Entrepreneur Archives - Page 2 of 2

The Entrepreneur and Internet Home Business

Have you ever tried running a company that is online? Many business owners are currently depending on the power of the Internet to market their services or products. Home based business are getting increasingly more popular now-a-days. Likewise, it’s probably time for you to think about an online entrepreneurial home based business.

Occasionally, those that have young family members can’t manage their time between their career and the responsibilities of the home. Because of this, many of them are compelled to leave their jobs so they can take good care of their family. This is not the end of the world for you. Actually even if you’re home and looking after your family, you can run an online business.

There are many of home based business possibilities online. All it takes is exploring your home business alternatives, and selecting the best one that will certainly benefit you. If you have the top qualities of an entrepreneur, an online home business will certainly be the solution to your needs.

Sometimes, if only one spouse works, the earnings are not enough to provide for the family’s needs. If you don’t have a job, you could start considering an effective online home business possibility.

If you have your own computer, and also, most significantly, an Internet connection, you could become an entrepreneur who owns or runs an online home business. Nevertheless, you need to also make sure that the business is reputable, to prevent any kind of issues in the future.

The first option is to end up being an affiliate online marketer. For those entrepreneurs with minimal funding for starting a business, this is an excellent selection, considering that you will just need a small amount initially. You will need to find an affiliate company that will certainly give you a lucrative opportunity with the product or services they are providing.

After doing this, you will then develop your own website where you will market the services or products. In order to bring a large amount of traffic to your site, it should be interesting and memorable. You will certainly have the ability to get compensations for every single product sold or for the services provided.

Supposing you currently have a home business such as selling arts and crafts, you probably have observed that you have few clients in your area. If you intend to have a bigger market, you could turn your home business right into an Internet based one. By doing this, you could even reach other countries. But first, you need to develop your own website, where you can place images of your arts and crafts.

This will certainly take a lot of effort, especially if you’re just starting out; this will take a lot of tough work. You will need to put a lot of effort into your website to ensure it is user-friendly. If customers can navigate within your website with no trouble, and you have exceptional arts and crafts products, even more orders will certainly come.

Considering that you’re an entrepreneur, you will not have many issues managing the orders and arranging the deliveries of your products. You just need to develop the right contacts, or links, and earnings will certainly come rolling in.

There are still other online home business possibilities for business owners. By surfing the Internet, you can discover the ideal business possibility for you. Your best qualities and abilities as a business owner will not go to waste if you take part in an Internet business.

So if you have restricted funding and few business resources, try the home based business possibilities that exist online.

How to Become a Nurse Entrepreneur And Experience Real Freedom

You know you want more freedom and flexibility but you are unsure how to get there. You have a great idea but you don’t know how to turn it into a viable business. You dream about owning your own business.

But then the years go by and you still haven’t taken action.

You find yourself still in the same old nursing job, maybe even feeling a little burnt out and frustrated.

You’re just mystified! You don’t know where to start.

So what do you do to stop feeling so stuck?

Here’s How You Can Stop Feeling Stuck and Get Started as a Nurse Entrepreneur

1. Consider Your Background

Do you have at least 5 years of nursing experience? Having some nursing experience can be very helpful when you are setting out to be a nurse entrepreneur. This experience gives you the skills you need and also helps you determine a specialty for your nurse entrepreneur business.

2. Research Various Nurse Entrepreneur Opportunities

Reviewing roles other nurses have pursued in setting up their nurse entrepreneur business can provide you with some ideas of what might work for you in your location. There are well over 20 nurse entrepreneur opportunities and more crop up every day. Some of these opportunities include: case manager, legal nurse consultant, foot care nurse, life care planner, nutrition and weight loss consultant, cruise nurse, and many more.

Look for websites about nurse entrepreneurs. Read blogs and articles to get ideas about what others are doing or where there might even be an unmet need for a new nurse entrepreneur business.

