Contents From The Editor 3
Memories with MAçON
4
Entrepreneurship, the next generation
6
From a Logistics Company to Supply Chain Enabler 8
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The Era of Women Entrepreneurs
10
Entrepreneurship, A Wise Option!
12
What Students think about us:
14
FROM THE EDITOR
Editorial Team
Taking Action on Your Calling To “Write” Rule #1: We communicate ideas to other people in writing or verbally Rule #2: As soon as we communicate, the message will be misunderstood
Omkar Tawade
Dear Readers, We welcome the new batch of aspiring MBA students. Our last few editions have really been worthy and added value to many. The magazine in your hands is a result of considerable efforts and time invested by the authors. As we move on in this journey, you will understand that we will be covering a vast horizon and would make sure that the interest element of the readers is retained. This is just the beginning of the wonderful journey we have in mind with you. As with this new edition we here at Maçon are proud to present, yet another issue, completely crafted by our new senior Maçonites. I congratulate all the team members and contributors for their efforts and the time that they invested towards the success of yet another edition. I never cease to be amazed at the myriad of ways people can fail at verbally communicating. Writing, however, gives us an opportunity to think, research, carefully craft our thoughts, and lay out each idea in a logical, informational, persuasive, or even inspirational way. But it seldom happens without a tremendous amount of practice! MBA Entrepreneur Magazine is chock full of articles written by people who never thought of themselves as authors. They are students with ideas, and they spend most of their learning time crafting how best to communicate those ideas to others. Those who are most successfully have learned be write succinctly, precisely, effectively, and to tell a story. In the process they had to conquer their own fears, self-doubts, insecurities, and sheer inability to conceive of themselves as “published.” It was always “someone else” who achieved that. Think about what it is you are called to “write” in your life. Then start practicing, and then practice some more. To end it on a lighter note we have specially kept in mind the needs of our juniors along with that of seniors and crafted the magazine to ensure a vast coverage of interests. We have included the articles of our newly elected POC’s which range from their experiences at the official entrepreneurship cell of IBS to telling us the importance of entrepreneurship and also a start-up called “Delhivery”. We have also tried to provide a short glimpse of the ideology of Robert Kiyosaki, while also bringing into picture the women entrepreneurs presently on the world stage. Also we are glad to have one article by a non-cell member which only portrays the love towards our cell by the students of this great institute. I wish you all good luck and expect you to be associated with our magazine in times to come.
Karthik Jairam Budhaditya Mukherjee Prerna Kumari Yashasvee Gupta Snehaa Tripathy
Creative Team Arunbalakrishnan Rahul Bongoni Subin Domini Manikanta Gundipati
Happy Reading !!! Editor in Chief Omkar Tawade
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Memories with Maçon PRERNA KUMARI, POC
I t was evening time, time for having endless conversations with friends over coffee in the college canteen. We were newbies in the college, were still not aware of everything that was happening around us, and this coffee time was the time of information sharing, informally known as “the gossip”. So this fine evening we were discussing about the buzz that was spread all around the campus “The Club’s recruitment process”. Every club of IBS had started their promotion and welcomed us to join them. It was then when I got to know about 4 • L’ENTREPRENEUR - IBS, Hyd
‘Maçon- the Entrepreneurship Cell’ of IBS Hyderabad. I had little idea about this cell initially, but then I searched about it and ended up being inspired by it. The recruitment process had already started as Maçon is always the first one to recruit and to select the best. Registration for that was about to get closed, and I almost missed the deadline, but phew... thank god I didn’t! Now that I think about it I wonder had I not applied for it, I would’ve missed such a great opportunity and the experience I had with Maçon. This takes me back to the beautiful memories and the learning that this cell gave me.After all the selection process, a meeting was called the other day at the library stairs. I still remember I was a bit nervous, but it turned out to be a really good interaction session with our seniors, met new people (our batch mates) and THERE… the journey began. We had our first orientation program, an official meet, which again was a great program to know more about the cell. I interacted and made friends and was
happy to be a part of this amazing family. And that was just the beginning, we had so many events and programs which followed by. Be it Guest lectures or the “LIVE SATTA DARBAR”--our flagship event, or the “Startup Saturday”—a gathering of entrepreneurs on every second Saturday of the month, a great opportunity to get inspired; or The “B-plan Showcase”- which gives you the opportunity to showcase your business plan to the venture capitalists, who in turn are looking for a budding entrepreneur.
experience in the coming days with Maçon, especially with the fresh batch joining us this year, all geared up to get more inspiration and learning. Here’s a small quote that I remember I read somewhere “An entrepreneur is someone who jumps off a cliff and builds a plane on the way down.”
