DARE - Because Entrepreneurs Do

Honestly I do not have a definitive answer to that. My own take is probably it is better learnt from an entrepreneur because classroom training cannot be as effective. Maybe I am propagating a clichéd point of view being pedalled for so many years that entrepreneurship cannot be taught or

inculcated in a classroom. I would like to ask you the following questions: Can you learn swimming without going to a swimming pool? Can you learn riding a bicycle without actually getting on to one? I am sure you agree with me that in both cases you can't. Similarly, I believe entrepreneurship should be learnt through mentoring, inspiration and action.

 

Real entrepreneurship happens by jumping in, trying and failing sometimes and eventually succeeding. The reason I started thinking about this is because in the past few months many business schools have invited me to their entrepreneurship programs and last month I accepted an offer to take a session at Mudra Institute of Communications Ahmedabad’s (MICA) entrepreneurship program.

I must say that it was a learning and pleasant experience interacting with these hugely talented and “budding entrepreneurs”. Did I go to a flower nursery? Budding Huh! Buzzing definitely. Lots of ideas, enthusiasm and drive.

For a change I realized that they were really serious about being entrepreneurs. All had dreams in their eyes and laptops on their desks while I was interacting with them. I was talking to “Screenagers” who were searching things and concepts and people I was mentioning and talking to them about.

I decided to make it interactive and asked them a question to understand where was each one of them going. I asked them “What’s your gift?”

Suzoy said that his gift was the ability to simplify things— he takes sessions where he teaches non-teaching staff how to multiply without using tables. Ritika has the ability to imagine exponentially which she wants to use in making creative brochures and websites. Esha said that she could dream, and turn them into reality— her strength was execution, and she plans to use it to differentiate between ‘recreation’ and ‘leisure’. Sapan’s gift was networking and he plans to use this in creating a discount portal, working on a loyalty program for corporate organizations and retailers. Keshav’s gift was execution which he was actively using, and already has three ventures dealing with corporate training. Siddharth’s gift was ‘observing people keenly’, which he plans to encash by working on film tourism, while Shwetha’s gift was writing, which she plans to use to make short interactive story books by having videos in them.

From these varied responses I am sure you know that they took entrepreneurship seriously and were not academic about it. I was impressed, excited and also nervous. The next generation of entrepreneurs is daring and nuanced.

Two of them even sent me their business plans promptly.

One of them sought my help for training and showcased his excellent relationship skills.

The question I kept asking myself was would they have been better off if they had joined a CEO or a senior business manager or an entrepreneur as an understudy? Wouldn't they be better off being in Delhi and Mumbai working in either entrepreneurial startups or directly with entrepreneurs?

I wanted to know why they chose to be academic about entrepreneurship.

Subhash Chandra did not go for an entrepreneurship course; neither did N R Naryan Murthy nor first generation entrepreneurs like Sanjeev Bhikchandani and Deep Kalra.

I have reached the conclusion that what probably worked for them are the following three things: (1) Learning from each other, that’s the huge one (2) Drawing inspiration from visiting entrepreneurs (3) Having a fair sense of where they are headed

I would prefer apprenticeship over a course in a school.

Would they be better off participating in the Indian version of Trump's “Apprentice"? Maybe DARE magazine should start one. I would be happy to host this DAREing show.

Anurag Batra
Anurag Batra is real life, first-generation entrepreneur who is Much Below Average (MBA) from the prestigious Management Development Institute, MDI. When he is not busy writing such columns, he can be reached at anuragbatrayo@gmail.com.Anurag is the founder and editor-in-chief of exchange4media group which includes exchange4media.com.

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