3. Find your Target Audience (Customers)

Know where to find the people who are going to buy your nurse entrepreneur products or services. Ideally you want to be able to find your customers in groups. If you can find them in organizations, groups, educational institutions, types of employment, or social groups your sales and marketing will be much easier. Trying to sell to your target market one at a time is expensive and time-consuming. However, you need to know where to find your target audience before starting your business.

4. Create Your Business

Now is the time to decide on a business structure, business name, logo, website name, get an EIN (Employer Identification Number) for tax purposes, determine what insurance you will need and where to get it, and create your business plan. Many US Small Business Administration offices offer training on starting a business. If you aren’t in the US, many countries have something comparable that offer assistance in starting a business. You can also get lots of information from the SBA website even if you aren’t living in the US.

5. Follow Your Plan

Now that you have created your plan, follow it. You have plotted your course.

Take action every day. Even if you haven’t quit your full-time or part-time nursing position. Take a step every day that is part of your plan to move you closer to your dream.

Down the road you will enjoy the excitement of owning your own business because of the steps you took today. Don’t lose sight of the dream because this is what pulls you forward. It is a lot more enjoyable to be pulled forward than to be running away from something.

The Tinkering Entrepreneur

tinoker

n. To manipulate unskillfully or experimentally

As an entrepreneur, you probably like to tinker. You probably like to ask a bunch of questions to the point that you get annoying. You might like to experiment with different machines by taking them apart. Or you may even like to take peoples’ sentences apart while they are speaking to you and analyze every single word for their true meanings and intentions.

The tinkering mind is a great mind; it’s a sharp mind that stays hungry with a voracious appetite for understanding, manipulation, and the unknown. If you aren’t tinkering, then you should be.

Here is a list of 5 things that you can begin your tinkering journey with:

1.) When somebody tells you something that they have done and want you to give it a shot, then go for it but make sure to tinker. For instance if your friend tells you to try a new recipe for brownies, then why not add a few of your own ingredients to see if it’ll taste better. It may or may not, but that’s not the point. The point is to try new things and experiment.
2.) If you like to read books, then start combining ideas that you have learned from various books to make entirely new approaches to doing something. Many times, when you combine two concepts, they often have unknown synergistic effects.
3.) Never stop asking questions and trying to break down everything that people say to you. If you don’t understand something, then ask further. If you want to learn more about something, then keep on asking. It’s always good to tinker with knowledge that you are learning from people. Because when you do that… you sometimes stumble upon new ways of thinking – new thought patterns. Many teachers hate when student meddle with their lessons, but the entrepreneurial mind will not accept that.
4.) Take things apart. Seriously, spend some time every once in a while and take something apart – anything, it doesn’t matter. When you take things apart and attempt to learn about how they were constructed, you are exercising your brain and using your creative energy to understand new concepts. After some time, you will be thinking on new levels and applying new understandings to everything that you do.
5.) Look for patterns and put things together. I like to stare at random shapes and try to reorganize them in my mind. I picture them from different angles, with different lengths, widths, add new dimensions, etc… this is good, because you are enhancing your imagination with this type of thinking.

I know…. I know… many of you will deem these suggestions as a big waste of time, but what do you have to lose? Not much. The bottom line here is to continue to exercise your mind and strive for knowledge and understanding in unknown areas.

Entrepreneurs should never stop questions how things work, why things are the way they are, and anything else that they don’t understand or would like to dig deeper into.

Tinker with the world!

The Advantages of Entrepreneur Club

You have heard of card game clubs, sports club, press club etc. but, now there are Entrepreneur Clubs also which can solve the entrepreneurial problems. Popularly known as Entre Club, the club is actually a group of people who get together to implement and promote entrepreneurial practices in the respective areas.

Entre Club and its Functions:

Every entre club has some objectives. Some clubs aim at educating students about entrepreneurship and some provide financial aid to the students for participating in a competition. Whatever be the objectives these clubs follow, they are directly and indirectly involved in the promotion of entrepreneurial spirit.

