28 August,2011 12:12 PM IST | | Yolande D'mello
It's not a lucrative job at an MNC that young graduates seem in search of anymore, but a chance to be their own boss. With entrepreneurs getting younger and the number of startups growing, the veteran entrepreneurs' club turns kingmaker, using the give-and-gain principle
Chennai resident Vijay Anand makes his money from telling young professionals, "You're the boss!" And his words carry weight when you realise that Anand launched his own business when he was just 16.
Anand runs The Startup Centre, a three month-old business incubator that's already doing well enough for him to consider expanding operations to Pune next year. The 29 year-old's firm trains wannabe entrepreneurs in the art of starting up by giving them a chance to learn from experienced entrepreneurs, designers and industry experts.
Mumbai boys Sushrut Munje and Ashish Pingle started housekeeping firm
Hammer & Mop six months ago with the help of Mohit Bansal and business
incubator L-Pad. They picked up 30 residences across Mumbai in two months.
Pic/SAMEER MARKANDE
Applicants go through three phases to realise their dream of working for themselves. It starts with a Drop-in, an informal introductory meeting of a large group of interested persons, who usually meet at a coffee shop or at Anand's Egmore office. "We see a lot of over-ambitious students and guys working in the IT sector who want to take a break. There are professionals coming back from the US who want to run their own company too," says Anand, profiling his clients.
The point of the Drop-in is to meet individuals who might have an idea on where to start. Anand laughs, "We've often been thrown out of coffee shops for making too much noise."
The former software engineer tells us that 85 per cent of all startups that have co-founders, get into fights in the first year of business. "But two founders are still better than one, because starting your own business is a lot of work and you can always use more hands. It's always better when partners who started out as friends get into business because you can fall back on the bond of friendship," says Anand.
Soon after completing his Standard 10 board exams, Anand started his first entrepreneurial venture by developing software that would help financial transactions at a bank, and teaching employees to use it. "At 16, you don't think of it as entrepreneurship. It's pocket money," says Anand, who also conceptualised and built Proto, a startup platform, in 2006 that has offered bootcamps for 2,000 new ventures.
The Startup Centre's Resident Programme, the second phase, is six months long and allows Anand's team to flesh out the entrepreneurial idea by talking to potential customers and suppliers in the said sector, and test the product's capacity to generate business.
The final phase, the Accelerator Programme that lasts another six months, is where The Startup Centre finally invests in the idea and provides the project with mentorship from industry experts.
Anand has already received 35 applications for the Resident Programme of which 10 will be finalised, and participants finally coached for a fee of Rs 7,500 per founder.
Quick-fix businessmen
Pune-based Startup Garage prefers doing it the speedy way. A venture by Mohit Bansal, the four month-old service offers aspiring entrepreneurs a crash course in business through a two-day camp at Rs 2,500 a seat.
"New entrants always underestimate the work that goes into starting a company," says Bansal who also founded L-Pad that helped steer three such ventures.
'For every 10 startups, 9 fail. We are equally concerned about the nine and try to do our bit,' says a line on the Startup Garage website.u00a0After organising two camps in Pune, one in Mumbai and another in Bengaluru, 29 year-old Bansal says the transition to short form mentorship is temporary. With 35 participants split into groups, Bansal throws in 10 mentors who conduct the camp. "While teams pitch their ideas, we evaluate them and help build the product or service before finally building a business plan and presenting a demo to possible investors."
Highlighting the difference between a business incubator and startup, he says, "A business incubator works like a school. We review applications, admit projects and when the mentorship is done, the company becomes an alumnus but is still a part of the incubator's expanding community."
Bansal's team looks for three criteriau00a0the team's background, the idea of the product or service, and its future plans. It's this team that decides if the business will succeed or not. "Being a skilled entrepreneur is like being gay. Either you are born with it or not," says the Symbiosis Institute of Information Technology (SCIT), Pune's alumnus.
u00a0
Sweep-and-swab Pvt. Ltd.
Unlike most business incubators, L-Pad did not directly invest capital into ventures but worked on four per cent equity in the company.
Hammer & Mop was one such company. Run by Flux Creek, a group of three young professionals, Hammer & Mop is a housekeeping firm that promises to 'make your every cleanup a pleasant, hassle-free experience'. Co-founder Sushrut Munje is a 21 year-old Kalyan resident who dropped out of engineering college in the third year when he realised he couldn't work for someone else. "I met a couple of like-mined people in college and decided to act immediately. We had an idea for a maintenance company that would offer you a plumber or electrician if they received a simple SMS. We applied to L-Pad for guidance and that's when Hammer & Mop took off," he says.
How did his parents take the decision to quit college? They were "conveniently out of town," Munje says, admitting that after much flak they are happy to see him run his own business.
The six month-old firm went through some changes in the concept stage at L-Pad, shaking off the maintenance tag and deciding to specialise in housekeeping. The firm is keen to bag contracts for the upkeep of offices, and provide office boys and pantry staff. They offer a One-time Cleanup at Rs 3,000 per 1,000 sq ft or a customised package where you choose the area and frequency, and the firm calculates the cost incurred.
While Hammer & Mop aims to plug the gap in the area of housekeeping sector that functions as an unorganised sector, it also looks at providing employment opportunities to the less fortunate by approaching NGOs.
It's all about sharing
It's a story worth telling, believes Shradha Sharma, founder of YourStory.in, a website for startup news that also acts as a conduit between venture capitalists and entrepreneurs. "Since 2008, when we started, we have published some 3,000 stories about 8,000 entrepreneurs. The startup is the star but we aren't just looking at success stories. It's essential to speak of those who didn't make it," says Sharma, who previously worked with a news channel.
She can brag about how new entrants head straight to her website to make an announcement about entering the industry, but it wasn't a rosy picture four years ago. "People thought I was crazy to quit a paying job but I knew the trend would catch on. Now we get 35 new startups keen to talk to us everyday."
The website acts like a library for aspiring entrepreneurs, tracking global and regional trends, introducing new investors and reviewing startups while evaluating their strengths and faults.
For entrepreneurs with some experience under their belt, it's a way to keep track of new competition, and for cloud computing companies and investors, it's a chance to cash in on new talent, explains Sharma.
But Bansal is not convinced. "Information is just one part of the process," he says. "The same information is available to everyone but how you analyse it and what you choose to do with it are key factors in success."
For Harsh Snehanshu and Apoorv Jain, the idea of starting their own creative platform -- The Witty Shit -- came to them when they were studying engineering in New Delhi. The 21 year-olds took inspiration from the status messages on Facebook and started a page where fans would 'Like' and contribute to their 'Wall' filled with funny one-liners.
The 10,000 contributions that the Witty Shit now has are not governed by copyright. After watching the success of their Facebook page, Snehanshu launched a website where fans could post one-liners that the duo would then sell to advertising agencies and T-shirt companies looking for slogans. "The point is to encourage creative networking. When it generates money, it will work on the principle of royalty. Every person who came up with a one-liner that got picked, receives a royalty," says Snehanshu who works out of his New Delhi home.
Taking the initiative forward by themselves proved exhausting, and while Snehanshu's management professor was intrigued, his engineering professors weren't as thrilled. After participating in IIM Ahemdabad's incubator competition in 2010, and winning, the two were finally recognised for their work.
Two months ago, Snehanshu and Jain started a community for student entrepreneurs. They called it Student Entrepreneur Network (SEN). The group meets at the IIT Delhi campus once every week to discuss ideas.
The new entrepreneur is getting younger, investors are getting more curious and with ideas from technology to tiffin services finding a way into the market, veterans say this is just the beginning.
