EchoSystem

 This virus has penetrated through all the trade and capital routes, bringing doom to even very powerful and well-structured countries.  It therefore also reversed the direction of flow to an extent. Pandemics alter the course of history and bring new ways of living into existence. The crisis has brought the world running high speed to a screeching halt. There are major changes in how consumers and businesses behave. 

A few months ago celebrating birthdays with people tightly packed in clammy areas with lots of hugging and cheering would’ve sounded fun but now the thought of it brings shudders. The thought of tiny invisible organisms waiting to fasten to our organs makes the ordinary events feel more formidable. 

Pandemics and recessions and all sorts of black swan events act as catalysts that accelerate newer innovations with new values.  They disrupt the existing market footholds. This is when disruptive innovation comes into play. Disruptive innovation is a product or service that creates a new market with a different set of values which ultimately takes over the existing market. These innovations tend to be products or services targeted at the lower end of the customer spectrum usually brought by outsiders or entrepreneurs in startups.

 Back to the birthday example, a few months ago celebrating your birthday on a video call with your friends, as they sit in the comfort of their own homes eating cake together might’ve seemed frivolous and pointless but now it is a shocking reality! It sounds like absolute madness, doesn’t it? The disruption in the market and livelihood created a space for new ideas and innovations. The same ideas and innovation which would’ve been a mad man’s rambling or a rich lady’s whims are now the only plausible reality.  

How to tackle this new ‘reality’ and win the fight with as fewer bruises as possible? With consumers who previously ran behind luxuries now looking towards security, there is a reason for apprehension in small capital investors and large capital investors alike. For early-stage startups, the pandemic of this magnitude is very difficult to handle. But on the upside, the disruptive theory is a bright spot for these small-cap investors. Their actions during the crisis will determine how they are going to emerge out of it. 

Disruption is not as easy as it sounds. The gap between the theory and the practice is wide. The reason is that tinkering around the edges of a product or service and finding modifications is a lot easier than coming up with a new product or a service that meets the quality standards of everyone and has a reasonable price.  

How can you ever get on a water slide in an amusement park or relax back into the comfy chairs in a movie theatre without apprehension? How can you ever travel to a different country or place without the imminent feeling of catching a pathogen? The key to disruption is not in the innovation but striping down the preconceived notions and trying to create new answers. An alternate reality. 

Though the crisis might strain the capabilities of startups and present them with new and immense challenges, the disruption created by the pandemic can also act as a portal for the startups to change the dynamics of existing society and to emerge strongly established.

The silver lining is while most social enterprises are small, they’re growing in number, and have the potential to tackle great issues we face with the environment, poverty, drugs, incarceration, trafficking, homelessness, equality, and mental health.

So everyone wants to ask what is social entrepreneurship: Put simply, it’s the use of new approaches to solving old social problems. Throughout history, there have been social change agents and activists who have put their societies on a better path. But over the past couple of decades, a distinct, more entrepreneurial approach to alleviating social problems has emerged. That path-breaking generation of social entrepreneurs broke free of the false dichotomy between “it’s a business” or “it’s a charity” to experiment with business models, innovate new distribution and replication methods, and hold themselves accountable for results.

Basically, it means using business as a tool to solve social issues. It’s risky, because entrepreneurship is already hard, and entrepreneurship exercised with the precept of placing a social cause above your profits is even harder.

There are two things worthwhile about social entrepreneurship.

The first is that they tend to be really close to the social problem that they’re solving and they’re free to deliver their impact in the way they see best. On the flip side, they still have their business constraints — you can’t just allocate money and resources that don’t exist.

The second thing is that social enterprises tend to be self-funded, and that means that, in a sense, they’re in control of their own destiny. You have to be conscious that plenty of businesses fail. You need to have a solid business model. And yes, earning profits can get in the way of your social impact.

Being a company that’s willing to sacrifice profits for their mission gives extra truth to their vision of change. And there is something really powerful in that. It’s like they inspire trust in their stakeholders that they’re doing the right thing.

We just looked at two of the great forces that social entrepreneurship brings to the table. The next question is how do you get more people playing the impact business game? There are three bits of magic to this:

· The first is the generation of ideas

· The second bit of magic is external validation

· The third bit of magic is what happens when you bring people together from different backgrounds to work on an idea

If you’re developing a social enterprise, make sure you’re on the ground, talking to the people you want to impact. Make sure to incorporate their stories, hopes, and dreams into whatever concept you’re developing.

