DARE - Because Entrepreneurs Do

What is the best course of action for a wannabe entrepreneur fresh out of college—start immediately or work for 2 years?

When Satya Vyas completed his BTech in metallurgy and materials engineering from IIT Roorkee two months ago, his parents were very happy. As is usual with bright students at India’s premier technological institute, he had landed a lucrative job offer from a multinational company.

“The company is the number one in the world, as far as offshore engineering services are concerned. My parents were very happy. The basic package itself was $100,000 per year [around Rs 3.5 lakh per month] I could have saved 20 or 30 lakhs in two years,” says the 23-year-old who was planning to do an MBA after two years.

Instead, Satya turned back to his student days. “Even as a student, I had found it difficult to get good food delivered home. I had also, a year ago, visited different cities to find out if there was a possibility to start a food-delivery business for homes and offices.”

So, with just a hundredth of the money that was offered to him by the engineering services firm, the lad from Jaipur is all geared up to start operations at ‘Dietz Foods’, a home-delivery service for the health-conscious.

“What is the worst that can happen?” asks Satya, who comes from a predominantly non-business family, except for his father who used to run a flour-mill business. “I was anyway planning to work for two years and then do an MBA. Then I felt it was a better decision to start right now and learn along the way. On my own, I would learn more than if I were working at any corporation. This way, I am learning marketing, HR, etc. And finally, you cannot wait for the best idea and the best time. You will make mistakes, but you keep learning and not repeating those mistakes.”

Satya is not an exception. Fed by stories of entrepreneurs making it big, many university students dream of starting on their own as soon as they can get their degrees. With many having designs in sectors like Internet and software products, which frequently require very little initial investment, starting out on one’s own has never been easier. But is that the right way to go, or should one spend a year or two in a company and gain that ‘operational expertise’?

Hesitate, and all is lost
“I don’t think there is any such thing as a right or wrong age for starting out,” says Rajeev Karwal, founder and CEO of the Milagrow Business & Knowledge Solutions, a provider of management services to small and medium enterprises. Karwal, famous for setting up or turning around the fortunes of many consumer brands such as LG in India, believes that a young entrepreneur can learn much more on his own than as an employee at another firm.

“India today is completely different from what it was when I started out,” says Karwal, who started his career a quarter century ago. “It was not as open and happening as it is now. The ecosystem was limited, the public sector banks were laid back, and the VC culture did not exist. Today, these things are there. If someone has the will, they should step in. If the idea gains traction, there will be money behind it and the skills that one talks about can all be brought in later. In fact, the greatest companies in the world, whether it is Apple or Microsoft, were all started by people who did not work anywhere else,” he points out.

Karwal, who has been an entrepreneur only for the last one and a half years of his 25 year career, also agrees with Satya’s belief that a career in an established company is not going to be very helpful to an aspiring entrepreneur. “I have interacted with people who run big corporations and I have also interacted with many young entrepreneurs. Many who run big companies are not anywhere as sharp as some of the small entrepreneurs that I have worked with,” he says.

Satya also points out that sometimes not having worked in an established company may be a benefit, as it allows you to “rethink the core processes” of an organization—to steal a line from an IBM ad. “Many people told me that since I am by training a metallurgical engineer, I should work in a restaurant for some time before starting on my own. But I want to develop my own best processes—how the supply chain will work, where I will source my raw materials, what values my company stand for, etc. In an established company, these processes may have been set 20 or 30 years ago and you will be involved in a very small part of the overall process,” he says, adding that for him, time is of great importance.

Anthony Hsiao, a German who co-founded the Pune-based online travel utility entrip.com after graduating from the Imperial College, London six months ago, has his own take on the risk of starting off immediately after college.

“People said that it was quite risky, and that one has to have a few years of work experience inside a company before trying to set up his/her own company,” he says. “My response to that is, we’re 23-24 years old and spoilt by our lifestyle in rich and relatively perfect Europe, what do we have to lose if we try out our luck in an area that interests us a lot? Whether you’re out of college or out of Symantec, it’s all the same. We’ve just hired two guys, one from college and another one from a large company. The graduate has had relevant exposure, which is evident. The other one who’s worked for a company hasn’t really had much relevant exposure,” he points out.

Or learn at someone else’s expense?
Yet Satya and Rajeev are exceptions. Most entrepreneurs feel that it is always a good idea to test the waters before taking the plunge.

“To me, entrepreneurship comes as a natural evolution of one’s corporate career,” says KK Venkatraman who co-founded 3DSoC, a 3D modeling company, spun out of Indian Institute of Science nearly two years ago. Venkat, who is also the CEO of the company, got into 3DSoC after a 12 year stint with Wipro, after becoming aware of the need for and opportunity of starting purely product-based IT companies in India. “The inspiration for starting the company came from my career with Wipro, which was into services,” he says.

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