A Day In The Life of Sampad Swain, Founder, Instamojo

This article is a part of our series of articles about "A Day in the Life of An Entrepreneur" 

An entrepreneur lives a very curious and satisfying life. It is frustrating at times; for her/himself or sometimes for people surrounding the entrepreneur but it is all a part of the wonderful journey and we at YourStory, celebrate it. Meet one such man, Sampad Swain. A serial entrepreneur, Sampad loves building stuff and is currently working on Instamojo- a one-click checkout system for the web. We got in touch with him to find out how his typical day passes (please note: there is no typical day with a startup).

Here's a quick fire Q&A followed by a timeline.

YS: How many hours do you work on an average a day? 

Sampad: We work 10 hours at office. Rest 6-8 hours from home (before and after office).

YS: Are Sundays off?

Sampad: We keep Sundays as office holidays -- but we are remotely working mostly.

YS: What are your views on work-life balance?

Sampad: Work-life balance is for a businessman; not for a startup entrepreneur.

YS: When you were about to startup, what did your family say?

Sampad: I was always sure about my priorities -- so family had very little to say. But they are mostly supportive.

YS: How big is your team? What kind of a work culture do you maintain?

Sampad: We are now 4 people working full-time. We are kind of people who don't take ourselves too seriously -- that makes up for a very informal setup.

YS: Views on social media. How addicted to FB, Twitter, etc are you?

Sampad: If you look at each of the team members tweet count, you'll get the answer. But in short, we are growing-up with social media.

[Team: Aditya Sengupta (@Sengupta), Akash Gehani (@rockball13), Harshad Sharma (@hiway) and Sampad Swain (@Sampad) ]

YS: How do you look at Media in India? Both online and print.

Sampad: I believe in democratization of media -- guess online is where my heart & mind is.

YS: Favourite book, movie and cuisine.

Sampad: Book: Into the Wild | Movie: Thank you for Smoking | Cuisine: non-chinese food

YS: What's your favourite pass time? 

Sampad: Recent one is browsing through dark alleys of Quora. (We double that)

TIME LINE

7AM- still sleeping (mostly).

9AM- checking emails/updates

11AM- product related work.

3PM- talking to users/partners/customers (offline and online)

[Is there a small afternoon nap? "Sorry, I don't have anything called nap in my schedule ever."]

5PM- product related work.

8PM- check emails (again).

11PM- product testing/usability and related stuff.

2AM- reading up on news/updates.

Well, that is how a busy entrepreneur spends his day. Is your head nodding in agreement?

Coincidentally, Instamojo is also a Tech30 company and a very promising startup worth keeping an eye our for. Know more about Instamojo.