potential” he said. Vaitheeswaran sustained the 2008 recession and secured venture capital in 2011. However by 2012 his business was struggling and low funding and rising competition in the e-commerce space eclipsed the company and it couldnt get back on its feet. Indiaplaza’s failure was a big personal blow to Vaitheeswaran. Society often fails to differentiate between the company and the individual he said in an interview. When a startup succeeds the founder gets all the credit even though success is a collective effort. Conversely when a startup fails all the blame falls on the founder he added. Things only got worse as creditors police and angry vendors would show up and threaten him from time to time. But times changed and things started to change when Mint published a piece profiling 20 internet influencers in which it included Vaitheeswaran. This isn’t about the outcome. You were the first to pioneer e-commerce in India the publications journalists told him. Presently Vaitheeswaran guides startups and counsels big corporate houses like Tata and Deloitte. He is often invited to speak at events held by TEDx IIMs and other prestigious institutions. He is also the author of the acclaimed book Failing to Succeed.