Generally, an entre club performs following functions:

1. The participants share their ideas and problems with each other.

2. A club organizes events to strengthen the network.

3. It invites experts to answer to the queries of club members.

4. It aims at getting the right knowledge to solve a problem or investment issues.

5. It invests its time and money in problems and sells solutions for the same.

6. It doesn’t work as a committee or commission. But, it works as an individual who has an ample amount of freedom to exercise.

7. It works on its own evaluation level and takes decisions more swiftly.

8. It promotes commercial goods and services by pooling the knowledge of various experts.

9. It solves problems of all its group members and provides them with enough opportunities to work upon.

If you want to be an entrepreneur, you don’t need to have money but you must have an urge to earn money. You don’t need scholarly sense but you must have great ideas.

An entrepreneur must have right knowledge and above all a risk-taking attitude. He should have capability of converting few pennies into thousand dollars. An entre club uses the knowledge of all such entrepreneurs who have got skills, attitude and temperament to perform well.

As a small business owner, you must be a part of such clubs to get right kind of support to grow. You must share the problems and challenges you are facing and the ideas you are exploring. A group of opportunists in these clubs can act as mentors who can show you right path to follow and right strategies to implement.

A simple get together at entre club can actually come out as a great brainstorming session. And you never know where you get the great idea to invest. So, enter into an Entre Club and enjoy the benefits.

To know what kind of club is suitable for you and how it performs, you can consult market advisors or you can search over internet to learn about various entre clubs operating in your area.

Why Do You Want To Be An Entrepreneur?

Most of the discussions start with the question, “How can you be an entrepreneur?” and “What should be done to be a successful entrepreneur?” but the first question that must be dealt with is “Why do you want to be an entrepreneur?” Do you really want to be an entrepreneur? This is the first question that must be asked by anyone and everyone before thinking of starting any business venture? This is the moot question. And yes, first of all you would have to understand who is an entrepreneur? What is entrepreneurship per se?

The word entrepreneur comes from Latin. Entre-enter; pre-before; neur-nerve center. Taking its derivation we could understand entrepreneur as someone who enters the nerve center of a business that no one entered before and then makes changes to it that results in a paradigm shift in the whole process. An entrepreneur is the one who is willing to take risk in any business endeavor. Entrepreneurship is the art of finding an opportunity and then pursuing it to success. As a saying goes “brilliant people also see the same things that others do but they observe things that others don’t.” It is the same with entrepreneurs also. They come out with ideas that others don’t think about and that is why they become successful.

Another term which has found a lot of popularity in recent time is a technopreneur. Well, a technopreneur could be understood as an entrepreneur in a business related to technology. It is generally seen that a technopreneur generally has some kind of proprietary and patentable intellectual property rights that he commercializes and reaps benefits out of it. Technopreneurship is a term which is generally used for software companies.

Now let’s talk about our earlier question. Why entrepreneurship? Why are you thinking of being an entrepreneur? Do you really want to be an entrepreneur or is there some kind of compulsion to be an entrepreneur? Is it because you don’t have any job or you currently find yourself out of job? There are many who get into the field because that is what his father and forefathers have been doing. Well, after all, it is their family business. And there is another category that interests me the most. It is the one where people claim that they want to be entrepreneurs for the very simple reason that they want to be entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship is in their blood.

It is for you to ask yourself. Why do you want to be an entrepreneur? I would like to tell you one thing. Entrepreneurship can really prove very rewarding but and this is a very big but, it is very risky and not easy. Until and unless you are ready to slug it out till the end, the chances of success are very limited. If you are fed up with you daily office routine and want to try your hands in entrepreneurship, let me tell you that the time you would have to spend for your own company would be far more. The effort that you would have to make would be far greater than what you have been making. There has never been any short cut to success and there would never be any. But yes, when you really become successful, the rewards compensate for everything.

The avenues open are many but you would have to make appropriate choices. The present time offers you opportunities where you can earn money and make a mark for yourself without actually investing too much of capital. Yes, we are in the age of “MiniPreneurs” where anyone and everyone can start a business of their own

12 Benefits and 12 Challenges of Being an Entrepreneur

All over the world, people are breaking free from the traditional employment model and choosing to achieve business success as entrepreneurs. Will you be the next?

