AT THE age of 11, Mr Neeraj Sundarajoo was nearly expelled from school. His 'crime': Following his entrepreneurial instincts.

His teachers thought he was conning his schoolmates; he thought he was fulfilling a need.

'I started Kids Club, a membership programme on my school bus. You had to be a member and it gave you the opportunity to buy marbles, erasers, pencils and whatever we fancied that we could not buy in school. That almost got me expelled from school,' he recalls, with a smile.

That entrepreneurial spirit has worked well for him. Now, at 28, he is the chief executive officer of Comwerks, a digital media agency which he started with his older brother seven years ago. His brother has since moved to Shanghai to work with an animation development company.

'We had a lot of support from family... but not financially,' says Mr Sundarajoo who is a member of the Singapore Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

'After my parents moved to India in 2001, as my father was picked to run the National Commodity and Derivatives Exchange as their CEO, we had the entire apartment which we converted into our office. We worked from there for a year and then moved into our own office.'

The company has gone from strength to strength, boasting a long list of clients from government agencies to top information technology and telecommunications firms.

But it hasn't been all smooth sailing. Mr Sundarajoo hit a crisis in 2004 when his company had to downsize its 10-man team.

'We had to cut costs and decide whether we wanted to continue with the business or not. We asked ourselves some key questions: Was the problem with us or the business?; Could the problem be solved and, if yes, how?

'The business had opportunity and was good. It was us who poorly managed it. We went back into business with these answers.'

Despite that rocky hurdle, he still loves being an entrepreneur. In fact, he wishes he had started earlier.

Mr Sundarajoo believes that an entrepreneur is someone who fills a need or a gap and that person can run their own business or work for someone else.

'Steve Ballmer, the CEO of Microsoft, works for Bill Gates. Do you think Steve Ballmer is not an entrepreneur?' he asks.

His advice to young entrepreneurs is to understand themselves and know what they really want to do before jumping in with both feet. And be prepared to make mistakes.

'The way to not making mistakes is to have a lot of experience. To have a lot of experience, you need to make a lot of mistakes,' he adds.

Sheela Narayanan

This series is brought to you by the Singapore Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry