People / Stories – Page 3 – Enterprisers.in

The Logical Indian

25/03/2015 Support

Starting from merely 50 paisa per day, Mrs. Patricia Narayan now earns INR 2 lakh a day. She started her career 31 years ago as an entrepreneur, selling eateries from a mobile cart on the Marina beach a midst all odds. Today, she has overcome the hurdles and owns a chain of restaurants.

She married against the will of her parents. Unfortunately, the marriage failed but her parents never forgave her and she was on her own along with 2 children.

“I knew I should either succumb to the burden or fight; I decided to fight my lonely battle.” she said. She started selling pickles, squashes and jams she made at home.

However, the turning point in her life came when she started her own cart on Marine Drive, Mumbai in the year 1980. This gave her identity and exposure. According to her, the Marina beach was her business school, her MBA. On the first she just sold one cup of coffee, making 50 paise the first day. But she never lost hope and earned as high as 2500 rs a day.

One day the Slum Clearance Board gave her an offer to run the canteen at their office with a proper kitchen. The chairman met her during morning walk. Thereafter, she never looked back.

In 2004, life again took an ugly turn when she lost her daughter in a car accident along with her son-in-law. This was a huge setback for her. The ambulance refused to carry their dead bodies. Finally, somebody carried all the dead bodies in the boot of a car. She couldn’t bear the scene and broke down.

That is when she decided to keep an ambulance on that very spot to help people whether the victims are alive or dead.

Pain is an inevitable part of life and it must not stop us from moving forward as ‘moving is life’ and ‘still is dead’. Her journey was briefly halted by her daughter’s death but it did not take permanently pause. A couple of years later, she set up ‘Sandeepha’ restaurant along with her son in memory of her daughter.

Her dedication and hardwork helped Sandeepha attain great heights in the hospitality sector. Today, Sandeepha boasts of channelising sales through 14 outlets across Chennai, earning INR 2 lakh on an average daily basis. She was awarded ‘FICCI Entrepreneur Of The Year’ in 2010.

'Starting from merely 50 paisa per day, Mrs. Patricia Narayan now earns INR 2 lakh a day. She started her career 31 years ago as an entrepreneur, selling eateries from a mobile cart on the Marina beach a midst all odds. Today, she has overcome the hurdles and owns a chain of restaurants.

She married against the will of her parents. Unfortunately, the marriage failed but her parents never forgave her and she was on her own along with 2 children.

"I knew I should either succumb to the burden or fight; I decided to fight my lonely battle.” she said. She started selling pickles, squashes and jams she made at home.

However, the turning point in her life came when she started her own cart on Marine Drive, Mumbai in the year 1980. This gave her identity and exposure. According to her, the Marina beach was her business school, her MBA. On the first she just sold one cup of coffee, making 50 paise the first day. But she never lost hope and earned as high as 2500 rs a day.

One day the Slum Clearance Board gave her an offer to run the canteen at their office with a proper kitchen. The chairman met her during morning walk. Thereafter, she never looked back.

In 2004, life again took an ugly turn when she lost her daughter in a car accident along with her son-in-law. This was a huge setback for her. The ambulance refused to carry their dead bodies. Finally, somebody carried all the dead bodies in the boot of a car. She couldn't bear the scene and broke down.

That is when she decided to keep an ambulance on that very spot to help people whether the victims are alive or dead.

Pain is an inevitable part of life and it must not stop us from moving forward as ‘moving is life’ and ‘still is dead’. Her journey was briefly halted by her daughter’s death but it did not take permanently pause. A couple of years later, she set up 'Sandeepha' restaurant along with her son in memory of her daughter.

Her dedication and hardwork helped Sandeepha attain great heights in the hospitality sector. Today, Sandeepha boasts of channelising sales through 14 outlets across Chennai, earning INR 2 lakh on an average daily basis. She was awarded ‘FICCI Entrepreneur Of The Year’ in 2010.'

Courtesy : Farida Sidhwa Govekar

Motivations, People / Stories, Startups

The child bride who is now the CEO of a $112 million company

03/03/2015 Support

Last updated on: February 26, 2015 19:08 IST

“Living is hard, but dying is easy.

“These were my last thoughts as I downed a bottle of poison.

“My aunt caught me in the act and rushed me to the local hospital…

“When I opened my eyes in the hospital room I was not the same person any more.

“Gone was the naive helpless girl the world had deemed too worthless to exist.

“I felt strong, recharged and empowered.

Padmashree awardee Kalpana Saroj who fought child marriage, poverty and a host of social injustice went on to become the CEO of a million dollar company and lived to tell her tale.

Kalpana Saroj

Click to continue reading….

Motivations, News, People / Stories

What Went Wrong: 101 Failed Startups Tell All

27/09/2014 yazdi

Worried about your startup? You are not alone.

That’s the subtext to a new study from CB Insights, which goes into the 20 reasons startups are likely to fail. The study has everything, from weak founding teams to failed pivots to overbearing investors.

This is not exactly the first study about startup failure, of course, but it’s a bit different from many others. First, it’s compiled from 101 startup failure post-mortems, rather than from a survey asking CEOs what went wrong. That gives it a level of detail you don’t often see. Second, it’s focused on venture-backed, fast-growth (well, they intended to be fast-growth) companies, which is a unique universe. Last, it contains many extended quotes and anecdotes from founders, who, at least in the samplings made available through CB Insights, seem to be remarkably candid.

