India: ‘Dhandho’ To ‘Venture’

‘Entrepreneur’ is a person who makes money by starting or running businesses, especially when this involves taking financial risks. And when it comes to taking risk in terms of our daily routine life then the mindset of majority of the Indian communities makes you little cautious apart from few Indian communities who have been doing business for multiple generations as its “dhandha” or “dhandho” the way we call it in Konkani which is not worth taking the risk compared to “Service” and this has been for generations. So you could figure out from the names like Tata’s, Birla’s or some of the surnames in Goa like Salgaokers, Dempo that they are or were in business.

 

Why do you think business families or some of the business communities were/are able to hold onto their business for 3rd or 4th generation? The sole reason is the sustainable ecosystem that they made which met the requirements of traditional business. The people from the non-business communities lacked this along with the mindset which caused a huge gap in terms of innovation as the majority of our population were dependent on few Business houses who in turn ran the country.

However with the introduction of Professional technical courses in India, it shadowed the usual mindset and got some tech savvy people in the business fold. In all it was Information Technology which led the upcoming surge by parting with old ways of heavy manufacturing to online based rapid changing technology. One such company which is worth multiple billion dollars now is “Infosys” founded by Narayan Murthy in 1981 who was described as “Father of IT Sector” by TIME.

Professional education flourishing and the demand for technology driven services from the western world brought many laurels to India. As the Indian mindset towards the business slowly started being positive the ecosystem started becoming the bottleneck which was addressed in due course with E-cells in colleges and now the Incubation Centres which are supported and backed even by Government and philanthropists.

There are many support schemes which the Government of India has come up with, like “Startup India”, “Standup India”, innovation centres, roadshows, conferences, incubators for the support of innovation in young buds. Showcase your Ideas with Proof of Concept or small viable product which exposes Angel funding, Venture capitals which you can lay your back on with respect to financials (same was not the case with Narayan Murthy back then who started with Rs.10000). The Government of Goa is also sponsoring Rs.10 Lakhs for the startups in Goa. Strong foundation of  ecosystem with government driven initiatives for the ideas of Innovation, Its the time for the younger generation to drive the next phase of entrepreneurship leading India competing with the world as even the Indians are referring to business with a new modern name  “Venture” rather than “dhandho” or “dhandha”.

 

 

Compiled By:

 Mr. Shreeyank Jambhale

Asst. Prof. ETC Dept