THE ENTREPRENEURSHIP- START-UP CONUNDRUM

          Once again my obnoxious, holier-than-thou attitude goes haywire, vacillating from one extreme to another, swinging through a plethora of issues, right from demonetization to plastic money to cashless transactions. All with a smug smile ! Reminding my visual imagery dynamics of a Cheshire cat that has slurped up a tub full of cream ! My 'practical' and 'smart' friends appear to be biting dust    ( Or is it my imagination running riot ? ) And once more I laud  (for whatever reasons, at this juncture) my three-odd-decade-back decision to etch out my professional space on my own. Back then, the rationale was an upstart 'Not too dotty about waiting for someone's condescension of dropping salary checks on to my spread palms' . Needless to say, I had to lend my natural auditory appendages to a host of hush-hush comments. From " Does it make sense throwing a cushy prospective job in a top refinancing institution ?" to "Why take the risk ?" via "None in the family has ever ventured into anything but being part of the service class ", I had had it all,  heard it all . And I must admit, there were times when I did allow myself to sway . If  nobody caught me during those moments, I have nothing to thank but my congenital 'gift' - a natural poker face !!

          A few years later, the pride ( at times superficial ) of issuing salary checks and employing skilled and qualified personnel kept me going for a long time. Candidly speaking, this exercise turned out to be quite a killer at times . What with all these getting wedded to overheads like obscene electricity bills, a host of  new commercial taxes (those were the days post the initiation of the New Economic Policy ) and stationery bills. Added to these woes were the pressures of following market norms and gimmicks. Thankfully , I didn't succumb to them.The rationale this time was..... Well, there was no rationale this time apart from the heart and head taking turns at ruling over each other ! To cut a long story short, I often felt the need to accept that I had bitten more than what I could chew. If not a single issued check from my side has bounced, to date, I have to thanks Dame Serendipity, and none   else !

      

          Then came the stage of investments in immovable assets - office space, residence - which brought with it a host of challenges, including the Damocles' sword of paying my EMIs which got ameliorated through solutions like, what is called crowdfunding today. The adjective traumatic would be an euphemism, to describe those days. But the perks came along too ! I learnt the usage of one new term  -  back-burner ! The dynamic nature of shifting priorities was another lesson that came as an additional benefit. People might like to call me a warped masochist, but I hungrily slurped up this hugely interesting learning phase too. And yes, they gifted me with tiers and tyres of adipose around my once-trim waistline too !! 

          Rising from these ashes was no mean task. The how's , why's et al are things I don't need to articulate anymore. But yes, it was a state of mind which had to be squeezed, pushed and goaded ; but all by myself. And  all these travails and roller-coaster rides patently honed and sharpened my ideas of entrepreneurship, Or, I would choose to believe so ! Talking about the state of mind, my cerebrum helps my mapping process and I recall the words of Adora Cheung , CEO of Homejoy. She defines start-up as ' A state of mind of a group of people who collaborate to make the explicit decision to forgo stability in exchange for the promise of tremendous growth and excitement of making immediate impact " Why would I choose to introduce this at this point ? Simply because I connect a start-up with a highly-focussed and adventurous form of entrepreneurship . If you take the 'forgo stability', I can almost proudly compete for the title of Start-up King. For, rocking the boat is a much cherished and revered activity of mine. And, of course,it rattles me from the ennui of a boring, smooth sail . 'Excitement' ? Oh yes ! That's something that is a very important requisite that makes me decide to the take the plunge and keep swimming !

          Neil Blummenthal's definition goes this way : An entrepreneurship working to solve a problem whose solution is not obvious and success is definitely not guaranteed. Hmmm.... Adventurous, I am . But foolhardy ? Maybe, if I could get a strong 'influencer' !! To sum up this entire didactic outpour, I would articulate it as a hypothetical informal interview, which would go as 

Question :  What exactly do you do for a living ?

Me          : Well, I am a trainer. But I'd choose to believe that I am

                    20% trainer, 30% mentor and 50% entrepreneur

Question : Must be making quite a lolly !

Moi         : Hmm....I suppose. But yes ! I remit an amount of X as 

                  service tax, Y as income tax. And of course, there are 

                  salary checks worth Z. With my lowest paid employee

                  grabbing and amount of A.

Question : Cool. So, those are your expenses . But...

