Can Entrepreneurship Be India’s Biggest Employer?

India has one of the largest pools of educated, well qualified professionals – doctors, engineers, software, communication, teaching etc. Invariably, a large majority of us in the student community first think of employment in the corporate world – be it engineering, marketing, management or software. Only a miniscule minority think of entrepreneurship – having gone through the grind of long education, it is natural for most of us to dream of the first paycheck, the learning that the first job brings (of course, at the employer’s risk and investment!) and the visions and hallucinations of the air conditioned offices in the green, high rise landscapes that now define New Bangalore!

Entrepreneurship, on the other hand, is a more difficult journey – no guaranteed 1^st paycheck after 1^st month, no swank office and no fancy gizmos, no excitement of a “fun workplace with interesting colleagues and an understanding, supportive boss”, no social life at the workplace with weekend parties, outings and so on.

Worse still, no money, no ‘support staff’ and no customer in sight too! It’s only ideas and plans – some in the head, some tucked away in presentations! An idea that will, one fine day, God willing, excite an investor!

Some of the great success stories are too well documented to be repeated here – but just to mention, Dhirubhai Ambani, NR Narayan Murthy & the team that founded Infosys, Mark Zuckerberg, etc.  But then, these are folktales that happen perhaps a few in a generation. That is not what this post is about.

If one were to pass through the residential areas of Bangalore, it is amazing to see the large number of home run businesses – catering outfits, digital marketers, coaching classes, recruiters, call centers, software start ups, advertising agencies, workshops, etc. Don’t ever be under the impression they are earning any less than what the equivalent software professional in the Big MNC is earning! And each of them employ anywhere from just a handful in their home offices to hundreds “loaned” on an “outsourcing basis” to the big companies!

They make mistakes and pay through their noses for it! They take risks and get rewarded hugely for it! The world thinks “they are their own bosses” but they are the only ones who see “the customer as their boss”.

But to each of them, the most satisfying aspect of their life is “they do what they enjoy doing, not what they are forced to do”. Sometimes it works, sometimes it hurts!!

That’s entrepreneurship for you – are you game for it?

And next time you see someone who thinks he / she is unemployed, just tell them “the job is perhaps already with you, just that you are not doing your job!!”

Manisha Raghunath

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