How serial entrepreneur grew companies after beginning as taxi driver

Cash Singh wasn’t enthusiastic about his transfer to San Francisco from Punjab, India, at age 19 in 2006.

“I used to be [depressed] for that one 12 months. I needed to return,” says Singh, now 38, including: “Socially, I used to be very alone.”

He initially attended school within the Bay Space, however dropped out after a few of his credit from college in India did not switch over, he says. His mother urged him to discover a job rapidly, so he labored a brief stint at a neighborhood drugstore, then as a dispatcher for his uncle’s cab firm making round $6 per hour, he says.

Singh spent the subsequent 12-plus years working within the cab business, first driving for himself earlier than amassing a five-cab fleet, operating his personal dispatch firm, then launching Driver’s Community, an promoting and advertising and marketing company for impartial drivers.

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In 2018, Singh determined he wanted to do one thing unrelated to taxis. So, along with operating Driver’s Community, which is now often called ATCS Platform Options, he teamed up with a neighborhood barber to open Dandies Barbershop & Beard Stylist in Mountain View in June 2019. He obtained the thought from his companion Joypreet, who instructed that he comply with the instance of his mom — a hair salon proprietor in India and, later, Northern California, he says.

Final 12 months, Dandies introduced in $1.07 million in gross sales, based on paperwork reviewed by CNBC Make It. ATCS Platform Options introduced in $1.18 million in income, paperwork present. Each companies are worthwhile, says Singh, who works at Dandies full-time and spends about 20 hours per week on ATCS.

Here is how Singh constructed Dandies from the bottom up whereas concurrently operating one other enterprise, and why he says he is not achieved with serial entrepreneurship but.

Going from cab driver to barbershop proprietor would possibly appear to be an enormous soar, however Singh says he had years of preparation. After pushing his mother to get her cosmetology license and open her hair salon in 2007, he helped her run, promote and market her store.

However the course of to opening his doorways was tedious, and he spent $75,000 in startup prices from his taxi driving and dispatching financial savings, he says.

“It’s a must to undergo allowing. It’s a must to undergo coping with the town,” says Singh. “It took me a stable 12 months to get the license to even open the store, so I used to be paying hire for one 12 months earlier than I might open the store.”

Singh had no expertise as a barber, so he partnered with a barber good friend of his to open the store’s doorways. Six months later, the Covid-19 pandemic hit. His enterprise companion left the corporate as a consequence of a household matter, so he closed the store for a few 12 months, however hire nonetheless needed to be paid, he says.

Singh obtained two Paycheck Safety Program loans from the Small Enterprise Administration — one for $68,000, and one other for $18,000 that was finally forgiven, he says. He borrowed $20,000 from two pals, one other $30,000 from his life insurance coverage and took on $80,000 of bank card debt. He additionally liquidated his inventory portfolio and spent much less cash on requirements like meals “so the enterprise might keep open,” he says.

“I needed to promote every thing,” he says. “I needed to eat much less. I actually needed to deal with consuming $1 per meal to ensure the enterprise stays open.”

Throughout that downtime, Singh enrolled in barber college so Dandies might serve a greater variety of private grooming varieties when it reopened in 2021. “As we obtained extra engaged with the group, I had lots of people from each facet of life: Males, ladies, LGBTQ, children. Nearly all people needed to come back to Dandies,” he says. “So we began increasing into completely different ability units and we needed to cater to all people.”

Right now, Singh owns three Dandies places, employs 25 folks — 15 are barbers — and takes dwelling a $7,000 per 30 days wage, together with $3,000 from Dandies and $4,000 from ATCS, he says. He is paid off his life insurance coverage mortgage and bank card debt, and is beginning to chip away at his remaining PPP mortgage, which prices about $300 a month, he says. Dandies grew to become worthwhile in 2023, he provides.

Going a whole bunch of hundreds of {dollars} into debt and chopping again on meals to maintain a enterprise alive requires a sure form of psychological resilience. Singh’s resilience stems from a childhood in Punjab that was closely impacted by battle between Sikh separatists and the Indian authorities, he says.

In 1988, Singh’s dad was nonfatally shot by a terrorist. A bomb fell in entrance of his father’s comfort retailer — the place the household spent extra time than their very own dwelling, says Singh — in 1991. Floods additional harm the shop, resulting in much more wrestle, Singh says.

1000’s of miles away and many years later, Singh faucets into the identical work ethic and grit that helped him via his childhood, he says. “I simply do not feel any completely different. I am doing the identical factor that I used to be doing 19 years in the past,” he says. “I nonetheless work 15 to 16 hours a day. I nonetheless work arduous. I nonetheless do the issues that I must do … These are the habits that I’ve developed since my childhood.”

Maybe unsurprisingly, then, Singh says he is trying ahead to including a 3rd concurrent enterprise to his portfolio: an app known as Barber’s Community, the place barbers and their shoppers can reserve chairs and request appointments at barbershop places throughout the nation. He is began constructing the app, which is analogous to scheduling apps like Booksy or theCut, utilizing a few of Dandies’ income, he says.

Although he works greater than the common particular person, Singh says he would not have it another approach, and he does not see that altering for the foreseeable future.

“I do not suppose I am going to ever retire. I’d wish to work all over,” he says. “That is simply what I breathe.”

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