Maçon also provides a great platform to expose your talent with “IBS ventures”- an attempt to encourage the aspiring minds of IBS, who wants to start something of their own. I cannot think of a better way for aspiring entrepreneurs to get started with. What I have learnt from Maçon and the entrepreneurs that I have met through this cell, is to keep believing, keep going and keep dreaming to “startup” something unique or present an existing idea in your own unique way and show the world that no matter how big or small your idea is, it is there to succeed and inspire people. If you’re not making mistakes, then you’re not making decisions. I can’t wait for what more is left for me to
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Entrepreneurship The next generation...!
Yashasvee Gupta, poc
up the term “entrepreneurship” and in a blink’s time it will come up with n number of links which will describe the term but with tedious terminologies and discourse. Well, entrepreneurship is a pot filled with gold topped by dreams, ideas, risks, will and action in sequence.
the present level at 6.1 crores, 60% being the youth generation! Now, that’s a huge number, isn’t it? Well, not all those who are unemployed are unskilled; on the contrary they are skilled but jobless. People like us attain remarkable knowledge, but when it comes to job, we keep waiting for the right placement and the wait never ends. Why sit idle and wait for others to employ, why not start up something of our own and instead of getting employed, employ! To quote Barak Obama, ‘We know that the nation that goes all-in on innovation today will own the global economy tomorrow.’ All one needs to do is ignite the inner passion, ambition, vigour, enthusiasm and innovation, ignite the flair to do standalone the crowd and then there’s nothing one can’t do to reshape the economy.
122 crores is the count that reaches on the graph of population in India and unemployment has been rising to strike
If you collect instances from lives of entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs, Dave Hakkens, Mark Zuckerberg, and many others,
G oogle
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you’ll be amazed to see that the success for which they are known today has a trail of numerous failures and rejections. Stories like these reflect that modern economy is all about innovation, daring and having an international outlook. Well, defining Entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship in literal terms and definitions is quite elusive, however, scholars all over the world have been associating the terms with economic aspects like innovation, new ventures and risk bearing. Entrepreneurship is not a rocket science. In fact, if you have the will and desire, it simply starts with an idea; and if you, insightful, have an idea, that’s all you need!
mitigation for it. One thing that is to be remembered here, is that risks seems dangerous only till you see it from a distance, for once experienced, you know that there always will be a way out of it. Come out of the beautiful valleys, climb the mountains, because a failure surmounted is a step ahead towards success. “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game’s winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that’s why I succeed.” says Michael Jordan, NBA Hall of Famer. Now, the next and the last step of being a successful entrepreneur says, “Don’t just be a dreamer, be a doer”. Put your plans to If you want your ideas to pay off big and action and keep co-relating to your plans, proud, just follow your heart along with monitor the deviations and correct them. these simple steps. The first step being, Ignite thy entrepreneurial spark....bloom analysing all the aspects related to the with new ideas....take risks and fear not idea along with validating the market in if mistakes happen...for mistakes are the terms of demand. Once you are done with prerequisites for success..!! thorough analysis, move on to the second step of writing a business plan and keep in Happy Entrepreneuring! mind that whatever you do should count. Plan the sources of funding, the location of your start-up, make small goals that leads you to the ultimate, and plan such that you achieve what you’ve planned. Calculate the possibilities of risk and plan L’ENTREPRENEUR - IBS, Hyd 7
From a logistics company to a supplychain enabler karthik jairam, poc
The story of the popular e-commerce logistics
company is a classic example of the weekend over-a-beer idea turning into one of India’s coolest start-ups. In 2009, Sahil Barua and Bhavesh Manglani met at one of Mumbai’s Hard Rock Cafes. They met through a common friend and Sahil was introduced to Bhavesh as a tech stud. Despite a few beers down, Bhavesh impresses Sahil with his knowledge. Later in 2011 when Bhavesh wanted to start a
