Execution

My last article was about ideas and how to generate, incubate and finally commercialise your idea. But what should you do once you have the final product? Why try and sell it of course! But, there is a step in between. Most of us do not have the funds to actually get our idea into the marketplace. Whether it is the need for coders for an e commerce site or large scale manufacturing, the need for seed money and continued funding is felt by every venture in its early stages. Not only in the early stages, most successful start-ups go through multiple rounds of investment before they become operational.  So here is a brief guide to the different kinds of funding available to young entrepreneurs and what should they expect from these sources.

1. Grants

This is the most lucrative kind of funding out there. Many institutes give grants to ideas that they feel requires their backing. Grant money does not need to be returned (Some grants require you to payback a part of the money in the form of donations but this is considered to be debt financing explained below). This grant money is also (most of the time) well publicised and can help you gain recognition and associates.

The downside is that most grant money is issued to projects in their research stage. This money is also very tightly controlled and there are strict guidelines set up which limit how the money can be used. Grants are also fiercely competitive and very hard to come by.

2. Debt Funding

This is the kind of funding that most banks and financial institutions issue. These institutions have very clear lending policies and are very clear about rate of interest, time of return etc. You need to have a clear business plan and repayment strategy for this kind of funding, along with good credit history. These banks also often need some kind of collateral. This kind of funding provides you with clear aims that your company needs to achieve to repay your loan and this also gives you full control of your idea and product without having to consult investors and venture capitalists at every turn.

The cons of this are that this funding needs to be repaid whether your business is a success or not. The repayment scheme is discussed when you are issued the loan and needs to be adhered to. This kind of funding also doesn’t give you any secondary benefits such as having the recognition that comes with having a big investor and the visibility which comes with it (look at flipkart with its billion dollar investment).

3. Equity Funding

This is the kind of funding that most of us are familiar with. Almost all new start-ups want a piece of this very tiny cake. When you get equity funding you may be funded by friends and family, institutionalised angel investors, seed capitalist all the way upto venture capitalists. In return for the funds they provide these investors ask for equity (shares) in you start ups. This is a good thing as they can only get a return for their investment when your company does well. They often provide guidance and networking opportunities to you and your associates.

As great as it may sound there are a few problems with equity funding

• Your idea does not solely belong to you now. You have to keep your investors happy and appraised of your performance and have to take their views into account.
• It is extremely hard to get this kind of funding.
• Even if you do find somebody who is interested in funding your venture they might not be as forthcoming as you would like.

This is the basic difference between debt and equity funding:

4. Crowdfunding

This is the newest kind of funding out there. It involves directly connecting with your market and asking them for funds for a product they might find useful. Sites such as Kickstarter and Indigogo are leaders in this field. This involves putting a prototype of your product on the website and having a reward based investment by the general public.

This is very helpful for really innovative small scaled ideas but requires an internet presence and a lot of luck.

Most small businesses go through the following stages:

And have the following investment model

However every start up is different and will require different kinds of funds at different times. So the final advice I would like to leave you with is choose wisely .So, may the odds be ever in your favour.

P.S. If you are having a hard time understanding investment and funding watch the first few episodes of the HBO series “Silicon Valley”.

 

The Interview

Amidst the pile of sheets, different pencils, eraser, set squares and T-squares, I spotted out one (almost) living being in her polka-dot pajamas. The spotted species is popularly known as “The Architecture Student”. Her sleep-deprived eyes looked up from her sheet as the interview began:

Q.What comes to your mind when you hear “entrepreneurship”?

— Lijjat Papad. I was only eight and munching on the papad in subject when my father narrated me an incident about how seven Gujarati women started a small venture of making papads and selling them from their homes which gradually grew into a successful business. “It’s called entrepreneurship.”, he had concluded.

Q.Do you think it helps the field of  architecture ?

— Of course it does. Right now, after I finish my graduation, I’m looking at five more years of slogging in somebody’s firm and running around to fetch coffees for my superiors. The only key to freedom from a relationship with the coffee machine and for the liberation of ideas is running a firm of my own.

Q.If you had all the resources would you like to start a company?if yes then what service would you provide?

–Yes, that’s the dream. Someday, I want to start an architecture firm which would focus mainly on the residential architecture. Afterall, accommodation of the raging population on this planet is one of the biggest challenges.

Q.What campus companies would you have wished for in your college to make your job easier?

— The fact is that an architecture student has more luggage to carry than a coolie does on Mumbai Central railway station. A campus company from whom we can rent the drafting tools for the time that we are in college can serve as a relief ointment to our numbed-by-pain vertebral column.We are always in a battle against time and are highly forgetful. A stationary provider on the campus can be the knight in shining Armour during such crisis.

