Son of Bohri Business Family uses entrepreneurial platform to transform ideas into real projects

Although Hatim Choonawala grew up as a part of a traditional Bohri business family and knew he would have the opportunity to join and contribute to the family business, he was always passionate about creating value by working on his own ideas. 

This passion became distant as he grew up as he developed new interests like gaming, football and got absorbed by the education system. In 2017, he started studying BCOM at the Maharashtra Institute of Technology (MIT), Pune.

During one of his Business Management classes at MIT, Hatim’s professor Mrs. Sana Khan asked all the students a question “What do you do when you go home?” 

This put Hatim in deep thought about what he was doing in life, and was that what he really wanted to do. That one question was enough to motivate him to: explore himself and his interests, get his hands dirty, experiment and prototype with the ideas that kept him up at night.

Following the newly emerging inspiration for self-exploration and self-development, Hatim engaged himself with multiple co-curricular activities. 

Hatim enrolled into S.E.A.L (Systematically Enhanced Ability to Lead), an entrepreneurship and leadership programme which helps build skills with courses, articleships, volunteering and more. He also created a prototype of one of his own ideas- a “music pillow”- (a pillow which has a vibration module to replace your alarm and headphone speakers for the music), by actively seeking resources from his college’s E&TC department. He was involved in other co-curricular activities too such as playing football, Go Karting, sales events, etc. 

Slowly discovering what he was capable of doing through his experiences in co-curricular activities, Hatim decided to join the Enterprise India Fellowship. Hatim shared, “In schools and colleges, they teach you to go from 1 to 100 but they do not teach how to go from 0 to 1.”

Hatim Choonawala

Hometown: Pune, India

College: MIT Pune 

Subject: Bcom

Interests/Cares About:  minimizing food wastage and supporting those who are not able to receive good education or work opportunities due to poor financial conditions.

Fellowship Span: Jan 2020-Dec 2021

Fellowship Activities Sneak Peek:

Worked on 9+ projects including 4 Enterprise projects like the Tinkerfest & #karo and two client projects with News Shuttle & KlugAvlon, and 3 personal projects including Sunday Game Nights (a project he incubated with other Partners).

Co-created Sunday Game Nights to organize and host online bonding experiences for families and communities, organizing 12+ events and engaging 360+ people over a span of two years.

Next Steps post Fellowship: working with Prime Containers, his family business that provides corrugated paper tube and packaging solutions.

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Hatim’s reflections on his self-discovery journey and the major change he witnessed as he worked on multiple real life projects and created his body of work.

Throughout his fellowship journey, he worked on 9+ projects including 4 in-house Enterprise projects like Tinkerfest & #karo, two client projects with KlugAvlon and News Shuttle as well as 3 personal projects- Stand Up, Catapult and Sunday Game Nights (a project he incubated with other Partners- aka students in the Fellowship). 

Hatim shares, “looking back at my life right now, in the past one and a half years I feel I learned and did more than I did in 3 years of college life.”

Along with working on in-house projects at Enterprise and consulting projects with the clients, Hatim also used the platform to convert a lot of his ideas into personal projects and build them up from scratch. From exploring how to make catapults to performing standup comedy sketches and to hosting online community game nights, Hatim gave all of it a shot. And in fact he has been working with one of them- Sunday Game Nights for almost a year and half now!

He brought together Shreeya Mendiratta and Mrunmayee Padmagiwar, two other Enterprise Partners (aka Enterprise students) and co-created Sunday Game Nights, a platform to organize and host online bonding experiences for families and communities. The team has organized 12+ events and engaged 360+ people through their events so far.

“Hatim is a very dynamic and extroverted guy. While working with him I realised that he did not once shy away from going out and speaking with the crane operators. He and Daksh (the other Enterprise Partner on the project) roamed around Pune city to speak with operators and collect information about our Crane safety sensors. Hatim also has a very good sense of organizing, sorting and analysing data that helped us in creating a marketing strategy to connect with crane operators in our network.”

Dhruv Gupta, Head of the Bombay Sales Division of KlugAvalon, a company manufacturing crane safety sensors and material grade load cells.