Let’s start by covering 12 of the most commonly-mentioned benefits of being an entrepreneur to inspire you on your journey:

1. You can choose your own schedule.

2. You are free to travel.

3. You can take sick days or vacation days whenever you need them.

4. If there are necessary tasks you don’t enjoy or have time for, you can outsource them.

5. You can select your own employees.

6. Learning to be a better boss also teaches you to be a better employee.

7. Your innovative ideas have a chance to shine unfettered.

8. You do not have to wear a uniform or follow a company dress code.

9. You enjoy better job security than most people.

10. Entrepreneurship teaches you the benefits of hard work.

11. You can always feed your curiosity by learning more about every aspect of your business.

12. Your ambition can always drive you to greater heights and business success.

As you can see, entrepreneurship is becoming popular because it comes with a whole new lifestyle for those who are willing to seize it.

Of course, entrepreneurship isn’t all sunshine and freedom. According to the United States Small Business Association, a third of small businesses fail within the first two years, and more than half fail within the first five years.

Not surprisingly, the challenges of entrepreneurship represent the flipside of the advantages we discussed above:

1. Choosing your own schedule can result in wasted time without the proper time-management skills.

2. Even while traveling, it may be necessary to handle work-related crises, because you are basically always “on call.”

3. There are no paid sick days or vacation days, so you must decide how much each day off is worth to you.

4. You are responsible for completing any tasks you can’t afford to outsource.

5. Hiring employees means you must learn how to conduct interviews, uphold workers’ legal rights, and coordinate payroll.

6. If you don’t yet have the leadership capabilities to direct others, you will be taking a crash course once you hire freelancers or employees.

7. You must narrow all of your innovative ideas down to the ones that have the most potential to help you achieve business success.

8. If you don’t maintain a professional appearance in person and online, it is sure to reflect poorly on your company.

9. You are responsible for funding your business, even if you’re operating at a loss.

10. Only results are profitable, not time clocked, so it’s possible you will work hard and still end up disappointed.

11. You must be familiar with each aspect of how your business operates, including those which may not interest you, to ensure everything is running smoothly.

12. Only you can motivate yourself to achieve business success.

To sum it up, let’s say that with freedom comes responsibility. If you can’t handle one, you aren’t yet ready for the other.

Of course, I don’t believe people should give up on their dreams. Just be sure to arm yourself with knowledge and understand what you are getting yourself into.

Tips and Strategies for a Small Business Entrepreneur to Beat the Competition

Many new Small Businesses fail during the early years and one of the reasons attributed for the failure is their inability to beat the competition.

To be successful in your business and to be acknowledged as a successful small business entrepreneur, you have to adopt certain strategies that will enable you to outsmart your competitors and beat them.

1. Go Shopping Yourself:

If you are a manufacturer of certain products, you should go shopping yourself at least once a fortnight. By doing this you will be able to see how and where these products are being displayed, the price at which your competitors are selling their products and the type of packaging used. In fact purchasing of your competitors products on regular basis, testing them and comparing them with your products will be a very useful and productive exercise.

2. Become a member of a Professional Association:

As an entrepreneur it is very important that you become a member of a professional association related to your business or industry. Never, ever think that you can operate in a vacuum and succeed. By regularly attending their meetings, you will get the opportunity of meeting like minded people and your competitors too. Opportunities for gathering vital information and secrets abound in such meetings. Be watchful, grab them and implement them in your small business.

3. Gather Information about Your Competition:

You must have a plan whereby either you or one of your employees should order your competitors’ broachers, catalogues and price lists. This will give you very vital and useful information as to how these products are priced, advertised and promoted. Keeping this constant tab on your competitors will enable you to discover the reasons why some are more successful than you. This ongoing study will help you make very calculated changes in your price structure, marketing and advertising strategies.