Q.Do you think architecture colleges should also promote Ecells?

–Ecells can work as good as a GPS system for the architecture students who are gearing up to step out of the college and are as lost as a sheep. Pursuing entrepreneurship needs a heavy dose of encouragement and guidance in the right direction. So having Ecells in architecture colleges would work in our favour.

 And with that our interviewee concludes her interview because even though we want to know more about this bone-tired talented species called The Architecture Student , they always have work to do and hopefully ,after reading this interview,even architecture colleges will start promoting Ecells and some budding entrepreneur will cash-in on the idea she spoke about and earn a lot of blessings along with monies for saving the students from turning into part-time coolies.

Moral of the story:Feasible business ideas can be found in plenty right in your backyard, you just need to look right.

…so goes the famous pop song by Beyoncé Knowles. With the tide of women empowerment and feminism sweeping the world, everyone gets excited when a woman excels in some field or achieves something breaking the general norm. But when you look deeper, you find yourself asking the question “Are women really ruling the world?” Year after year, we see newspaper headlines on how girls have aced exams round the country. It just makes you wonder then why is it so that women simply seem to disappear when we move higher up the ladder? We see less and less women making the decisions.

The trend is not limited to a particular set of fields, it is observed everywhere. The ratio becomes exceptionally skewed when it comes to entrepreneurship. Women’s participation throughout the world is varied from 1 % in Pakistan to 27% in Sub-Saharan Africa. Even in India, women entrepreneurs are a rarity.

We cannot talk about women entrepreneurship in India without thinking about the famous “Lijjat Papad” venture. Major population of the women entrepreneurs in India commercially prepares the 3 P’s-Papad, powder and pickles. Women have been successful in extending the boundaries of their kitchen or in some case their wardrobes but they still have a long way to go in the tech world. With tech entrepreneurship being heavily dominated by the brawling Y chromosome, things become more difficult for women. They need more than just an idea to make it into the thick-skinned entrepreneurial world.

With high risk-reward ratio and lack of mentoring, it’s very easy for the budding women entrepreneurs to get discouraged. The reason that tech entrepreneurship emerged as a male dominant field in the first place is that it falls out of the gender specific roles of women. We all are socially programmed since birth that all rough and tough work is the domain of the men. You will find women at the high end of brands of clothes, accessories, media and food. This goes with their gentle and fragile nature. So they are easily accepted in those fields.

When asked about the greatest challenges that women entrepreneurs face, Lastminute.com co-founder Martha Lane Fox said: “When you are not the norm, you have to battle to be accepted as the norm, and so we know it’s harder to get funding as a women. And again, I don’t really believe that’s because there’s this overt sexism anywhere, it’s just a cultural thing. If you work in a venture capital fund where there aren’t any women in that fund, because we know the finance sector doesn’t have many women, you probably see a woman coming in and you maybe have some prejudices. This might not be true in all situations, but culturally that might be the case. It doesn’t make anybody a bad person; it’s just cultural norms I guess”. We don’t consciously create a bias against the women who walks in to pitch her idea for funding but because our society is programmed in a patriarchal way, it hinders the growth of women as entrepreneurs.

Apart from social norms and lack of mentoring, it’s difficult for women to get funding. Again, Women don’t get funding because they aren’t considered as risk takers by the society. All the difficulties faced by women entrepreneurs boil down to the thinking of the society we live in. It’s difficult not to act on the prejudices that are built in our mind since childhood. It happens subconsciously but it does makes us a bad person if we ignore it. And that’s where our education comes into play. The educated crowd, the ones that are ruling the world for now should consciously give women a better environment to compete with them. Women are not asking for any special treatment but women entrepreneurs do need a fair chance to compete. That is exactly why there are various organizations working towards a better sex ratio in the entrepreneurial world. Some of them are 500 startups, NASSCOM with their GIT(Girls in Technology) program and Federation of Indian Women Entrepreneur(FIWE).

Even after tackling the social norms, the pesky middlemen and the corrupt system, India still has some surviving women entrepreneurs to boast about. Ekta Kapoor, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw and Shahnaz Hussain are the well known names of media, business and fashion. Though there are really few names in the tech industry. With colleges offering opportunities at an early level and the times and perspective of the society changing, there wasn’t a better time than now for the budding women entrepreneurs to exploit the market. Plato truly said, “As women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach the same things.” That’s the reason we have Bloombox-The Ecell of our college. Bloombox promotes and helps all the campus based companies. If you have an idea, they can help you make it happen.

So girls! Let’s run the world!