“Hatim is one of those people who can patiently build an idea or a project from scratch. He has the ability to research, refine, prototype and execute his ideas with grit and commitment. Hatim is extremely open to feedback and seeks out learning and growth opportunities. He is also able to inspire people around him to rally round and collaborate as a team,” shares Aditya Jhunjhunwala, Co-founder of the Enterprise India Fellowship.

As he graduates from the fellowship, Hatim is working with his family business- Prime Containers, which manufacturers packaging solutions of corrugated paper tubes and containers in Pune. He is working on creating a sales pipeline, an overview of total stock and production as well as focusing on aspects like data management and web development.

Now ever more aware about the importance of relationships, communicating with people and learning from them, Hatim is looking forward to contributing to his family business in his own unique way.

Interviewer: Akash Bhalerao
Authors: Rhythm Joshi & Akash Bhalerao
Video Editor: Rahul Devkar
Story Editors:  Aditya Jhunjhunwala, Ankita Parashar & Nikita Juneja
Webpage Designer: Dnyanesh Chandewar

Although Hatim Choonawala grew up as a part of a traditional Bohri business family and knew he would have the opportunity to join and contribute to the family business, he was always passionate about creating value by working on his own ideas. 

This passion became distant as he grew up as he developed new interests like gaming, football and got absorbed by the education system. In 2017, he started studying BCOM at the Maharashtra Institute of Technology (MIT), Pune.

During one of his Business Management classes at MIT, Hatim’s professor Mrs. Sana Khan asked all the students a question “What do you do when you go home?” 

This put Hatim in deep thought about what he was doing in life, and was that what he really wanted to do. That one question was enough to motivate him to: explore himself and his interests, get his hands dirty, experiment and prototype with the ideas that kept him up at night.

Following the newly emerging inspiration for self-exploration and self-development, Hatim engaged himself with multiple co-curricular activities. 

Hatim enrolled into S.E.A.L (Systematically Enhanced Ability to Lead), an entrepreneurship and leadership programme which helps build skills with courses, articleships, volunteering and more. He also created a prototype of one of his own ideas- a “music pillow”- (a pillow which has a vibration module to replace your alarm and headphone speakers for the music), by actively seeking resources from his college’s E&TC department. He was involved in other co-curricular activities too such as playing football, Go Karting, sales events, etc. 

Slowly discovering what he was capable of doing through his experiences in co-curricular activities, Hatim decided to join the Enterprise India Fellowship. Hatim shared, “In schools and colleges, they teach you to go from 1 to 100 but they do not teach how to go from 0 to 1.”

Throughout his fellowship journey, he worked on 9+ projects including 4 in-house Enterprise projects like Tinkerfest & #karo, two client projects with KlugAvlon and News Shuttle as well as 3 personal projects- Stand Up, Catapult and Sunday Game Nights (a project he incubated with other Partners- aka students in the Fellowship). 

Hatim shares, “looking back at my life right now, in the past one and a half years I feel I learned and did more than I did in 3 years of college life.”

Hatim Choonawala

Hometown: Pune, India

College: MIT Pune 

Subject: Bcom

Interests/Cares About:  minimizing food wastage and supporting those who are not able to receive good education or work opportunities due to poor financial conditions.

Fellowship Span: Jan 2020-Dec 2021

Fellowship Activities Sneak Peek:

Worked on 9+ projects including 4 Enterprise projects like the Tinkerfest & #karo and two client projects with News Shuttle & KlugAvlon, and 3 personal projects including Sunday Game Nights (a project he incubated with other Partners).

Co-created Sunday Game Nights to organize and host online bonding experiences for families and communities, organizing 12+ events and engaging 360+ people over a span of two years.

Next Steps post Fellowship: working with Prime Containers, his family business that provides corrugated paper tube and packaging solutions. 

Self Testimonial: “Enterprise has not just helped me gain an entrepreneurial mindset but also helped me gain more clarity about myself and a better vision for my future by helping me get out of my comfort zones and constantly push myself to become better and better on each step of my life. During my enterprise journey there were many first times for me, like hosting a stand up show, solving a real life problem and making a business model out of it, creating a facebook marketing campaign which helped gain some new skills and gain an ethical unfair advantage over most of my peers. Looking back at my life right now, in the past 1 and a half years I feel I learnt and did more than I did in 5 years of college life.”

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