To succeed, fail fast and learn fast!

Computational Biology alumna Ms Rajoshi GHOSH, whose start-up Hasura recently made news for vaulting to unicorn status, has this advice for our students seeking to make an impact in the start-up space – “You want to fail first.”

While this may not sound intuitive, this nugget of wisdom has guided her own career pathway. She says, “If you are going down the path of something that is not working out, you should realise this quickly so that you can pivot or change track.”

Starting off as a bioinformatics researcher in the field of genomics, Rajoshi discovered that she was not cut out for research. With this realisation but unsure of what she wanted to do next, Rajoshi decided to step out of her comfort zone and took on a short-term role at the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) in Ghana, teaching university graduates the technology and business skills needed to start a global technology company.  

It was at MEST that she found her true passion. She says, “Being in the midst of entrepreneurs who are highly driven… it was an environment that I really enjoyed working in.” This, coupled with the insight that everyone, and everything, is going to be technology-enabled (“This is a horizontal truth across all industries”), motivated her to set up Hasura.

Hasura was founded in 2017 and launched its commercial offerings in 2020 at the start of the pandemic.  It makes software to simplify and accelerate application (app) development, enabling developers to tap disparate sources of data more efficiently and to build and scale their apps easily.

It was a tough journey, but “being outcomes-driven” kept her focused. The other aspect, she shares, is to “leave things in a better place than when you started…as there is a lot of chaos, especially in early stage start-ups.”

On students venturing into the start-up space, she says, “NUS already has a network and ecosystem supporting entrepreneurs. Use this ‘unfair’ advantage!”