Instilling Entrepreneurship

Do you remember when you were a kid and you thought you could do anything? Well, You still can.Because, a lot of what we consider impossible is easy to overcome and in case you haven’t noticed, we live in a place where one individual can make a difference. Want proof? Look around you and notice the plethora of necessities and technologies you use daily. They are made by people ready to make their mark.  Maybe they came with very little. Or perhaps they didn’t own anything except for ‘a single brilliant idea’. These people were thinkers, doers, innovators, until they came up with the name ENTREPRENEURS. They change the way we think about what is possible. They have a clear vision of how life can be better for all of us, even when times are tough. Right now, it’s hard to see, when our view is cluttered with obstacles, but turbulence creates opportunities for success, achievement and pushes us to discover new ways of doing things.

Young entrepreneurs are on the rise across the globe. So where are we lacking? What is preventing the Indian youth from taking that giant leap?

Number one, society. The quantitative analysis of your intelligence is what the society hunts for. First you need to prove on your report card to be allowed to continue pursuing your hobby. Even if you make a nuclear reactor or discover a new element in your garage, getting a distinction in your finals is a must. The maturing young mind becomes more inquisitive about it’s surrounding and right when you want to seek answers, you are bombarded with the most bizarre impediments you can ever think about.

Secondly, the narrow-mindedness of people. Most middle class families want the mainstream life. Surviving is becoming a tougher challenge everyday. The safest visible path with least resistance to a ‘decent’ life is : Study -> Get into a ‘reputed’ college -> Get placed in an MNC -> Get married -> Kids -> Wait for Grandchildren. The path is so enticing that most people forfeit everything else and join the race. This is made worse by the society that equates success to a person’s net worth. Entrepreneurship comes with massive risk that doesn’t guarantee anything. We often settle for what’s available, and what’s available isn’t always great. “Because it was there” is an okay reason to have a job, or a free sample at the supermarket but not a very good reason to climb a mountain or to start a startup.

 

And then there are the three cardinal sins almost everyone commits.

Ignorance:If we are not aware how to make something great, we just won’t. If we don’t know greatness is possible, we won’t bother attempting it. All too often, we literally do not know any better than good enough.

 

 

Momentum:If you’ve been doing what you’re doing for years and it’s not-so-great, you are in a rut. Many people refer to ruts as careers just living for themselves without any impact, without creating value in life.

 

Passivity:There is a difference between being agreeable and agreeing to everything what people tell you. You have to trust the little internal voice that tells you, “this is a great idea.” You will lose or you will win – no one knows that. But it will be something worth fighting for.

So what opportunities will you go after and why? If you’re an entrepreneur, you know that risk isn’t the reward. No. The rewards are driving innovation, changing people’s lives, creating jobs, fueling growth and making a better world. Entrepreneurs are everywhere. They run small businesses that support our economy, design tools to help you stay connected with friends, family and colleagues around the world and they’re finding new ways of helping to solve society’s oldest problems. Do you know an entrepreneur? Entrepreneurs can be anyone. Even you. You just need to start small. So seize the opportunity to create the job you always wanted. Help heal the economy. Make a difference. Take your business to new heights. But most importantly, remember when you were a little kid, when everything was within your reach and then say to yourself quietly, but with determination IT STILL IS.

 

3M’s 5 Sutras for Budding Entrepreneurs

Have you ever used sticky notes? You know those yellow pieces of paper that you stick on your fridge or your board. What about scotch guard? Or scotch tape? These seemingly basic products have been in use for most of our lives yet we never question who first invented them.

3M, or to use its former name Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation. If you ask it’s CEO Inge G Thulin what his company does he’ll tell you that they are “in the business of innovation”. The company, which was started in 1902 with the aim of being a mining corporation, has been at the forefront of innovation for nearly a century. It has a staggering presence worldwide with offices in 60 countries and a foothold in 200. 3M owes its formidable strength to its unusual corporate culture, which comfortably fosters innovation and interdepartmental cooperation, backed by a massive research & development budget, which in 1997 exceeded $1 billion. Because of this, 3M ranks as a leader in—and in many cases a founder of—a number of important technologies, including pressure sensitive tapes, sandpaper, protective chemicals, microflex circuits, reflective materials, and premium graphics (and the products mentioned at the beginning).

So it’s another multibillion dollar company, what does this have to do with us in KJSCE? A lot if you want to become an entrepreneur. Every entrepreneur knows that everything starts with an idea, something that is useful and can be marketed to the general populace. 3M proves that these ideas are not rare and don’t need to be ground-breaking. They just need to be good enough to make people’s lives easier. 3M constantly comes up with new ideas (so much so that they often need to incubate them) which are both smart and completely obvious once they come up with it.

