Bio

Who I am

My name is Mohd Rizwan. I'm from Bijnor, India.

I lost my father when I was two and a half years old. My mother and my elder brother raised me. My mother passed away on January 1st, 2019. I'm glad I had a mother like her, and I have a brother like him.

I studied BSc Computer Science and didn't finish it. I left because I believed the way it was being taught was wrong - there was no real education happening, and cheating was quietly encouraged by the people teaching us. One day I got up from my seat and left the room. That was it.

Starting out: The Networker

I started The Networker in 2018, before COVID, as a sole proprietor. It was a recruitment business, and it was just me - working alone from my room, on my phone, reaching out to companies, placing candidates. It survived COVID, and after it, the business actually took off. At my best, I was making around 2.5 lakhs a month, entirely alone, no team, no office. Clients stayed with me because I was more proactive than any vendor they'd worked with, and I delivered.

I've placed over 2,500 candidates through The Networker. That's not a rounded-up number - if anything, I'm keeping it conservative.

Building RKOSPL and Humgrow

In 2023, off the back of The Networker's success, I moved all my contracts over and started RKO Services Private Limited. I wanted to build something bigger - Humgrow, a super app for jobs and earnings. The plan was to let India's top companies post jobs, use it as an ATS and HRM, and let candidates apply for jobs or find freelance work, all in one place.

I made almost every mistake you can make. I tried to build the job portal, the ATS, the HRM, and the freelance marketplace all at once. I hired a team before the product was ready, and started signing clients before the team could deliver anything. We signed 10+ contracts with leading Bank/NBFC companies in India. I also rented an office I didn't need yet, and spent close to a third of everything I had on rent.

At our peak we had 32 people - half interns, half full-time, mostly in recruitment and management roles. I gave everyone full freedom and no targets, and told them to run it like it was their own company. That was naive. I wasn't a good manager. I wasn't a good trainer. I wasn't a good financial planner. I hired too fast, too many, and I ignored the warning signs because I kept believing people would eventually deliver on what they'd said they would.

By July 2025, I had no money left - not even enough to renew humgrow.com domain. I let it go and told everyone exactly what was happening. Then I shut Humgrow down myself.

I kept RKOSPL alive (thanks to Naman Malpani to help me in this). I didn't want my first company to end as a complete failure.

What I'm doing now

I'm building Xapproach.com under RKOSPL - a learning platform powered by AI, controlled by experts. It's pre-user right now. I'm building it alone, on purpose. No employees, no co-founder, no freelancers. The moment I bring someone in, I have to promise them something and deliver on it, and right now I want zero expectations weighing on anyone but me.

I'm not repeating the Humgrow mistake. One product. One thing at a time.

I'm also reaching out to founders at early-stage startups, because I want to learn how they actually operate - up close, in real time - and bring that back into how I run my own company. I've built something from nothing once. I've also watched something I built collapse because I didn't know what I was doing yet. I'd rather learn that second part from someone who's already been through it, instead of paying for the lesson twice.