“Entrepreneurship is about turning what excites you in life into capital so that you can do more of it and move forward with it.” – Richard Branson

“Make in India”, an initiative by Government of India, proved to be a boost for the entrepreneurial capabilities in India. Entrepreneurship is a very challenging and dynamic field which mainly emphasizes on creating and executing the new ideas and to establish new businesses. In today’s world, most of the start-up companies are the brainchild of entrepreneurial ideas.

Entrepreneurship means the willingness of an individual to start a new business venture by taking risk and managing it in this technology enabled competitive global environment.  The entrepreneurs are passionate to innovate, lead, invent or pioneer with a disruptive product or technology. We are also witnessing more and more entrepreneurs coming up with more than one innovative ideas, not only in a single domain but in multi domains.

In this global environmental many youngsters are choosing to become entrepreneurs. These aspiring entrepreneurs need to have following competencies to be a successful entrepreneur:

Characteristics of an Entrepreneur:

Careers in Entrepreneurship:

• Gain experience
  • Individual can join some start-up company first and understand the functioning and challenges faced by the owners
  • Work with entrepreneurship network in a city to get experience
  • Work in incubation centres in colleges and institutes
  • Shadow the new age entrepreneur working in the company
  • Join the organization which promote ‘Intrapreneurship’
• Here are few suggestions, if you wish to start your own venture
  • Start technology based venture. Technologies considered here, are – Artificial intelligence, ERP, Machine learning, Analytics, Big data and Robotics.
  • Start financial consulting firm.
  • Going for a Partnership with new small businesses.
  • Service oriented start-ups: service oriented startups, such as Swiggy, Zomato, housejoy etc. are getting a strong hold and recognition in market, so thinking of starting a business that caters to service industry is a very brilliant idea.
  • Innovate new product by studying the market and start a new business.
  • Participate in business plan competition and network with angel investors and start your own business.
  • Start an e-commerce company.

Challenges of Entrepreneurship and solutions:

• Support from family and friends: Have a clear plan of your business and share with your family and friends. Show them back up plan too.
• Accumulating Capital for business and cash flow management: “Money” is an important resource for any business and getting that capital is the most critical challenge an entrepreneur faces. To get the funding for business, talk to ‘venture funding’ agencies. There are many government schemes available in India to get such funds. New entrepreneurs must be very careful about the cash flow management, not only to start their business but also to sustain in the market for long run.
• Marketing and branding organization and products: Complete the environmental analysis before getting into product development and marketing activity. Have a unique plan for marketing. Decide the branding and marketing strategy in advance.
• Hiring people: Do competitor analysis and develop unique HR practices to motivate people to join. Search for candidates who have entrepreneurial skills sets, and take initiatives to retain them.
• Growth and sustainability of new venture: In this competitive, global, and technologically driven world, growth and sustainability of a start-up business is like a herculean task for entrepreneur. It’s very important for entrepreneur to understand the environment and take the calculated risk and innovate ideas time-to-time to make the business grow and sustain for a long time.
• Developing team: Developing a team for business is very crucial. Entrepreneurs need to have a leadership skill to form and lead a group of committed individuals. Entrepreneurs need to take up personality tests, such as: 1. MBTI 2. DISC and 3. Big Five to understand his / her personality and work up weakness. Understanding people and respecting their viewpoints will help entrepreneurs to develop an excellent team.

Though there are many challenges to start the career as an entrepreneur, however, if the new ventures are managed in a strategic and methodical way, it will be bound to become successful.

About the Author:

Dr. Rajasshrie Pillai is a Doctorate in Management and a post graduate in Human Resource Management & Marketing. She is certified trainer of Indian Society of Training & Development, New Delhi. She has over 17 years of experience including manufacturing Industry, Research and Academics. She has conducted workshops on HR for non-HR, HR competency development, Labour Laws, Team building, Communication Skills, Employee Engagement, Soft Skills training, Emotional Intelligence. She has authored 5 books on human resource management and organizational behaviour. She is certified psychometric test Assessor and NLP trainer.