ENTREPRENEUR SPECIAL...... Think Wait. Start! .

Think. Wait. Start! .





INDUSTRY EXPERIENCE MAY NOT BE IMPERATIVE FOR STARTING UP ONE'S OWN VENTURE, BUT IT ALWAYS IS GOOD TO GATHER SOME INDUSTRY EXPERIENCE OR TAKE GUIDANCE FROM PROFES SIONALS WHO HAVE WITNESSED THE UPHEAVALS AND THE BEST TIMES

For a really long time, students had their career charts chalked out properly. They would study hard in schools and colleges, get selected in a competitive exam and work in a field they dreamt of working in since they were kids. But, the situation is not the same anymore. The millennials today are more spontaneous and like to take one thing at a time. They do not believe in planning their entire life at one go and love to change their focus as and when the time demands. And many of them have been bitten by the entrepreneurship bug, most recently.

The trend of professionals becoming entrepreneurs is not at all new. Nonetheless, what is new in this trend is that against the experienced professionals becoming entrepreneurs earlier, now a large number of millennials want to start their own ventures as soon as they pass out from colleges. The tsunami of start-ups that the country is witnessing presently is the result of the hard work of a large number of young talent. Even so,as the number of startups increase, an almost equal number of start-ups fail to see the light of the day. This raises a fundamental question should the young graduates look at gaining some professional industry experience before venturing into entrepreneurship?
Harsh Kapur Pillai, founder director, Terragni Consulting gives the answer. “Freshers do not possess the practical skills to start and run organisations; these are important skills to have and they usually come with working in an established organisation. Working for a few years also ensures that there is a certain maturity that freshers would acquire that will stand them in good stead. But, there is also a flipside to working in established organisations. Working for established organisations and the comforts that come with a monthly assured paycheck and a set infrastructure mean that many people's entrepreneurial dreams get subsumed with the passage of time and the start-up dream remains a distant dream. Therefore,it is imperative to set a hard deadline by when one would quit one's job and get going on the start-up.“

While many may contest that working and strengthening any other organisation than one's own may result in a waste of effort and time, experts opine otherwise. One needs to be sure of what he she wants to gather at the workplace.“Provided the time is spent on acquiring key skill, networking, acquiring the right mentors and maturing, it is better to spend 2 years acquiring these attributes as opposed to starting up in a rush and then making expensive mistakes on the job in the start-up,“ adds Pillai.

Satyanarayana Tummalapenta, senior director software engineering, ShoreTel India,  on the other hand, shares a different view. He believes that to emerge successfully as a mogul, all one needs is a ground-breaking idea and not years of experience.“If one believes the idea is groundbreaking, one should not wait to gain some industry experience as it is probably the right thing to start right away.

In such a scenario, however, one should enroll a few industry veterans as mentors to compensate for the lack of knowledge on industry best practices, processes, etc.“

Being the master of your own destiny and personal fulfillment are key impetus for the millennial generation to start up.

But this could also be a daunting proposition for a lot of them.

What eventually matters is your attitude towards taking risks and having the courage to face and manage failures early in life as we all know not all start-ups succeed.

Geetika Joshi,an independent HR professional,

sums it up as she says,“It does not matter much whether you are a seasoned professional or an amateur.

What matters when one takes that big leap towards entrepreneurship is conviction to make it happen,

a ground-breaking idea and some experienced people around to help you cross the line.If you have got it all,

gather it all together and take the step towards entrepreneurship.

With all the right ingredients in place,one would fetch nothing but success.

Kamini Kulshreshtha

TAS16NOV16