Do You Have “The Sulemani
Keeda” for Entrepreneurship?
Sid called me up one evening to seek time for some discussion. Sid was working as a software engineer since last 5 years in a multinational firm. For me the discussion seemed to be quite predictable. He was known as one of the brightest student in our college with lot of creative ideas and a guy who always scored high grades but never enjoyed programming. Now, he was completely standing at the crossroads, probably thinking what next? The call was to have a discussion about the same.
I met Sid the following Friday evening at United Coffee House, Connaught Place, New Delhi. UCH has been a great place for me as I got the idea for my first venture while doodling at the back of the napkin with 2 of my friends. The discussion wandered to his career options. He was really frustrated and wanted to do something of his own. His work had been quite stagnated as he was doing some kind of manual testing in a software firm. He was also pressurized by his parents and girlfriend to get married. He was aware of the risks of getting into entrepreneurship as it could mean great upsides. Thinking is good but going about it the toughest part. Sid aspires to be an entrepreneur but will he be comfortable cutting down his own salary package. Obviously in a setting of multinational company, he was overpaid for whatever work he was doing. He was bit skeptical about the same. He was aspiring to be an entrepreneur, carrying a tag of CEO but the possibility of failure made him standstill. I asked him “will your girlfriend be ready to marry an entrepreneur?” Entrepreneurs normally are crazy gamblers and instead of betting on horses they bet on their hard work with a bit of luck thrown to it. Will your girlfriend or possibly would be wife be ready to accept you as an entrepreneur? Sid himself was not sure and probably never asked these questions to himself. Before he could speak I asked one more question. Will your wife or parents be prepared to manage the family finances by themselves, no matter either you being a gambler striking it hot or not? Sid pushed the idea out of his mind space for future. I was quite sure that Sid is not ready today and probably he would never be.
Besides Sid, I have one more example. One more guy named Vishal who actually started a company for online retail stores. He was talented, hard working and was doing pretty well initially. He was married to extremely beautiful girl who was given all sorts of comforts of life and large chunk of Vishal’s efforts were directed towards keeping her happy. A major chunk of his saving goes to make his wife happy as in he moved to a 4 BHK house in posh locality in Indira Nagar, Bangalore for which he was giving rent of INR 32,000 per month. He mobilized his company staffs to his house for domestic help. He had to gift his wife an expensive gift every month. “Is this Saccha Pyar? Aur Jaanleva Pyar?” Love has to be unconditional where you should support your partner unconditionally. Vishal’s organizational goals were directed towards domestic peace. A few years later, he had to close down the company and he joined back the IT sector.
The characters here are fictional but their stories are not. In both of the example you can imagine how little prepared these guys were to build an organization. The term “Sulemani Kida” means a virus that cannot be killed. One of my uncle who is a film producer told me for anything to succeed you need to have sulemani kida in you. If you look at any actors who made it large on the silver screen had the sulemani kida within their heart and soul be it Shahrukh Khan, Amitabh Bacchan etc. Same is applicable to Entrepreneurship. We have examples of Infosys, Mindtree, Wipro, Reliance group, Meru Cabs etc. Obviously Rome was never built in a single day. Building a company is not like planting a big tree rather planting the seed and with time having a vision of creating an entire forest some day.
One of the very common notions that happened to few of us in our friend circle was “My career is not going anywhere. I hate this company and I do not like my manager and now I want to start my own company.” Before you take any decision, give time to yourself and think about it. If you are married then talk to your spouse, otherwise talk to your parents, Talk to your friend who has always been there for you. Talk to themselves about your plans of getting into entrepreneurship. Let them rate you and tell you bluntly if they see any weakness in you being not able to run a company. I am sure that most of the people you talk will not give you advice to leave your job and start your own company. That’s not a problem though. People often start a great journey with negative experience. One of my senior from college called me and said “You know… I want to start something of my own… I want to get into business”. I asked him “what kind of business? What value you are planning to offer to your customers? Who are your customers? How much money you need to start?” Surprisingly he was not sure about these things. He just wanted to start a company in a hope of getting these answers once you get into the path of entrepreneurship. His only supporting argument was “This is the time, if not now then never”. And in the name of experience he had 4 years of experience in a software firm where he used to debug the code. For him it was important to have a girlfriend in life with whom he can hang out and share his thoughts. Probably this would give him a peace of mind to think and get an idea first and then can further look more into execution side.
In reality the right time to start any business is when your vision and mission are clear and properly aligned. The right time to start the business is when you are confident of utilizing your skills at maximum and are committed to create a family of product or services. The time is now when you are ready to dedicate your time on your venture. Any start up is like a new born baby and you need to give proper time and care to your venture. The time is now when you are able to manage both your professional and personal life in a balanced way. When a company is created one has to be very careful and responsible towards your investors, customers who all use your product/services and also employees. As an entrepreneur you need to love money. If you say you don’t want money or are not passionate about money then there is something wrong. You have to have enough money to maximize shareholder’s value and pay salaries to your employees. So having Sulemani Keeda is essential but with a proper plan and direction.
If you have the sulemani keeda and aspire to be an entrepreneur, you have a rough idea and surrounded by so much of BLAH BLAH BLAH stuffs. You need to pick the right thing and segregate it from Blah Blah Blah stuffs. So Are You Ready?
Written By:
Anis Bari
Co-Founder, Tantra Consultancy Services, StyleShop India
Website: www.anisbari.com