Most importantly of all, social entrepreneurs are driven by values: dignity, access to opportunity, transparency, accountability, and empowerment. They are passionate about the problem they are trying to solve and keep their social mission front and center as they scale up their impact. In many cases, they have left potentially lucrative careers to found their social enterprise, motivated by a desire for a more meaningful purpose or struck by an “aha” moment that compelled them to act.

In conclusion, neither traditional business models and nor government funding are always the best routes to make a social impact. Traditional business models are too focused on profit, and government funding can be scarce and restrictive. Social enterprises occupy a unique position in being able to deliver social change sustainably but the question we need to ask is:

Although we are living in the 21st century, the number of people who still believe that men are more adequate for business is not negligible. However, we are still inclined to believe in certain stereotypes about what are “masculine” and what “feminine” jobs are.

Many would ask does she have the skills and the answer to that is, she has the required skills innately in her.

To survive in today’s competitive world, one should always be ready to learn new things. She has an inherent quality of learning this very quickly and adapt to change faster. It has been scientifically proven that girls often mature faster than boys. Not only do they have a flair for learning but also they learn faster.

Integrity simply means doing the right thing because it is the right thing to do. As women are naturally evolved to take care of their family, they do the right thing for their families. And they don’t hesitate to take hard steps if those steps do any good for their families. Women entrepreneurs with their higher integrity do great in the business world.

Running a successful business means building relationships with employees, shareholders, vendors, and customers. Women have the ability to build relationships faster, which boosts the chance of their being successful. In a survey, it was found that female leaders excel at “nurturing” competencies such as developing others and building relationships.

To be a successful business owner, one needs to take full ownership of one’s business. Women are blessed with a super sense of ownership. Often, they take full ownership of their families. I don’t say that men don’t do that. My point is woman’s brain has developed this way — to take care of people whom they love.

In today’s cutthroat competition, lean methodology is the best way to manage costs and maximize profits. And without any doubt, women are very good at the lean methodology. We all know how good women are at household expenditures. Similarly, when entrusted, they do bargaining with vendors and negotiation with stakeholders to get the most out of every business dealing.

Businesses that readily adopt changes based on the need of time, grows rapidly. Women are highly adaptable in nature. Be it a daughter, sister, mother, or wife, they adapt brilliantly in their roles to make harmony around them.

Well, there is a reason why you often meet a woman HR manager. Women have a knack for human resource management, and they understand the emotive aspect of business better. This helps them manage people and business efficiently.

So where does the challenge lie? Here are the perceptions of the world, when a woman asserts herself as an entrepreneur. When a little boy asserts himself, he’s called a ‘leader.’ Yet when a little girl does the same, she risks being branded ‘bossy.’ A woman exhibiting her entrepreneurial prowess is presumed as wanting to take over the leadership role of a man. These negative cultural perceptions of women owning their own business can carry over, making it more difficult for women to gain social acceptance and participate in male-dominated events. The barriers that women entrepreneurs face in accessing credit from formal institutions are magnified in view of their limited access to formal education, ownership of property, and social mobility. Business success depends on the support the family members extend to women in the business process and management but family life has a dramatic impact on the progress of females. The work-home conflict — the tension caused by the dual responsibility of managing a business and maintaining a family is the main stumbling block for female business owners. Last but not least and the most concerning is safety — the biggest hurdle for women in India. Due to the rise of social crime, women hesitate to take on roles that demand long hours and interactions with a world of strangers.

The Entrepreneurial landscape is changing, though at a slow pace. Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Oprah Winfrey, Arianna Huffington, Indra Nooyi are a few names that assure us women are equally efficient when it comes to running a successful business.

The perfect version of a fairy-tale differs from person to person. And, the truth is — there’s no fairy-tale, whatsoever. For women in India, unfortunately — the process involves continuous tests and proving their mettle, something that makes women possess a qualitative advantage over men owing to the perfection of skill-sets as they pass the tests of time but the questions which need to be answered by women entrepreneurs are

Can we look at this from a different perspective to find a riposte? A younger mind’s retort to the grey strand theory of the ecosystem.

Let us imagine a situation where you walk into a restaurant after a rough day at work and order for a pizza hoping the pizza would drown out your troubles. A while later, as you look forward to savoring it, your order arrives and you grab a bite. To your dismay, something feels off, the pizza doesn't taste as expected. You sprinkle a little bit of salt and pepper and there you have it, just the right flavor complimenting your taste buds help you get away from your miseries for at least a little while!

If you noticed, had there been no salt and pepper, the pizza would've been a mere compromise.  But dude, why such a fuss about it? Well buddy, let me explain.

The youth today as we like to call it is like the pepper, a perfect mix of masala and spice, whereas the generation from the ’80s or older signifies the salt, modest yet powerful.

