'No job, no money': How man with just $100 in his wallet became a millionaire
Katt Srinivasan remembers opening his wallet and barely seeing a dollar.
He was standing in the supermarket after just having moved to Australia with only $100 to his name.
“It was not enough money to spend on the basic stuff in the supermarket. I opened my wallet and hardly had any money,” Mr Srinivasan told Yahoo7 News.
But fast forward just 11 years, and he is now running a million-dollar company.
Mr Srinivasan was born in India and later moved to Australia and studied a Masters in Information Systems at RMIT University in Victoria.
He then moved to the US and Singapore where he worked as a web consultant before settling in Australia again in 2008 with no more than $100.
“I was in my mid-20s and didn’t make wise investment decisions so I thought I should come back to Australia for good and this time settle down,” he told Yahoo7 News.
He thought it would be easy to find a job, but being just after Christmas he struggled.
“It was very slow, there was hardly anybody on the streets and I didn’t expect that to be honest,” he said.
“I didn’t have a job and I was alone and didn’t have any money.”
Mr Srinivasan finally landed a job fixing a web security bug for three days, but still was not satisfied with his career.
He then decided to launch his own website, TheBargainAvenue.com.au – now sneakQIK.com – , to give people the opportunity to shop online and save money by offering them exclusive coupons.
‘Failure would have crossed my mind’
Mr Srinivasan’s three-day job turned into a full-time role six weeks after his first day, around the same time he decided to launch his website in February 2008.
He was working around the clock and he saw his first dollars from the website start rolling in after a year before it really started raking in big money about three years after launching.
“I was sticking with the full-time job and worked during the night to the wee hours of the morning on the website. It sacrificed a lot of my time and took three years to really see the value,” he said.
“The situation I was in was bad at first, I had no job, no money to spend on myself, but it motivated me to do something more and follow my passion.
“Failure would have crossed my mind, but lucky for me online shopping kicked off big in 2012. Thank God for that, I believe in some luck.”
Once Mr Srinivasan could start paying his bills with the money from his website, he quit his full-time job.
“It was a tough few months after that,” he said.
“It was just a matter of persistence and perseverance and I kept working to reap the benefits.
“Quitting gave me a lot of time to focus on the website.”
Mr Srinivasan said the money he made initially kept him going, despite friends and family doubting his idea.
“They were like, ‘mate, we don’t know if it’s going to work’ and didn’t really believe in me, but I believed it would pay in the long-term,” he said.
Now a new father and living in Sydney, Mr Srinivasan believes his decade of hard work will allow him the time to focus on family.
He also hopes his story will inspire people to believe in their ideas and see them through.
“Anybody can follow their dream and succeed,” he said.
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