I am Sanjay Jethva, Co-Founder at Meetanshi, a Magento development company in Bhavnagar, Gujarat, India and living in this city for 10 years now. I spent my childhood studying at Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya, Kodinar. I pursued Bachelors of Science(BSc.) in Physics and then Master of Computer Applications( MCA) which led me to the world of Information Technology and programming!
Sanjay Jethva Sharing His Success Story
The Journey Began
The years of studying MCA could only be counted as my digital life before I bumped into Magento when I started my internship at a Magento company, as a PHP intern in December 2011. I started Magento during my internship and gradually learnt the CMS while working there.
My first company and the work I did there played a major role in shaping my career in this field and the reason to stick with it.
However, at a certain point, I felt the absence of a work culture that could get the best out of me. I wanted to work in an environment where I could polish my skills without any restrictions hovering over me.
It led me, with five of my colleagues at that time, to establish a Magento development company. It was my first step as an entrepreneur. Gradually, the company started to see a successful turn of events within a short time span.
The Need for Meetanshi
Meetanshi Logo
I felt that the goals of all the six co-founders were not heading in the same direction. I did not see the same output as I had dreamt of while starting this entrepreneurship. I sensed that six different mindset, running in different directions with an independent mentality created a haphazard situation.
This was when I decided to start Meetanshi in November 2017. With the help of co-founder, Shivbhadrasinh Gohil, we started our journey of Meetanshi to fulfil this purpose.
I am lucky to have a business partner that not only has the same goals and mindset as mine, but a different skill set to compliment me where I lack. I may be good at Magento, but when it comes to marketing and business development, he is the one who takes the wheel.
Meetanshi addresses the requirements of customers and develops the Magento extensions around it. Our Magento extensions stand apart in the market with our free lifetime support and official Magento marketplace approval. Not only this, we specialize in Magento payment gateway integrations that offer security and ease of online payments.
Since 2017, we are expanding Magento horizons, thrive to learn on a day-to-day basis, add more happy customers in our journey to success and keep exceeding ecommerce excellence!
The journey has not been easy. There’s more to this than meets the eye!
There were times when I faced a financial crisis after starting Meetanshi. I had to pay for the home loans, look after my kid’s education expenses as well as my father’s medical-related expenses. The starting years of Meetanshi was an imperfect balance between my personal and professional life. Also, I faced an accident during which I had to bed rest and cannot attend the office and my work had to suffer. However, all’s well that ends well. Now that I see Meetanshi as an established Magento development company and still growing, everything seems worth it.
The day when I achieved the certification of Adobe Certified Professional—Magento Commerce Developer or when I was recognized among top 50 contributors of Magento Community of 2019 or even when I see my team growing and achieving, it makes me proud of our endeavor!
There were moments when Meetanshi gained valuable recognition to be honored to be the part of the Clutch’s list of top E-commerce providers in India, or when the Goodfirms recognized Meetanshi among top E-commerce companies in India that made me proud of my journey and how my team is thriving towards excellence as expected!
I would also like to take this opportunity to thank my entire team for achieving 190+ 5 star Google reviews, and 90+ positive Facebook reviews!
I’m sure, with the current team, we are going to conquer many new endeavors and overcome the challenges that come in the way to success!
Couldn’t be any prouder of my Mit Crew, i.e., Team Meetanshi!
Myself with my Brilliant Team
I am lucky to have team members that were with me, not as my employee but as a family member, who thrived for the company’s growth. I and Shivbhadrasinh started Meetanshi with one employee and now we are a proud team of 25.
Celebrating 3rd Meetanshi Anniversary
A Glance of Our Team
I Don’t Miss a Chance to Pose With My Team
My Boys Chilling at Goa
Advice for Business Owners
My advice to someone who is looking to start their own venture is to never give up! There are going to be times when you will regret your decision but stick to it and thrive. However, make sure to have enough experience and skills in the field of Magento before standing up on your own.
