Joel Samuel Raj

The Roots Behind jay

My business journey started young, at 19.

I loved photography and was always looking for ways to put the pictures I clicked to use. I started making photo frames and calendars, but one idea took me further than I expected notebooks. I began designing notebook covers using photographs I had taken myself and produced my own notebooks from scratch. I started selling them to college friends, family, and people around me. Before I knew it, I had sold around 2,000 notebooks.

That little notebook business took me places. It taught me what it meant to actually sell something I had created, deal with people, understand costs, take risks, and figure things out on my own. Eventually, for various reasons, I had to put it on pause. The idea never really left me though. I still believe I will bring it back someday, bigger and better.

After college, I was at a point where I honestly had no idea what I was going to do. I had studied aeronautical engineering, but I had zero practical knowledge in the field and, without a degree, a job in the core industry wasn't really an option.

Then came drones.

What started as curiosity turned into a completely new direction. I began learning mapping, surveying, cinematography, and everything I could around drones. Coming from a photography background, cinematography came naturally to me, while the technical side was something I had to learn along the way.

Since 2018, I have been flying drones and working across different areas of the industry from mapping and surveying to cinematography and eventually power-line inspection. I spent years working as a freelancer before moving to Saudi Arabia in 2024 to work professionally as a drone pilot in power-line inspection.

Even while working a job, the entrepreneur in me never really switched off. My business in Chennai continued to run, and I kept thinking about how to improve it, what could be built next, and what new ventures I could explore.

There is something I have learned about myself along the way: money from a job and money from something I built myself never felt the same. I could make a lakh from a job and still feel like something was missing. But the first ₹10,000 I made from my own business gave me a kind of satisfaction that money alone couldn't explain.

Maybe I simply couldn't settle for less. In fact, I have never really felt that something was enough. I keep running through failures, setbacks, uncertainty, and everything in between.

I don't consider myself the smartest person in the room. Honestly, I sometimes joke that I'm probably the dumbest human alive. But maybe that doesn't matter as much as having the courage to take the leap when everyone else is standing at the edge thinking about it.

That is what I want JAY to become something built through taking those leaps.

The bigger goal is to build JAY and its ventures into something people know, starting right where it all began. If JAY becomes something noticeable in Perambur, that alone would mean a lot to me. From there, the ambition only gets bigger.

I want to build businesses, discover new ventures, create opportunities, help other entrepreneurs, and eventually use what I build to contribute to society in whatever ways I can.

This journey is nowhere near finished. I don't know exactly where it will take me, and that's probably the most exciting part.

I believe that if you can think about something, dream about it, and genuinely believe it is possible, there is a way to make it real.

Take the risk. Jump.

The journey might be difficult. You might fail. You might struggle more than you imagined. You might even question why you jumped in the first place.

But the jump itself?

Believe me. It's awesome.