For a start-up to run successfully, striking the right balance between these two is of utmost importance. But in reality, people fail to understand this very concept.

A start-up is indeed judged to have less experience looking at its age rather than the journey it has been through which stands as a classic example of judging a book by its cover. It is a crying shame to tell that while the people/companies should be looking at a start-up as an opportunity to grow/partner with, they engage themselves by keeping a tab on the number of people with grey strands in the start-up. Within no time, you realize that the age factor played a major role in your start-up's downfall and just because someone did not find that feather in your cap (grey hair), the potential of your start-up was taken loosely and overlooked.

Is our perception biased? Is it true that intellectualism is directly propositional to age? Does it indicate that the darker strands aren’t reliable or relatable? Who stands accountable for it? Is it our culture or do we blame the situations?

Are you with me in the same boat?

We will explore the qualities and requirements of entrepreneurship. Moreover, we will break down the commitments entrepreneurs make, and examine the nine distinct characteristics of the entrepreneurial mind. These characteristics include:

Passionate Drive 

Resilient Attitude

Optimistic Approach

Creative Mindset

Integrity as a Value

Visionary with foresight

Astute Nature

Risk-taking Courage

Self-motivated Individual

Let’s break the code one by one

The Passion

Entrepreneurs are often self-starters who follow their own paths and passions. Entrepreneurs are decisive with clarity, persistent to achieve results, and have a high level of confidence and self-belief in themselves. Because of these qualities, they are always passionate and serious about their business, which also makes them very demanding. They know what they want, and they will bend over backward to ensure that others follow their instructions to the letter.

The Resilience

Successful entrepreneurs experience setbacks just like everybody else. However, for them, setbacks are only temporary conditions that can bring about positive outcomes if tackled in an optimal way. Entrepreneurs experience their fair share of criticism, rejection, and failure. They go through intense fears and also make terrible and costly mistakes. However, these circumstances never phase them. They pick themselves up, learn from the experience, and just keep moving forward with more determination than ever before. This is the kind of resiliency that keeps propelling them forward to higher levels of achievement.

The Optimism

Entrepreneurs understand that the vast majority of people will not believe in them, or in their vision. They’ve heard people tell them time and again that what they’re doing is impossible, and that failure is inevitable. But in such instances, what seems to deter them, only encourages them to work harder to prove people wrong. In many respects, it is this optimism in them, that helps them thrive under pressure and perform at peak levels when their backs are against the wall.

The Creative Mindset

Entrepreneurs are also highly inquisitive, curious, creative and innovative. They’re charismatic, reliable, well organized and always take personal initiative to get the job done. They have the ability to create a transformational power in their product or service, which provides high value on the back-end — thereby turning customers into raving fans. Their creativity goes the extra mile and that is essentially what helps drive long-term growth and success.

Integrity as a Value

Entrepreneurs are individuals who have a strong work ethic, high standards and expectations of themselves and others. They are independent, very ambitious, disciplined and resourceful. They believe in the fact that together everyone achieves more. They are honest to themselves, their team and their idea. Integrity is a non-negotiable value for a true Entrepreneur.

Visionary with foresight

Entrepreneurs are motivated every day by a compelling vision that drives them forward. Their vision is part of everything they do and part of everything they are and embody. This helps them to stay focused on the short-term. They understand the value of planning ahead and the need to be following a plan of action which helps them to accomplish their vision.

Astute Nature

Entrepreneurs who astute in business matters easily could turn any transaction profitable. They have the ability to notice and understand things clearly. They never discriminate and are very clever with good judgment in trivial situations. It is this quality of astuteness which makes them identifiable in the crowd easily.

Risk-taking Courage

Entrepreneurs innately believe that Life without Risk is a Life without Growth. They are courageous by instinct and are willing to walk into the unknown with confidence. They are willing to attempt challenging, tricky and exigent tasks in order to achieve their goal. Their cliché is, if you want something you've never had, you have to do something you've never done.

Self Motivation

This simplest form of force drives Entrepreneurs to achieve the unthinkable. Their ability to motivate themselves is the most crucial skill they possess. This drives them to keep going even in the face of setbacks, take up opportunities, and show commitment to what they want to achieve. This is their Expecto Patronum to wade of any negativity that may face them on their path to success.

So ask yourself: Do you truly have what it takes to become an entrepreneur?

The question I would ask is: were these world-changing companies ever been incubated? I couldn’t find substantial evidence but if someone has one, then please give us one.

