Interview with Team of Deadly Law
Content :
1. Tell us about yourself
Deadly Law was started by Mr. Dilawar Khan who’s an Advocate at Calcutta High Court as a legal blog and journal. In 2018, Anwesh, Apurv joined and three of us completely turned the page into a meme page, posting funny content related to law and 2 years down the line, they’re at 115k on Facebook. Last year we started our Instagram page in the month of July and in little over a year are nearing 45k.
Anwesh Panigrahi- I’m from Cuttack, Odisha. Completed my B.B.A LL. B. from School of Law, KIIT University in the year 2019 and has been practicing in Orissa High Court ever since. Cleared the AIBE exam in 2019.
Apurv Shaurya- I hail from Patna, Bihar. I did my B.A.LL.B. from KIIT Law School, Bhubaneswar in the year 2019 and my LL.M. from National Law University, Delhi in the year 2020. I also qualified UGC-NET for Assistant Professor in 2019 though currently I am aiming for Judicial Services.
Aayushi Shankar- Nativity is from Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh but I have lived in different parts of the country. I pursued BA LLB (Hons.) from KIIT School of Law, Bhubaneswar. After completing 5 years of my graduate life in 2018, I did LLM from my Alma Mater in the year 2019 where I chose Family Law as my specialization and cleared Bar exam too. I started practicing at National Company Law Tribunal, Mumbai in 2019. I worked there as a legal associate/retainer at a CA firm in Navi Mumbai where I handled cases mostly under Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code and S.138 NI Act. Currently I’m back at my native place as the office has been closed due to pandemic.
(Anwesh): Deadly Law was started by our Founder Mr. Dilawar Khan who’s an Advocate at Calcutta High Court as a legal blog and journal and due to time constraints and other unavoidable obstacles, couldn’t be continued. In 2018, I (Anwesh), Apurv joined and three of us completely turned the page into a meme page, posting funny content related to law and 2 years down the line, we’re at 115k on Facebook.
(Aayushi Shankar): I joined Deadly Law in 2014 when I was in second year of my law school. I have always been interested in writing and Dilawarbhaiya was looking for someone to look after the news section of the website. That’s how I was given the role of Editor-in-chief of the news section in the website. Even after the website got down, I have been associated with it and now we have started our own franchise of Online Courses. From a few to a family of thousands, Deadly Law has come a long way indeed.
Last year we started our Instagram page in the month of July and in little over a year are nearing 45k. Our Twitter handle is gradually amassing popularity as well. We have our WhatsApp and Telegram groups, where law students and law professionals across India connect to each other and help each other out.
2.How did the idea for your business come about?
As you are well aware about the huge fees of Law College, which cannot be afforded by many people of the country. As you know in Law colleges people are made to focus on several subjects at once, making them prone to having weak subject points. We are trying to focus on subject by subject and help people study important Law subjects with more focus via a virtual platform. Our aim is to build a platform where everyone can have access to quality education through online medium
3.Can you tell us about your venture ?
We started as a meme page, getting popularity by making people laugh through our humourous posts. Last month we launched our first online certificate course on Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 and 65 students enrolled for the course. Earlier this month we started our Law Of Trademarks online certificate course and the participation was quite overwhelming. It has been a very challenging experience and the team had to work really hard, putting in efforts day and night to prepare the course and prepare the platform to impart it to the participants.
4. What are the challenges you faced till date and presently facing?
The journey has been challenging, but fun at the same time. We started the meme page as a hobby and with the common intention of giving people an opportunity to smile after they’ve had a tough day at work, so that they can browse through their feed and have a happy time. Some people have even gotten offended and sent us death threats over texts and calls but then there would not have been memories had these things not happened. We’ve struggled together, achieved whatever we have together. We at Deadly Law, are more of a family than a team.
“Even though there are 9 people who hate you and criticise you in everything you do there will always be that one person who’ll always support you and love you.” We are what we are today because of our followers, our Deadly Law family and as Dean Winchester once said “Family don’t end in blood. But it doesn’t start there either”
5.What was your key driving force to become an entrepreneur?