4. Attend Trade Shows and Seminars:

Trade shows are places where you as a small business entrepreneur can make useful contacts with other entrepreneurs in your own field of activity and other allied fields as well. Viewing new developments, technologies and marketing methods will inspire and motivate you to develop your own business in those lines.

Attending seminars can be very useful, educative and a place to make useful contacts. These trade shows and seminars can open up new windows of opportunities for you.

5. Read Trade Magazines and Newsletters:

Subscribe to your industry or business trade magazine or newsletter. You will come across many things that you are not aware of, in manufacturing, advertising and marketing. These tips and tricks will help you fine tune some of your present strategies.

6. Address Meetings and Focus Groups:

Never miss an opportunity to address meetings related to your industry or business. It will also be wise to organize Focus Groups where you can obtain the views of the members regarding your products. The feedback thus obtained will help you make changes in your products and the marketability of your products.

7. Distribute Free Gifts, Vouchers and Coupons:

The whole world loves free gifts. Even millionaires love anything given free. You should take full advantage of this and promote your small business by offering free gifts. Whenever there are community gatherings, focus group meetings and other functions, try and distribute free gifts, discounted coupons and vouchers. You should ensure that you have your website URL, address and phone numbers embedded in all your items.

8. Have a Professional looking Website.

A well designed professional looking website is absolutely essential. By providing all the information about your business, products and services, it will add credibility to your small business.

Conclusion:

To succeed as a Small Business Entrepreneur is your ultimate goal and failure is not an option. Keep a watchful eye on your competition and implement these tips and strategies. It will not be long before your competitors disappear from the radar screen.

Entrepreneurship Defined – Entrepreneur Vs Small Business

The concept of entrepreneurship takes a wide range of definition and its meaning has progressed over the century. To many, it is linked to starting one’s personal business. However, nearly all economists believe that it is more than starting a business.

The word entrepreneur comes from the French word entreprendre, meaning ‘to embark on.’ In a business perspective, it means to start a business. Entrepreneur can also refer to a person who systematizes and administers a business and usually takes the risk for the sake of profit or turnover. He can also be defined as a person with high propensity who pioneers change or anyone who wants to work for himself.

Entrepreneurship vs. Small Business

The terms ‘entrepreneur’ and ‘small business’ are quite alike and can often be used interchangeably. With much commonality, however, there are significant differences between the entrepreneurial venture and the small business.

Entrepreneurial venture is quite different from small business in the following ways:

Innovation – This is the very instrument of entrepreneurship. It providesresources with a new power to create wealth. Entrepreneurship frequently engages extensive innovation further than what a small business might exhibit.
Risk – Risk must be usually high in an entrepreneurial venture. If not, with the enticement of sure profits, many entrepreneurs would be trailing the idea and the opportunity would no longer exist.
Amount of wealth creation – A booming entrepreneurial venture generates substantial wealth, normally in excess of several million dollars of profit rather than simply generating an income stream that replaces fixed employment.
Speed of wealth creation – A successful small business can make quite a lot of profit over a lifetime. But for an entrepreneur, wealth creation often is fast and speedy, for example, within 5 years. Also, the types of business they are engaged in is what basically differentiates entrepreneur activities. Innovation is the key. Every entrepreneur should rely greatly on this. Innovation can be emphasized on the following:

new organization
new products
new markets
new production methods

When such innovation produces new demand, wealth is created. From this standpoint, one can simply describe the function of the entrepreneur as one of merging a variety of factors in an inventive manner to generate value to the customer. It hopes that this value will surpass the cost of the input factors, therefore spawning greater returns on investment.

So the main differences between entrepreneurship and small business is that the entrepreneur takes a risk and hits the ground running with the intent of immediate, and hopefully massive payoffs, whereas the small business generally starts smaller, with less risk and the income and success builds over time under very controlled planning.