Look behind in your journey and identify your strong points. Such self-analysis will help you select the niche in Magento related business. Decide if you want to work in a company that is product-based or service-based? You will get your answer to select the appropriate niche.
Also, do not neglect the marketing side of a business. As a Magento developer, you may be skilled at coding, however, do not forget that marketing is the backbone of a business. Even if you are skilled at Magento, you cannot set up a company without business development skills and getting a word out there.
Lastly, choose your business partners wisely. If you want to set up a standalone business it’s fine. However, if you are choosing business partners, make sure you have the same goals and different skill sets, just like I have. It is important not only to be successful but flourish faster than you can imagine!
Magento & Beyond
In the coming years, I would like to see my business not only grow in terms of revenue, though it is one of the things that obviously we focus on, but also to be a prominent brand when it comes to Magento 2 extensions. I would like my team to be all certified Magento developers who can serve our clients to build futuristic online stores!
With the pandemic in the scene, E-commerce has grown by leaps and bounds. Magento CMS is capable of addressing the requirements of modern online shopping with PWA Studio, headless architecture, seamless omnichannel experiences and much more! More and more merchants will be tempted to choose Magento owing to its capability of insane customization and in-built excellent features.
There might be other CMSs that are popular than Magento but when it comes to customization in large sets of data and handling bigger stores, there is no threat from the competition.
My Love for the Magento Community
I attend the Meet Magento India event every year. With all the events organized virtually now, it becomes easy for me and my team to attend all the meetups, contribution days, and other events to gain and share knowledge and get the exposure in this field.
Meetanshi participates in Meet Magento India events as sponsors, whenever possible. We also sponsored a Virtual Distributed Contribution day for Bhavnagar location. Our developers also contributed on that day.
Here are a few pictures from Meet Magento India 2020 of team Meetanshi with the well-known faces of the community:
Pictures From Meet Magento India 2020
I would only like to tell my Magento Community to never stop growing, even when time is adverse, just like it did during the pandemic!
For me, Magento is one of the best things that has happened to me!
Attending Magento-related events got me new friends like Sanjay Dabhoya, Founder of Solwin Infotech, Piyush Lathiya, Founder of Aureatelabs & Pradip Shah, Founder of LuroConnect.
Also, these events gave the opportunity to meet like-minded people and opened a platform to build partnerships with companies in the Magento niche.
How I Keep Myself Updated
I and my team actively participate in Magento Forums and Stack Exchange to answer questions and in the process, learn about Magento. Also, devdocs is our bible for Magento!
Apart from such resources, I believe Twitter is the social media platform where Magento community hangs out the most and so I follow #Magento for the industry updates.
Also, the challenges that I face while working on clients’ projects help me learn new things everyday.
I Have a Life Other Than the Work
Apart from Magento, I love playing cricket. Our team at Meetanshi is also a team at the cricket playground. We organize matches during the weekends for fun.
Being an entrepreneur always keeps me on my toes. So long vacations are not something that I could enjoy regularly for now. However, I try to get myself small getaways with family at beaches like Diu or Goa.
I Reward Myself by
There are certain things I do that gives me happiness such as spending time with my son, organizing picnics with the team, organizing potluck parties at Meetanshi, etc. Also, sleeping on weekends is a luxury that I do not get much!
It is safe to call me a gadget-freak, which is why I reward myself with a new gadget whenever I achieve a milestone in my career.
I may also have cheated sometimes on my schedule by escaping to a long drive with my wife which is something I love to do.
Another thing I do is invest frequently. I believe it is something that is going to reward me in future and thus invest my money whenever possible.
We also make it a point to recognize and reward employees for their outstanding performance in building the company and contributing significantly in our journey of success.
Here are some photos of the same:
Team Picnic at Dwarka
Potluck Party at Meetanshi
Contributors of My Journey to Success
Connect With Me
Feel free to connect with me via any of the following mediums:
Thank you for showing interest in my story. Hope it is an inspiration for newbies in the Magento Community.