ENTREPRENEUR
STARTUP SPECIAL BACK TO A 9 to 5 JOB
Several startup founders
have gone back to being employees prompted by a slew of reasons, only
reaffirming that entrepreneurship is not for everyone
After a 13-year corporate career,
Rajul Jain in 2009 launched Yebhi, a fashion and lifestyle portal. In five
years of operations, the company struggled through a cash crisis with no money
to pay vendors or employees and a rift among the cofounders on strategy.
Though Yebhi raised $30 million (Rs
190 crore) over multiple funding rounds from Nexus Venture Partners, Fidelity
Growth Partners India, Qualcomm Ventures and Catamaran Ventures, it was unable
to raise more money, which eventually forced the founding team to bring down
the shutters in January 2014.
“By the time Yebhi closed, I was 40
years old and couldn't gather enough courage to start up again,“ said Jain, who
joined fashion e-retailer Myntra as senior vice president of supply chain three
months later.“We did too many things too fast and ended up in a situation where
even our investors stopped supporting us.“
Jain's story is one among many in
which founders shut or quit their ventures and opted for the safer haven of the
`nine-to-five'. Although a glamorised career choice these days, entrepreneurship
is not everyone's bread and butter. Besides being muddled with sacrifices
around personal and social life and money, there's the added pressure of
quickly scaling a business, ensuring steady cash flow to pay salaries, and
sharing managerial space with key external professionals.
“The number one cause is an
unwillingness to go all the way and have that grit to finish the race, which in
this case can be seven to eight years. Entrepreneurship needs adjusting for an
elongated period a lifestyle which will be lower than what you were leading
earlier,“ said Shailesh Vikram Singh, an angel investor and executive director
at Seedfund. “Most people are not willing to give that up, especially when
there's always a nice and breezy window of a job offer available from
corporates.“
Or the assumption that
entrepreneurship is all about hitting $1 billion in sales in five years. “That
may hold for a country like Israel. For a diverse economy like India's, setting
up a good metal working shop by a former head of manufacturing is an example of
quality entrepreneurship too,“ said G Sabarinathan, chairperson of
IIM-Bangalore's entrepreneurship cell, NSRCEL. Of the more than 50 ventures
incubated at the centre, about a dozen have “possibly disappeared,“ said
Sabarinathan.“Three of those were because the founders fell into disagreement,
while nearly in all of them the entrepreneurs have dropped out.I would imagine
10-15 of them did get back to corporate roles (in some instances more than one
founder per enterprise),“ he said.
So why is the other side compelling
for some? Intra-preneurship, in which people in corporate roles take ownership
and responsibility for a business, is one factor.
Once an entrepreneur, always an
entrepreneur, and a few former founders have found themselves working with a
similar philosophy ideate, build, co-create, but by leveraging existing
networks and resources while fuelling the system with an `entrepreneurial
culture'.
A case in point is Amarinder
Dhaliwal, who cofounded DoneByNone, an online private label fashion brand. He
quit his venture in October to join YU, Micromax's online-only smartphone
brand, as its chief operating officer. “I had put in enough effort from my end
but the business wasn't getting the capital it needed,“ he said.
Dhaliwal didn't want to start a new
venture immediately but preferred to be associated with a new online
business.“An area I was exploring was a well-funded company, but in the same
space of Internet or mobile where scale could be achieved or was there,“ Dhaliwal
said.
Companies see value in `have-been'
entrepreneurs. Paritosh Sharma, former cofounder of networking site for
startups HashTaag, and Gurjodhpal Singh, former cofounder of gifting portal
GiftCart.com, joined payments company PayUMoney (part of Naspers Group) in plum
roles.
“A lot of incredible companies like
PayU today are hiring failed entrepreneurs. The fire, grit, determination,
courage and the `I won't be out till I die' attitude is what entrepreneurs
have, which makes them different,“ said Sharma, who joined PayU India as head
of small and medium enterprises and partner-business growth after his venture
wrapped up because it wasn't able to make or raise money. Singh is vice
president at the company. Success, therefore, becomes a relative term, say such
entrepreneurs, because skill sets and insights acquired in the bargain are
irreplaceable, as starting up teaches one to be a `jack of all trades.' “My
entrepreneurial journey made me a patient person. I don't lose my cool at the
drop of a hat. For me, it's all about solving a problem and problem-solving
needs a calm mind to think rationally. Every challenge excites me and one will
never find me saying, `It's not my job,'“ said Amit Goel, who founded
Patterbuzz, a digital content startup that shut in three years due to low
funds. Goel, now vice president and head of product at cloud telephony company
Knowlarity Communications, said he doesn't mind getting his hands dirty in
anything be it hiring, sales, marketing, technology, or customer support. “I
love every part of it. Anything which makes my product successful is my job.“
Ironically, failure has a silver
lining. “I've gained enough confidence now that I can jump into any place and
hold the fort simply because as an entrepreneur you are used to wearing
different hats,“ said Chandra Shekar M, who has run three ventures, of which
one was successful. He's now an architect at Knowlarity.
“It's hard to judge the tenacity or
horsepower and whether a person has a thick skin,“ said Rahul Khanna, partner
at venture debt firm Trifecta Capital Partners.“If investors back the right
entrepreneurs, it will help India create companies such as Flipkart and
Snapdeal which can create tens of thousands of jobs.“
|
Shonali Advani
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ET3JUL15
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