Trigger the Entrepreneur in You

The thought rolls back to days when we used to pore over discriminating the terminologies ‘Engineering’ and ‘Technology’. As given to understand, Engineering is a design process bringing in innovative thinking and customized solutions in any field, be it construction, power distribution or design of machine intelligence. And by contrast, Technology is a process or tool to execute these designs. Over twenty five years back, as a young engineering aspirant, some of us have debated on this dichotomy of nomenclature, a civil-mechanical-electrical engineering as against a chemical-production technology. Nevertheless, ‘a professional course’ as we call it moulds and directs the student to make a profession of his/her stream of study. Apart from the opportunities in the mainstream functional areas like Project management, Design, Research & Development, or Pedagogy, the quintessential commonality in all streams of study also helps ‘the engineer’ adapt to swings of the market and make smart shifts in career. Year 2000, for instance witnessed a phenomenal shift of career of engineers from all streams of study into IT, a sector which then exhibited a tectonic boom.

Till a decade ago, our country continued to run short of the number of engineers produced annually as against the intake in both the private and public sectors as per a survey. The statistics shows that engineering colleges sprung up in number from a fair 1500 colleges in 2007 to a mind-boggling 3300 in 2015 in India, with a small state of Kerala alone shouldering over 150 engineering colleges. Has this lowered the bar or shrunk the demand for the profession, is for experts to comment. However, living facts like, India presently churns out more engineers than US and china put together, may add food to these thoughts. Haven’t we stratified multifarious our output of engineers in India. The premier group of IITs followed by a group of corporate backed institutes, NITs, the pick of state colleges and then the rest. On one, we see a brilliant topper from IIT Mumbai walk away with a plum crore plus annual CTC on campus placements and on the other an engineer from strata lower down, still struggling for an upkeep in the initial years. A leading UK based global recruiter firm suggested that engineering roles were the hardest to fill as has been agreed upon by 45% of recruiters globally. As per Nasscom report in 2011 only 17.5% of engineering graduates were deemed employable. India’s information technology industry spends nearly $1 billion a year to make them job-ready, the report said. Again, telling upon the prevalent quality crunch. Eventually we heard reports like, over 50% merit quota seats vacant in Kerala, AICTE bringing down the number of engineering seats by six lakhs etc.

The scenario here triggers the need for an entrepreneurial upbringing of our young engineers. If we track the career path of engineers from premier institutes in India in the recent past we can see that a good share of them either venture on their own or take a short term industry exposure and then go enterprising. The story from the premium B schools in India is no different. Moreover their curriculum itself introduces entrepreneurship. IITs and IIMs have shown growing fervor for entrepreneurship with as high as 4-5% of students preferring startups to plush placement offers. At IIM Kozhikode 15 of the batch passed out the previous year are entrepreneurs. A recent report reveals that 41 students out of the new batch of various IITs are at various stages of their startup blueprints. Interesting statistics there! The question is, why are such initiatives just restricted to premium institutes and not others? Why can’t we raise the bar and bridge the gap. To be a successful entrepreneur is perhaps the toughest of all assignments, but certainly the most gratifying one at the end of the day.

Let’s go through a few successful examples. Sachin and Binny Bansal, two ex-IITians from Delhi after some initial exposure in Amazon, ventures into an e-commerce start up in 2007 beginning with small transactions of book and electronics. Now, in less than eight years the company has evolved into a billion dollar business house Flipkart, on an M&A spree gobbling over all small timers. The case study of Make my trip, OLX and UBERs of the world, unfolds similar success stories. A 19 year old young lad, a Harvard sophomore invented a networking tool with a simple intention of getting connected to his friends in college, in 2004 which turned an instant hit. The site now is one of the biggest in the world with over 40crore connections, Facebook by Mark Zuckerberg. Endless goes the success stories of startups in India. This is not just restricted to the IT and e-commerce sector. Services sector, logistics etc also has witnessed flavors of success through startups. Redbus, Taxi4sure goes the names of innumerable startups conceived by brilliant young engineers and in a span of just 7-8 years established a, strong brand equity. Grey orange robotics established in 2009 is the first of its kind venture offering logistics automation solution. Robots move shelves stacked with various products scanning barcodes, yet again the brainchild of two BITs pilani youngsters.