Myself    : No, dude. These are my investments which pay me rich

                  dividends. In short, I am totally blissed out, thanks to

                  these.

        

          I would choose to believe that many of my fellow entrepreneurs will be in consonance !

SMART LIVING;RESPONSIBLE LIVING ?

                   

                     

                         Pardon me ; am I getting presumptuous ?

                 Bear with me ; am I on a self-congratulatory spree ?

                 Humour me ; I might get a trifle unbearable .....

       ..... as unbearable as the autorickshaw driver behind you, who honks incessantly with the sole purpose of goading to skip past the red-alert signal, when morally ( legally, as well ) I am bound to to wait for at least a good half a minute. If the honk had verbal power, it would say " Bugger off, dude. Can't afford the luxury of enjoying trivial matters like waiting for the signal to change colours." To  be fair enough, and self-deprecating , as unbearable as me,              moi, myself ! The above-mentioned citizen of India is an apt prototype of the mass of males who use the same vocational skills to fend for themselves and feed the umpteen mouths at home.

     It first happened during one of those occasions ( it happens quite often these days ) when my rickety car, whom I call my soulmate now, for it begs for moksha , redemption, salvation, thanks to having outlived its 15-year-old run, was at its monthly visit to the 'spa'. I was naturally forced to sign in for the services of the ubiquitous rickshaw to get to my nearby workplace. Being a denizen of a metro like Mumbai, where the scores of good causes initiated by vigilant and and sensitive activists get gobbled up by large-scale indifference, after the initial flare-up of enthusiasm, I have been letting the being-responsible-citizen bug get the better of me, for quite a good period  of time. So, a little hesitantly, a little with confident-trepidation ( oxymoron ?), I pushed the envelope and almost whispered into the 'chauffeur's' ear  a 'request' to wait till the signal turned a fecund green. He turned around, mouth almost agape, eyebrows raised. Then he settled down to a hesitant, but warm smile. "Aap shaayad pehle passenger hain,   saab. Baaki toh.. always in a hurry, with ants in their pants. Ha ha !" This was his response. One thing led to another and the talk finally ( in those short 10 minutes ) culminated to a mutual agreement of being a trifle more patient in such a milieu. If not for anything , at least to act as good guides, if not role models, for the kiddos.

     Cut to a good fifteen minutes post settling down to mundane chores like getting my PC working , it suddenly struck me that I had to call up my son's school for an appointment with the Principal. And that's when it dawned upon me that I had been left rudderless, for I had been deprived of the magic-wand of modern-day communication - my cell-phone ! Probably in the rickshaw ? Being suitable blessed with a great flair for hyper-ventillating, my      near- fossilized presence of mind decided to hang up its tattered boots. A good ten minutes later, divine wisdom decided to descend upon me and I took the chance of giving a tinkle on my registered number, using my landline. One more long period of continuous ringing was driving my nerves to their splitting peak ; the manifestation was a hyperbolic slap on the forehead with my open palm. Tethering on, with a desperate attempt to invoke the favour of Dame Luck  , I kept the exercise of redialling on..... Till the       doorbell rang ' Ting tong'. Door opened . Security guard gives a toothy smile "  Koi aapse...." "Yes, yes, yes !!" was my alacrity-replete reply. 

     Rushing down the stairs, I saw my knight-in-armour. Said he " Kya saab, baatein toh badi badi. Mobile rickshaw mein hee... Aur vibration mode mein ?" The next few minutes of his narration made me realise how much the man  had felt the need to take the extra effort to rattle his presence of mind and memory to come back after a good five-kilometre drive, remembering where he had dropped me. His simply worded talk about how he felt the need to be largely honest was spiced up with a wink, which was followed by the observation by him that dishonesty was a specially nurtured skill, which he was unable to develop. A profusion of thanks from my side was  reciprocated with a modest wave of his hand. 

     Truncating the ecclesiastical blah-blah, lest you think what relevance all this blah-blah has to do , in terms of relevance,with what has been named as the title, I would like to ask if my 'holier-than-thou' ranting makes sense ? Just my way of sharing my experience of how practical and feasible it is to be a little more sensitive to the needs of a changing world around me. People around me notice it and it does reap decent dividends. Retrieval of my cell-phone ,among many ,is only one such instance. And the additional perk of invoking the more sublime qualities from within a fellow being is a special 'kick', of course !!
      Any takers ?