I personally don’t understand the purpose of incubators and feel as though they never give attention to whatever I think, create or propose as I am either a naïve choice or a risky investment. It is too much like the college scene: a few elite ones, the rest are never accounted for. Whereas I strongly feel innovation has, and always will be, born out of a college canteen, or library or sit-out outside the college gate.

Technically, the Start-up ecosystem defines Business Incubator as “An organization designed to accelerate the growth and success of entrepreneurial companies through an array of business support resources and services that could include physical space, capital, coaching, common services, and networking connections”

Where am I (College Student with a unique life-changing idea)? If Incubators are to incubate entrepreneurial companies then what do we get from the ecosystem? 

The truth is either I will be dictated to work on an idea conceived by a faculty at college with no defined outcome but with a false pride of attempting the project or I will be commanded to visit a few webinars, workshops to fulfill the tick mark compliance requirement of sending the students to such events. 

And when I come up with what I feel could be an idea or a skill that can support an idea, I will be made to wait for someone to guide/assist me? And that someone will be unable to support me because they are designed to accelerate the entrepreneurial companies, which have been incorporated and are earning some revenues. 

I want someone to help me understand how Entrepreneurship is the right choice for my career? 

What are the requisite skills to become that Entrepreneur and how can I acquire them? 

Will only people with Idea can become Entrepreneurs? 

What if I don’t have an idea but have a skill that can help an idea to become strong?  

But more often, I am explained about the hypothesis of the probability of the permutations and combinations of the potential solutions which are still a mystery. 

I may not be intelligent, committed, unaware of the potential of me as an individual or my idea. I may be confused, indecisive, volatile but I am ready to be guided, informed, counseled and lead to experience the Entrepreneurial Journey. 

To conclude, I would say if you’re looking to nurture and incentivize a culture of innovation for this country, we are where you can start by fostering before you define, ideate, and solve the problems that matter.

A Guide to Being a winner in this Tough Game

We, students, have a very rough journey to face with all those rejections and underestimating judgments. Many new start-ups come up every year in India but only a few sustain. Out of all failed start-ups, the most witnessed is in a scenario where a student hustles for the start-up to be a sustaining Entrepreneur. It is not because the idea wasn’t good or the business model wasn’t right. 

So, why are we failing even after numerous schemes and programs available to boost the start-up?

It is because we are unaware of the ecosystem and it’s way of working things out. There is a huge void in communication and knowledge between Students and the start-up ecosystem where Students have no knowledge of what the ecosystem expects and in turn, the ecosystem fails to discover the best ideas from Students.

A whole new world is waiting for our presence on the other side of our college gate  

1. Access to an Ocean of knowledge: A large ocean of knowledge now fits into our palm, yet we don’t try to unleash its huge potential. If we can understand the tool in our palm-The Mobile Phone, we can learn a lot from it, just Google all the information you need and the library is on your screen to answer it all for us, knowing how to get the answer from Google is an art in itself and irony is that you can learn the same art from google and the knowledge you gain can be from the experiences of other entrepreneurs or the balance sheet of a good MNC. 

2. Access to Capital: Any great idea to come into full reality it needs capital. Initially, we have to invest in our own idea and prove, to the rest that our idea is valuable and it is worth generating revenue, to expand further we will be needing an investor.  Finding an investor is a tough job but with an ecosystem, you will have access to the network as such that the job turns out to be very easy and everything else falls into a place.  The capital must be available to embrace each stage of development, from seed to early to growth stages of your business.

3. Mentors: Mentors are like the wheel-alignment of a 4-wheel drive. They will ensure continuous movement towards the expected outcome, you will never give-up or stagnate if you have the right mentor. This is a key benefit, you will have someone mentoring you in all phases, who has already gone through all ups and downs of Entrepreneurship and they ensure that you are not drifting off to lose the game.

Bonus Tip

Are you still the same crazy person thinking to change the world?

Then here is the thing: work smart, go find a team of excellent and smart people to work with because “No Great Battle Ever Fought was won by an individual”. Be efficient and be flexible.

Ratan Tata, Sudha Murthy, Ritesh Agarwal all these great entrepreneurs started at the same age as us. Do you know how many rejections did they face when they started?

Any rational person would give up but they didn’t and that’s the reason why they turned into sustainable Entrepreneurs. So, giving up is a synonym for those who want to be normal.

There are many incubators out there to guide you if you are a well-functioning and revenue making start-up. But what, if you are a student and all you have is an idea, just an idea which you believe in? Which you think can influence people’s life on this planet or probably can change the world?

What? How? Where? When? If you don’t find the answers then, stay tuned to know the answers.