So how do they do it? How do they come up with seemingly simple ideas that escape everybody else? The answer (I hope) will help some of you budding entrepreneurs come up with your own ideas.
Here are some of the things which 3M looks into when developing an idea.

1. Research
Know the market. Know what the customers need and what they want. Ask them what would make things easier for them and how much they would pay for it. Market research is a vital step in any enterprise.
For example, we all have laboratory courses every semester which require write ups. Most of us either take it from the Xerox centre or print them ourselves but wouldn’t it be easier if you could just get the write ups delivered right to your class? This is exactly the service Writing Wonders provides.
They knew this idea would work because they asked their classmates whether this service would be useful to them. They set the price according to the survey they conducted and accordingly took orders and contacted printers.

2. Have a broad base
This is especially important for us. We as engineers tend to close ourselves off into our fields but the truth is every major idea in the last 25 years has grown from an amalgamation of different areas of technology and services. Do not hesitate to step out of your comfort zone to explore other options.

3. Talk to other people
This ties in with the earlier point about having a broad base. You should talk to people from other fields that are in the same boat as you. You never know when inspiration might strike but it makes sense to expose yourself to as many young entrepreneurs and innovators as you can. It will not only help you make contacts and get to know people who might help you on the future but can also help you make a roadmap about what you need to do once you develop your product/idea.

4. Give yourself time
This cannot be stressed enough. Give yourself time to think through what you want to do. Rushing into things can only lead to disappointment. Google first started as a way of organising large amounts of data, which developed into page ranking which then went on to become a search engine. You never know where your ideas may take you, so foster and nurture them.

5. Do not hesitate
This might seem as the anti-thesis of the last point but is equally important. Once you have your idea put it into action. Take the necessary risks and do not be afraid of failing. Xerox had developed a valid GUI years before Apple but Apple was the first company to have a graphic interface which revolutionised the home computer market.

A failed idea does not mean that you have failed. It just means that you have to pat yourself on the back for coming up with a solution that no one else thought of and after that ask yourself ‘What’s my next idea?’.

Young Entrepreneurs of KJSCE

What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the words “Entrepreneurship “ or  “Entrepreneur”? Ninety percent of the time you will imagine one of those big shot business names like Bill Gates or Zuckerberg or Ambani or a faceless person in an expensive suit in a formal business environment.

But then you have to go back to the basics .Everyone started out with an idea. It is not even necessary that you have to become a corporate ninja to become an entrepreneur. It is the other way round. You first become an entrepreneur and then if you wish to , you become a corporate ninja or a stay at home mom or sell your idea and let someone else do the business

This concept has been well explained in the movie “English Vinglish” where a housewife sells ladoos from home and becomes an entrepreneur.Entrepreneurship means stretching the boundaries of innovation and for that, all you need is an inspiration. And inspiration like lightning can strike anywhere. Maybe one day your fuse decides to act out and you are sitting there in the dark trying to find a flashlight and suddenly you realize what an amazing concept “glow in the dark flashlight” is because honestly ,if everything is dark how will you locatethe flashlight! And just like that you become an entrepreneur.

To give a platform to start out and test their ideas , colleges have started developing Ecells or entrepreneurship councils which encourage ,support and incubate young entrepreneurs starting out in their college hoodies and grungy t-shirts.

Bloombox,KJSCE is one such Ecell and it helps to transform ideas into businesses . it’s like a mock test before going out into the cold hard world. The target demographic here are the students of the college but the challenges are all in real time. It is really astounding to see the ideas some of the students come up with .They range from services you always wished were available to those younever imagined until someone made it available.

Let’s understand this with few examples.

Tool trunk, an existing campus company sells tools in the college to FE’s and Mech students. If you aren’t from KJSCE and your college does not have this service then I am sure that you wanted someone to hand you the tools of the correct specifications nicely in a bag so that all you had to do was shove them in your locker instead of going to a hardware store and scratching your head and transporting those heavy chunks of metal to your college.

Another company Writing Wonders provides write-ups to you in your class. You don’t need this kind of luxury but wouldn’t you wish for it once it is there?

Artsy Craftsy sells handmade cards, surprise boxes, bookmarks and anything else you can come up with. Again , wouldn’t you wish for some new innovative personalized thingy to be available so that you can gift it to someone instead of a store brought card and at a much more reasonable price?!

If you are a tronics or EXTC student then wouldn’t you wish desperately that you don’t have to travel all the way to town if you don’t live near there and pick out components? Well, Component Cloud makes it available in the college!

As I said, some of these ideas are astounding. What India really needs is more entrepreneurs to challenge the First World countries and make rupee stronger. So, just gather your resources or your talents and team up with your friends or anyone who can fill in the voids of your idea and start a company of your own so that even you can get the impressive title of “entrepreneur” !