What Building a Company at 22 Taught Me

Building a company at 22 teaches you things in the wrong order. That's the first thing I'd tell any young entrepreneur in India.

You learn to make decisions before you learn how to be sure of them. You learn to lead before anyone has taught you to manage. And you learn, usually later than you'd like, that a large part of what you're building isn't the product. It's yourself.

I'm Avinash, Director and CEO of Incrix. Incrix started in 2019 in Kovilpatti, became Incrix Techlutions LLP in June 2021, and today runs five streams under one roof (Software, Automation, Branding, Education and Studio) with a 15-person team. What is it actually like? I don't think the honest answer is a story. It's a set of lessons, and they're the part that might actually be useful to you.

Lesson 1: Age is not the constraint. Clarity is.

I learned that people stop noticing your age the moment you're clear about what you're solving and why.

Being young does mean you'll have gaps: in experience, in networks, in knowing how things are "usually done". But the gap that actually sinks young founders isn't experience. It's vagueness. A vague idea invites people to judge the founder. A clear problem invites them to judge the solution, and that's a conversation you can win.

Nobody asks how old you are when you're clearly solving their problem.

So my first piece of advice is unglamorous: get specific. Who is this for? What do they do today? What would make them switch? If you can't answer those plainly, more confidence won't help.

Lesson 2: Where you start is a position, not a limitation

Incrix is from Kovilpatti, in the Thoothukudi district of Tamil Nadu. For a long time, the default assumption was that serious technology companies came from a handful of big cities.

I've come to believe that assumption is wrong, and I'm not alone. India's startup story is increasingly being written outside the metros; a PIB release on India's startup revolution notes that over 51% of startups are emerging from Tier II and Tier III cities.

What I learned is that a smaller town changes how you build, not whether you can. You learn to be resourceful. You design for real conditions (patchy connectivity, power instability, cost sensitivity) because they're around you, not in a slide deck. That thinking runs through our hardware today. I write more about the place itself in From Kovilpatti to Building a Technology Company.

Lesson 3: Self-belief is a tool, not a personality

One of the lines we wrote into Incrix's values is: "We trust self-belief, prioritise science and technology for human enrichment."

I put those two ideas side by side deliberately. Self-belief gets you started when there's no evidence yet that you're right. But self-belief on its own turns into stubbornness. Science is the check on it: test the idea, look at the result, change your mind when the evidence says so.

What I'd tell a young founder: believe in yourself enough to begin, and trust evidence enough to adjust. You need both, and you need to know which one you're using at any given moment.

Lesson 4: A company exists before the paperwork does

Incrix started in 2019. It was incorporated as an LLP in 2021.

I keep those two dates distinct for a reason. The first is when the idea became work. The second is when the work became a formal company. What happens in between is where most of the real learning is, and it teaches patience in a way nothing else does.

When you're young, everything feels like it should happen now. What I learned is that companies are built on a slower clock than ambition runs on. Structure, recognition and reputation arrive after the work, not before it. Recognition from Startup India and DPIIT, for example, came to a company that already existed; it didn't create one. If you're exploring that route, Startup India is the place to begin.

Lesson 5: Your job keeps changing

At the start, the founder does everything. Then, if things go well, the job changes, and it keeps changing.

Today Incrix is 15 people, whom we call "Mavericks": designers, embedded architects, full-stack and AI developers, editors, content strategists, sales, and administration and accounts. None of them need me to do their work for them. What they need is direction, clear priorities, fair decisions and the room to own what they build.

I learned that the hardest transition for a young founder isn't technical. It's moving from "I built this" to "we built this", and meaning it. You can read how that team actually works together in Inside Team Incrix.

The founder's job moves from building things, to building the people who build things, to building the place where they want to stay.

Lesson 6: Teaching is the fastest way to learn

A big part of Incrix is education, through Incrix University and our community channels. Together those channels reach over 120,000 people.

What I've taken from that isn't a follower count. It's a habit: if you can't explain something simply, you don't understand it yet. Teaching forces clarity (back to Lesson 1) and it keeps you humble, because learners will always ask the question you hadn't thought about.

For a young entrepreneur, I'd put it simply: teach what you're learning, as you learn it. It builds trust, and it makes you better.

Lesson 7: Values have to survive contact with real life

Our values are short: "Equity in mind, dignity in action." We also say we want to deliver quality solutions "in a reasonable way".

It's easy to write values like these. The lesson is that they only mean something when they cost you something: when the fair decision is slower, when the reasonable price is lower, when doing it properly takes longer. What I've learned is to write your values down early, before you need them, so that when you're tested you're following a commitment rather than inventing one on the spot.

What being a young entrepreneur in India actually means

It means you'll probably be underestimated, and that can be an advantage, because it gives you room to learn quietly and prove things with work.

It means the ecosystem is more open than it has ever been. Recognition schemes, communities and tools that used to be out of reach are now available to someone starting from a smaller town.

And it means you have time, which is the one resource older founders often envy. Time to make mistakes, to change direction, and to build something that takes years rather than months. I think that's one of the reasons we chose to build products at Incrix instead of only delivering projects. I explain that choice in Why We Build Products, Not Just Projects.

What I'd tell someone who is 22 and starting today

1. Start with a problem you understandNot a trend, not a pitch. A problem you can describe plainly, for people you can actually reach.
2. Be patient with the timelineThe company exists before the paperwork, and the reputation comes after the work. Both take longer than you'd like.
3. Invest in people earlyYour biggest leverage isn't your own hours. It's the people who choose to build with you.
4. Balance belief with evidenceSelf-belief starts things. Science keeps them honest.
5. Write your values downBefore you need them. You'll be tested sooner than you think.

Still learning

I don't think building a company ever stops teaching you. The lessons just change shape. The ones above are the ones that have stayed with me, and the ones I'd most want someone to hear before they start.

If you want the company's side of this story, read Building Incrix From the Ground Up. And if you'd like to see where all of this has led, from Classory to our hardware boards, start with What Are We Actually Building at Incrix?