This is How Moon Kalita is Serving the Nation on His Own Terms!

A tete-a-tete with the social reformer and entrepreneur, Moon Kalita The time when Moon’s father got posted in Uri (Jammu) in 1996, things got a little different for him and his family. It was 3 years before the Kargil war (in 1999) and the situation around the LOC was already tensed. Days converted into months in wait of their father. The family didn't have a landline, and the only way to know his father's wellbeing were the letters that arrived once in 2-3 months. Monthly payments through postal money order were the only means to know that their father was alive. However, it was not as regular as it sounds. At times, it took quite a lot of time to pay the monthly expenses. The hardships were quite evident from their torn shoes, the late tuition fees, the study materials on credit. His school pants grew along with him, the waist of the pants got loosened and re-stitched, and the hem got unfolded and sewed back. Although they used to get the best of things it took some time. Moon’s tough childhood forced him for not enrolling himself for the defense services. He chose not to follow his father’s dreams and live a life on his own terms. Moon Kalita, an entrepreneur and a social reformer, today, chose to do what his heart desired and contribute towards nation his own way. Moon opened a school, North Majgaon Public School, a result of the hardship they faced during their childhood. Unlike other schools, this school has been built in the middle of a village. “We want to help children who couldn't travel to town for better education. Public transport isn't there and private transports cost too much for them. Also, the area we chose to open the school has lots of army men, policemen and other defense personnel’, who mostly stay away from their families. So, a school in their vicinity will assure that while they are serving the nation, at least they don’t have to worry about their children's education. I have got a very soft corner for them, and helping them to serve the nation is the best I can do for them”, Moon informed. The school comprises of 34 students, out of which 7 students are studying for free. And we give them the best education possible. “This is our second year and we plan to add more such students every year. When we see those 7 students walking in every day, smiles pour on our lips. Some of my ex-colleagues send us one thousand rupees each every month as a donation. We plan to encourage more people to help us and help as many students as possible in the coming years”, Moon added. The school runs on the donations and the money they receive through Bohagi. Moon Kalita, alumni of Birjhora Mahavidyalaya (Bongaigaon, Assam), founded Bohagi Enterprises Pvt Ltd along with his brother Jayanta Kalita which is a result of understanding and working for his freelance projects almost 16-18 hours every day. He worked as an Account Manager in a subtitling and localization company before venturing his own. To start with, Moon personally started approaching other subtitling companies and received positive responses from them. As the projects over flooded, he chose to pass on the knowledge and trained his brother and few others. Thus, the foundation of Bohagi Enterprises Pvt Ltd was born two and half years back. They would teach in school till noon, and work on their freelance projects during the evening and night. However, they didn't have enough money back then to start as a company, get registered and to start an office until July 2018. “In Assamese language, the word "Bohag" means "Spring", and "Bohagi" means "Like the spring season”. So, Bohagi Enterprises Pvt Ltd is all about bringing new beginnings to people by providing them with employment and the opportunity to flourish in life”, Moon mentioned.   Moon Kalita with his team BV: What made you shift from an employee to an employer? Moon: When I and Jayanta were working as freelance Hindi translators, along with few others, a project landed on our laps. The task was to develop numerical, aptitude and general knowledge questions for different age groups. Initially, I told Jayanta that we should decline the project as we didn't have resources to develop such questionnaires. Jayanta disagreed and convinced me that he'll find such resources. He met Parag Nath, his junior in college, and told him about the project. Parag, a very cheerful and enthusiastic guy, was looking for an opportunity at that time. And within two days, he and Jayanta had a team of experts bagged with Masters Degree and qualified teachers who had agreed to freelance for us. Once we successfully delivered the project, our client was happy with our prompt responses and on-time quality deliverables that they immediately gave us another project. Thus started a series of microtasks! And Jayanta suggested the idea of starting a company, which will not only provide us with financial stability but will serve two other purposes:  

1. We could provide employment to many boys and girls in our town, who are talented but unemployed. Many of these aren't able to move out of town for different reasons and their talent being getting wasted.

 

2. We could invest a part of the company profit in the school. Even the school can grow faster and many more students can study for free. We would have to depend less on donations and we could focus more on maximizing our profits, which will benefit the school directly.

  Jayanta and Parag convinced me to start Bohagi and go out to get more clients. And luckily, I did go out, visited clients, and got more such projects. And pretty soon, Bohagi was registered as a company and we already had loads of subtitling, general translation, and content creation projects!   BV: Would you please introduce to your core team members? How many members do you have in total? Moon: Our core team comprises of three members who handle the operations: me, Jayanta and Parag. As we expand, there are few more hardworking employees who are going to be added to the core team. But for now, I handle the subtitling projects and sales. Jayanta handles the general translation and content creation projects, while Parag handles the in-house team. We work with around 80 Indian freelance translators and subtitlers (Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Bengali, Punjabi, Urdu, and many more regional languages) and 50 global translators (Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, French, Polish, Dutch, Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin, Malay and many more). We keep on adding more translators to our pool with a growing requirement. Our office in Assam has 18 employees, 4 freelancers in Tripura and 5 in Shillong who work on content creation and handle other microtasks.   BV: What needs to be an entrepreneur? Any advice you would like to give to our readers who wanted to follow the same path? Moon: Commitment to your projects. The most important part of a business is that clients need to be happy and satisfied. We always make sure that we deliver projects to our clients before deadlines. When our clients ask us for a capacity request, we give them under-capacity details so that even in case of unforeseen delays we have additional resources to pitch-in and complete the project before time. Due to this particular practice of ours, we started to get more clients and eventually the number of clients increased in a very short period of time. The other aspect is quality. We should never ever compromise on the quality of work. Quality delivery of one project will always lead to the arrival of another two. The third important aspect is communication. As an entrepreneur, it may be difficult in the beginning to be always prompt on responses to clients 24 x 7. In our case, me and my brother, Jayanta divided our time. When I'm unavailable, he is always there to respond to client emails, and vice-versa. This practice helps to convince the client to rely on you. Eventually, you will also be able to have someone to take care of the communication part. In our line of work, we always end up doing favors to clients i.e., unpaid favors. These favors may be unpaid in form of revenue, but it'll always help in maintaining good relationships and it brings you one step closer to your client. If it costs you too much then simply explain the situation to your clients, they will understand and pay you for the additional labor. The last important thing is taking good care of your resources. Always respect their work, hear them out. In turn, they will consider themselves a part of the group rather than feeling to be a mere employee. A satisfied and happy employee or resource is as important as a satisfied and happy client.   BV: A quote that you live by. Moon: Honesty is the best policy. Be loyal to whatever you are doing in life. Whatever you are earning, even if it's not sufficient for you, donate some. However small it may be, but donate something to the needy. Karma will always repay you. What's the use of making money and dying old when you can help shape another life before leaving yours? To know more such inspiring stories, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.