To entertain as well as educate students/professionals because we all know legal profession can sometimes be really tough on certain people. Sometimes it’s about giving people what they truly deserve, happiness and knowledge. We have been imparting legal knowledge through our humorous legal content and now since we have started our online courses venture, we are actually providing people a medium to gain knowledge.
6.How did you raise funding for your venture?
Ever since we started gaining followers and built a good followers base, we started getting paid promotion opportunities in which people promote their product/competition (strictly related to law) on our page and we would charge them a certain amount for that. Growth rate was good and the trust of people in our services and our honest work, enabled us raise a considerable amount of fund.
7.How do you build a successful customer base?
We serve the Legal Community where patience is the key and no one does anything without think ten times. So for us, managing a base has only one simple trick – Do what you do best and be transparent about it. Tell them what you’ll do, and leave it for them to decide. They are lawyers/Future Lawyers and they are trained to think about the best ways. If they choose you, be sure you do your best and they’ll make sure the good word spreads.
8.How do you market your business, and which tactics have been most successful?
We used humour to slowly grow the social media handles. Things that make you laugh go the farthest. As our social media presence started growing, we began showing the professional side of Deadly Law. Artificial paid promotions and other tricks we never tried much and couple of times we did it and found that it did not suit us well.
9.What kind of culture exists in your organization, and how did you establish it?
Our culture is a mixture of both, Casual and Professional. Our team members are close knit, and we have fun, but when it comes to our courses, managing the whatsapp groups, offering advices to students, we strive to be as professional as possible.
10.How do you generate new ideas?
It simply is a matter of observations. Sometimes you look at something and say ‘Oh well, If this could have been this way, I would be able to relate with it a bit more’ and boom ! you get an idea.
11.What are your ideals?
Patience is the key and no matter where you start from, Hard work can take you anywhere you want to go.
12.How do you define success?
If your existence did good for even one person, either helped him in an issue, or made him smile, I think that's success.
Success is the reward of your hard work and sweat. You cannot find success until and unless you’re ready to give your hundred percent. But it doesn’t mean you should always expect great results, accepting failures and working on it is the most humble way to achieve it. No shortcuts.
13.Do you believe there is some sort of pattern or formula to becoming a successful entrepreneur?
No, because entrepreneurship depends on creative and logical thinking. What I may find suitable for my venture may not give proper results to yours. Although, marketing strategies and some other concepts might be the same, but I believe every successful entrepreneur has a different strategy or formula to expand their venture.
14.What is your favorite aspect of being an entrepreneur?
Making something which helps people. We through our venture always try to help our fraternity and that’s how we accomplish our goals
15.What has been your most satisfying moment in business?
Amidst all the hatred and negative comments we receive, the most satisfying moment in the message from that one follower who appreciates our work on social media and tells us how much he/she loves our work. Also crossing 115k on Facebook was one great satisfying moment for us.
16.What entrepreneurial tricks have you discovered to keep you focused and productive in your day-to-day busy schedule?
There are no trick as such. We just try our best to complete deadlines on time and divide our work accordingly to yield results.
17.Who has been your greatest inspiration?
Kiran Majumdar Shaw and Sudha Murthy
18.Any message for future entrepreneur
“Work hard in silence, let your success do the talking”. From being just a meme page to being one of India’s leading platform for law students/Advocates to connect to each other (through our WhatsApp and Telegram groups where people interact and connect to each other and help each other out) to starting our own Online Certificate Course, we’ve a long way. But as Robert Frost quotes “Miles to go before I sleep”, we indeed have a long way to go. To everyone reading this, never give up on your dreams. The road is long and scary, you will have to struggle a lot, but all the struggle is worth it. Life will throw a lot of opportunities at you, but it’s upon you to decide whether you’d want to dodge it or catch it and make the best use of it. Cheers!!
For funny law memes visit https://www.facebook.com/DeadlyLAW/