Gaurav is a cafeprenuer who kept going despite facing several ups and downs in his journey and is now serving people with good food and soothing music.

Gaurav Kushwaha is the owner of Musafir Cafe and the founder of Musicathon.

Gaurav was born and raised in Kanpur, UP. He is currently based in Bir, Himachal Pradesh.

Gaurav did his schooling from Kanpur itself. Thereafter, he pursued his engineering from Ghaziabad. Recalling his childhood, Gaurav says that he was a naughty kid and grew up playing in the lanes with his friends. He says that being a 90’s kid, he enjoys being in the middle of technology’s inception and its revolution.

During his college days, Gaurav realised that he is not a desk-job guy. So after completing his engineering, he moved to Delhi to apply for a job in startups, and subsequently got a job in a startup called Akosha. He says that he worked there for about one and a half years before quitting due to a dispute with the manager. He then joined a startup named Zostel, he worked at Zostel for about a year and a half before quitting and deciding to start his own startup. He tried to run his startup for ten months before finally winding it up due to a shortage of funds. He joined Zostel again and worked there till 2019.

In 2017, during his stint at Zostel, Gaurav opened his own cafe named Musafir in a village called Bir in Himachal Pradesh. He then tried to manage his job at Zostel along with running his cafe by doing weekly up-downs. Eventually in 2019, he decided to quit Zostel and focus solely on his cafe.

Now that he was completely free to focus on his cafe business, Gaurav saw a scope for new activities that he could initiate at his cafe and thus he came up with the idea of Musicathon. In Musicathon, he decided to call up musicians to perform at his cafe to give his guests a unique experience of music. He says that it started with just two artists and around ten guests but he kept on organising the Musicathons and took it to a larger scale by renting out a camping place outside Bir to accommodate more guests. Gradually the participants increased and Musicathon became a popular thing. In February of 2020, as many as 565 people came to the 4th edition of the music festival which is a huge achievement for him.

Seeing the popularity of Musicathon, Gaurav shifted his cafe to a new place. But COVID struck in 2020 which took him to the verge of bankruptcy. Then he decided to start a crowdfunding campaign to save his cafe which proved to be a huge success as he received the target amount in just 72 hours. He organised the fifth edition of Musicathon with a limited gathering after the first wave of COVID. In the sixth edition, they collaborated with Roposo brand to livestream the music festival. And the seventh edition was even more successful as they got to collaborate with Roposo and Caravan too. He says that the eighth edition of Musicathon is about to launch.

When asked what he likes the most about his work, Gaurav says that he is doing what he always dreamt of and this makes him happy. He also likes it when Musicathon gets praise from people and makes them happy.

Gaurav considers his mother as his role model, who worked hard and raised all three of her children to have good lives. He further says that APJ Abdul Kalam and singer Arijit Singh are also his inspirations.

Drawing a compassion between education and experience, Gaurav says that it all depends on your age which one is more important for you. He says that up to the age of eighteen, education plays a crucial role in your growth, then the value of experience in your life increases. He further says that experimenting and exploring is very important in life.

Advising the people who want to enter into his field of work, Gaurav says that before quitting your jobs and jumping right in, you should volunteer with hotels and hospitality firms for some time to get a decision whether it’s your cup of tea or not. He further says that along with the dreamy landscapes of Himachal, you will also be dealt with numerous responsibilities once you open your own cafe there, so first experiment and then make the right decision. Talking about Musicathon, he says that he started it with a vision to give lesser-known artists a good platform, and not just to earn money.

Given a chance to go back in time with a time machine, Gaurav would like to watch MS Dhoni’s 2011 Cricket World Cup final winning shot live. He would also like to opt out of engineering and pursue a mass communication degree instead.

During his free time, Gaurav likes playing with dogs. He also loves interacting with various people and knowing their stories. Apart from this, he loves travelling and listening to songs. In the evening, he plays table tennis.

Describing his views on the impact of COVID, Gaurav says that a positive impact of the pandemic is the digitization of government offices and the start of the Work from Home trend. He says that many people finally got to do what they had always wanted. One of the negative things according to him is that people have lost the empathy that they had developed during the pandemic after it went away.

Talking about leadership, Gaurav says that he learned most of it from the CEO of Zostel. He further says that he learned to give liberty to the team members to get the work done.

Gaurav’s success mantra is working consistently without worrying about the results.