“Zao Foods”, a Mitali Khalra vision to inculcate a habit of eating nutritious food. She came up with ‘cafe Crostini’ in south delhi. Indiblogger. in was started as a free blogging platform, but the founders had some bigger game plans, to connect the corporate world, companies and brands to their customers as a revenue model.

‘Under the mango tree’, a social venture promoting bee keeping, by Vijaya Pastala, an MIT alumni took 14 years to establish. Swapnil kamat and his wife Ruchira had to undergo hardships before establishing their dream venture, Work Better-Training and Development, an executive training company focusing on teaching behavioral and cognitive skills to corporate employees. Helpingdoc. com, an online venture by a team of medical professionals conceptualized the idea of providing medical support online. An overview reveals that, innovative ideas have explored all facets of life, low cost energy, artificial intelligence, robotics, biotech, health, fashion, food, technology, service, and what not. Investors are now running after genuine ideas of business to fund for. Not just the angel investors or venture capitalists but even the corporate allot funds to invest in startups.

Ratan Tata, the ‘Tata group’ honcho, stepping aside from the day-to-day responsibilities of the corporate conglomerate, took interest in investing in 10 startup ventures shortlisted. The investments typically vary between 1-5 Crore and spread across dotcoms, health care, clean energy etc. The pick of them all is ‘Swasth India’, a Mumbai based affordable healthcare setup providing medical services to low income population, again an IIT Mumbai alumni venture. Franchise India, recently hosted a forum in Mumbai inviting business ideas. We also have Pro Bono consultants providing services to startups non-profit with social relevance and commitments. IIT Mumbai has an Entrepreneurship Cell, a non-profit independent student body which instills the spirit of entrepreneurship among students and working professionals. The Entrepreneur cell of IIT Kharagpur recently held an entrepreneur awareness drive, a massive initiative to encourage students across the country to embrace the concept of entrepreneurship. These E-cells incubates startup ideas by connecting investors and entrepreneurs of similar interests. The Global entrepreneur summit, Eureka – International Business plan competition etc are some of the events which drive the young budding engineers. IIT Chennai also runs an incubation cell C-Tides and Research Park for Startups. Kerala is no behind in startup initiatives and promotions. We have Kerala Startups Society, a not-for-profit organization with the objective of building a vibrant startup ecosystem. Regular meets are organized to interact with investors, successful entrepreneurs and players. Based in the IT technology park- Trivandrum, is Kerala Startup Mission (KSUM) formerly known as ‘Techno-park-Technology Business Incubator’. Under the guidance of Kris Gopalakrishnan of Infosys we have the startup village, another technology business incubator in kochi.

An innovative business model is all about identifying a social problem to work an effective solution. Thus the startup drive is not just a commercial drive but one of social relevance. A friend of mine recently travelling from Orlando airport to the hotel while on a business tour took an airport cab to destination paying about 90 bucks, but on return smartly took a Uber cab for as low as 25bucks for the same distance. A cost effective solution offered here. A decade ago if one planned a multi city travel in India, it involved a lot of planning and follow-ups with travel agents, hotels, cabs etc. Whereas now it all gets done in a jiffy fiddling with a chosen smart mobile App. Instance of life made easy and smart with start ups. Understandably the mortality rate of startups, are high and not all ventures flourish evenly. But for the youth it is a learning curve to introspect, re-model, and evolve to success.

The recent business visits by the Indian PM to the US, EU and middle east especially the one to the silicon valley, has generated overwhelming response in terms of investments proposals to India. The digital India drive by the Prime minister intends to generate innovative ideas in digital Technologies which include Cloud Computing and Mobile Applications. As we all know the new generation engineer is sharp, innovative and creative with a higher level of IQ than their predecessors. Now we have the brains, the bucks, the governance and all it takes is some out-of-the-box thinking to churn out the “ideas”. Let the academia with the conducive faculty instill this passion in our youths.

May the buzz line for the budding engineers be ‘trigger the entrepreneur in you’. Thank you!

(The writer is a Mumbai based corporate marketer)