What went wrong? In most cases, quite a few things, which is why the numbers in the study add up to more than 100. But here are the five most common problems.

No market need: 42 percent
Ran out of cash: 29 percent
Not the right team: 23 percent
Got outcompeted: 19 percent
Pricing/cost issues: 18 percent

People / Stories

He is a CEO at 17

10/09/201409/12/2016 Support

Computer whiz Jefferson Prince, who has built a 70-employee gaming company from scratch, tells S Saraswathi about motivations and challenges of entrepreneurship.

He is just out of high school, but 17-year-old Jefferson Prince is already the CEO of a company that is engaged in developing multi-platform compatible games for the PC and next-gen consoles (Xbox One, PS4).

He was born in Tirunelveli. His family relocated to London when he was three. He returned to India in December 2013 to head his own company, iCazual Entertainment.

The company had its humble beginnings in a small room in East London in 2011. Today it is housed in a four-storey building in Kodambakkam, Chennai, and employs about 70 people.

In this interview with Rediff.com, and special gaming interest blog “ TheGamingMonitor“, Prince talks about his interest in computing, his present endeavours and his ambitious plans for the future.

Click here for the Interview.

Business Ideas, People / Stories, Uncategorized

Change your typeface, save millions

01/04/2014 Support

CNN) — An e. You can write it with one fluid swoop of a pen or one tap of the keyboard. The most commonly used letter in the English dictionary. Simple, right?

Now imagine it printed out millions of times on thousands of forms and documents. Then think of how much ink would be needed.

OK, so that may have been a first for you, but it came naturally to 14-year-old Suvir Mirchandani when he was trying to think of ways to cut waste and save money at his Pittsburgh-area middle school.

It all started as a science fair project. As a neophyte sixth-grader at Dorseyville Middle School, Suvir noticed he was getting a lot more handouts than he did in elementary school.

Click to read on and find out which Font is most economical to print.

Motivations, People / Stories

Entrepreneurs are the future of India: John Mullins

13/03/2014 yazdi

John Mullins, Associate Professor of Management Practice in Entrepreneurship and Marketing at London Business School (LBS), was in Mumbai recently with a team of MBA students to study entrepreneur practices in emerging markets. In a conversation with BT’s Ajita Shashidhar, Mullins talks about Indian entrepreneurial stories that he finds truly impressive. Excerpts:

Q. What made you choose India of all the emerging markets?

A. There is much to learn from India. Twenty years from now, all the growth will not come from Europe and North America. It will come from emerging markets such as India. Therefore, it is a critical market to understand.

Q.Are there any Indian entrepreneur-driven enterprises that you particularly admire?

A. My students are currently touring rural India with the sales team of Dharma Life. I find their model impressive. The company caters to the basic needs of rural people by creating a distribution network for products such as cycles and stoves at affordable prices. By doing so, Dharma Life has also enabled several rural people to earn a decent livelihood by selling these products.

Click Here for the full interview

Business Plans, People / Stories

The Godrej Game-Plan

26/02/2014 Support

Ace industrialist Adi Godrej, Chairman of the 117-yearold Godrej Group and one of India’s leading business icons, has led the company’s shift from being a family enterprise to a modern conglomerate with his highly innovative ideas and inspiring leadership. His efforts have led to the progress and growth of the Godrej Group to a professionally managed, profitable enterprise today, along with improvement of the quality standards of the company’s products to meet the challenges of globalization.

The right communication is key to any company’s success, especially in times of a turbulent economy, and a market needs stimulation when it is weak. Godrej chose to discuss this insight and the role of advertising in a slowing economy, highlighting the strategy of the Godrej Group in this context, while delivering the keynote address at the launch of the Pitch Madison Media Advertising Outlook, 2014 – jointly brought out by the exchange4media Group and Madison World – in Mumbai on February 19

Click to Read more

Courtesy : Dara Acidwalla

People / Stories

Do you like reading success stories ?

08/02/2014 yazdi

Do you read business blogs where the author has failed three times without success?

No, because you want to learn from success, not hear about “lessons learned” from a guy who hasn’t yet learned those lessons himself.

However, the fact that you are learning only from success is a deeper problem than you imagine.

Some stories will expose the enormity of this fallacy.

Bullet holes: A brain teaser
During World War II the English sent daily bombing raids into Germany. Many planes never returned; those that did were often riddled with bullet holes from anti-air machine guns and German fighters.

Wanting to improve the odds of getting a crew home alive, English engineers studied the locations of the bullet holes. Where the planes were hit most, they reasoned, is where they should attach heavy armor plating. Sure enough, a pattern emerged: Bullets clustered on the wings, tail, and rear gunner’s station. Few bullets were found in the main cockpit or fuel tanks.

The logical conclusion is that they should add armor plating to the spots that get hit most often by bullets. But that’s wrong.

Planes with bullets in the cockpit or fuel tanks didn’t make it home; the bullet holes in returning planes were “found” in places that were by definition relatively benign. The real data is in the planes that were shot down, not the ones that survived.

Click Here for more of this interesting way of thinking 🙂

Inspired by his own success, an Ayurvedic doctor has turned full time water conservationist

Worried about your startup? You are not alone.

No market need: 42 percent

Ran out of cash: 29 percent

Not the right team: 23 percent

Got outcompeted: 19 percent

Pricing/cost issues: 18 percent