Conquering all the chances, humble community young lady from West Bengal constructs USD 10 Million esteemed organization

For Aunkita Nandi, a girl of a railroad engineer, experiencing childhood in a working-class family in the modest community of Burdwan, around 100 km from the state capital Kolkata, and concentrating on in Bengali medium in a district school was never a hindrance to thinking beyond practical boundaries. She stayed a certain youngster regardless of her mom's consistent pestering to work on her scholastic execution, frequently contrasting her and her friends.

For Aunkita Nandi, daughter of a railway engineer, growing up in a middle-class family in the small town of Burdwan, about 100 km from the state capital Kolkata, and studying in Bengali medium in a municipality school was never a deterrent to dreaming big. “I was average in my studies, but I believed academics alone can’t make one successful,” says Aunkita, 30, co-founder of Kolkata-based Tier 5 Technology Solutions Private Limited, a Rs 9 crore turnover software company with a current valuation of more than 10 million dollars.

Every time her mother tried to compare her with other girls, she would feel hurt, but she bore those slurs silently, determined to prove her mother wrong someday. The internet became her teacher, and she also listened to a lot of motivational and business books. She graduated in computer engineering from the University Institute of Technology, Burdwan, in 2012. It had been used by her older brother, who is nine years elder than her and presently works as a software engineer at CTS.

Her entrepreneurial streak surfaced in college, where she began to make various Android apps along with three of her friends and sold them online. “There was no investment,” says Aunkita. “We just built the apps and sold them online. We earned a lot of money and continued the business after our graduation as well. “Later I started understanding this is not something I wanted to do in my life, and I wasn’t enjoying it anymore. The business she was doing with her friends also ended in 2014. Two years later, on January 5, 2016, she started Tier 5, joining hands with her American boyfriend Jon Vaughn, 34, whom she had met on the dating app, Tinder. Jon is a software engineer from Florida. During an official trip to India, he met Aunkita in person for the first time at Chillis in Quest Mall, Kolkata, on July 22, 2015. Jon proposed to me,” reveals Aunkita, opening up to us. It was love at first sight when I met Aunkita,” confesses Jon. “We are, like, made for each other and complement each other well.” Though they have been together since then, the couple had their formal wedding only in January this year.

Less than six months after their first meeting, Tier 5 was launched in Kolkata with its US office in Indiana. Rs 5 lakh) and started with rented computers and two employees - one developer and one HR personnel. “By the end of the first year, we had around 15 employees working for us,” says Aunkita.

We started as a service-based company and got our initial clients through organic Facebook marketing.” In 2019 Tier 5 became a product-based company. Today, they have more than 21 products and offer a partner program, through which small and medium-sized businesses use their products online for a monthly subscription or buy and resell their products for profit. And when they make money, we win as a business owner,” says Jon.

For a girl who was educated in a government Bengali medium school in a small town, Ankita has come a long way establishing herself as an entrepreneur, providing jobs to many young people, and spending time with underprivileged children in Barasat and Sundarban areas, near Kolkata, during the weekends. “We plan to build a school at Basanti village in Sundarban,” says Aunkita.

Today, her parents live with her in Kolkata, and she bears no ill will towards her mother for her taunts during her younger years. “Had she not pushed me into engineering for securing a job, I wouldn’t have been in this business,” she says gratefully.

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