Age no bar, start-up today

NEW DELHI, INDIA: The TiE Entrepreneurial Summit, which began here today, is rich with many sessions that shed light on the entrepreneurial landscape in the country. Here is an excerpt of the discussions on “Age No bar”, where panelists Maher Peri, Vijay Sekhar Sharma and Shashank share their visions.

Shashank

Always have mentors on your side; listen to your e-cell; go through the entire phase of entrepreneurship. Age no bar, nothing is bar. They don’t matter. My suggestion to the students here is: sacrifice bit of your college life, start working on the business idea you have and after a few years will get sit in. Do what you can, get mentors help because they will be able to guide you correctly and you will grow.

Vijay Shekhar Sharma, MD, One 97

I believe in the under-dog story. I believe in Chak De’s 70 minutes story (the story says that you have 70 minutes of your life, you can make it or destroy. I am from Hindi School background, whenever I attended the Delhi University, the words were flying-like Ishanth’s (3 Idiots).

But then I told myself that one day those students sitting in the first row of the class will get a job in my company. That was my spirit. You need to have inspiration from within. You simple discover what’s in you.

Ashish Kapur, MD, Yo! China

I was an engineer by degree worked in GE and left the corporate life, I found food is a great opportunity. At that time there was no national food chains — the opportunity was obvious. If you start your journey to Vaishono Devi you will find south  and north Indian food chains. So I wanted to offer something that wasn’t available. 

I saw Chinese as a potential. The greatest challenge I found was funding but there is certain amount of glamour attached to the food business. we started in 2003 at MGF. Our values are quality, trendy ambiance and freshness. By 2005, every store was profitable, we decided to go out and raise funds so that we could expand our footprint. We got the funding in late 2006 and early 2007, but after 1.5 years all the capital was burned.

We made mistakes, the biggest mistake was to lose sight of customers — quality was gone and ambiance was not like earlier days. We went back to the board and said we have screwed up. Now we don’t care about our store expansion. We rectified the mistakes, reinvented the stores. Quality food was back. Now our focus is: meal by meal growth. My suggestion is go for founding when you actually need it and never loose your passion.

Also read: A sporting entrepreneurship

Q&A session

Question: How do I go with failures?

Ashish Kapur: You have to surround yourselves with positive people — we have a fabulous team, a supportive family. Keep the passion alive in you, remember entrepreneurship is a legacy.

Q: How business knowledge required to be a successful entrepreneur?

Vijay: Gather Knowledge as much as possible. Don’t go by MBAs, because MBA kills entrepreneurship. Remember the thing you want to do are not the things taught in the classroom.

Q: How did you manage to get quality funding?

Ashish: the full package matters,, the business idea, team, idea’s market segment etc.