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venture, Sahil was the first he turned to who agreed to be a part it. Subsequently Mohit Tondon, Suraj Saharan and Kapil Bharati all joined in leaving their lucrative jobs at Bain & Company. Delhivery, the brain child of the 5 founders, was late in the e-commerce retail game but they saw a market need in the logistics. E-commerce companies at that point of time either had their own delivery arms, such as Flipkart or outsourced it to courier companies dealing with documents or bulk cargo. The main problem with outsourcing deliveries to companies was that their systems were not designed to deliver parcels. Another major problem at that point of time was that none of the courier companies had adjusted themselves to the “cash on delivery” system which was and still is popular among the online shoppers in India. In one of the interviews by Business today, Barua, co-founder and CEO of Delhivery said, “It was the most interesting problem we could think of.” As the name indicates, Delhivery started off as a third-party, last mile logistics
An idea is worth only the amount of execution focus it gets – Suraj Saharan, Co-founder, Delhivery
delivery firm based in Delhi which would serve e-commerce companies alone. They started off with offering tailor-made solutions for brick and mortar retailers and small scale business even including boutiques and eateries. For the first few months, they functioned with bootstrapping their own money. However in 2012, one of their customers, Times Internet invested about Rs. 6.6 Crore. The monetary help got the company a business center in Delhi and a few warehouses in Mumbai and Bangalore. They plan to soon open two more warehouses in Kolkata and Surat. Before Delhivery set up these warehouses, the order cycles used to be anywhere between 4 and 7 days. But now with all the tech wizardry, it just takes 24 hours for Delhivery to handover a parcel after an order has been placed. The company has invested in its technological fronts and this has allowed differentiation even with its delivery systems. It is managed an efficient system where in the orders are routed via different flights and even different modes of transport all throughout the day. Whenever a package need to be delivered, a backend team plots an optimum route including specific flight numbers and vehicle numbers which will pick up the package from the airport. In this model, unlike the traditional hub & spoke, the parcel does not necessarily need to be stocked at the hub before it reaches the spoke. Each warehouse at
different cities functions like a processing unit by itself. They route parcels directly to the customer and avoid parking it in the hub which reduces their handling cost and time. Owing to their profound efficiency, Delhivery added yet another business to their ranks. They now also sell technology, like an order management system that controls the supply-chain for an online retailer. So now they are a supplychain enabler and not only a logistics firm. Delhivery seems to have positioned themselves well in the pricing front too. They claim to be cheaper than Bluedart and FedEx but a more expensive than smaller players. Their rates are flat and based upon weight, distance and volume. Revenue seems to have rocketed from 17 crores in 2012 to 62 crores in 2014. The firm is consistently clocking a revenue run rate of 8 - 8.5 crores per month this year. The company has expanded to 135 cities employing 3,000 people into its delivery business. Today, it delivers 40,000 to 50,000 orders a day and caters to customers like Flipkart, Healthkart, Jabong, Amazon, eBay and Myntra, among others. Delhivery just launched its international operations in Sri Lanka and Dubai last year. It also broke even in the past year making it one of the hottest properties in the fast growing start-up scene in India.
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The era of women entrepreneurs BUDHADITYA, hospitality head
The
tremendous boom in the field of technology, internet and mobile technology has helped Indian entrepreneurs build a valuable, feasible and scalable business at an unprecedented speed. There is a huge growth in women entrepreneurs along with their start-ups. Many women entrepreneurs are today successful in various areas including e-commerce , retail chains, and textile. They are no longer afraid of taking risk and now a days investors find these enthusiastic women entrepreneurs more focused, determined and innovative. According to Global hunt managing director Mr. Sunil Goel extensive and suitable exposure with equal opportunities are progressing
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with the trend of women in India becoming entrepreneurs as they compete with their male counterparts either for their education or employment”. Grab house founder Pankhuri Shrivastava also seems to be believing that Indian women are breaking the manacle of traditional image and moving on to starting their own business with the help of investors. Looking at the growth rate of women entrepreneurs in India the government of India has also sought to helping these ambitious women by providing them with special loans at low interest rate, helping them in networking and helping them reach out to general public. The glass-ceiling perception doesn’t exist in the new age companies. If we compare large traditional PSUs or private firms the proportion of women employees is comparatively high. According to a survey study by CoCubes. com, an online assessment firm, 97 percent of women desire for higher competency at the work place as against 95 percent compared to men. So GEM 2012 report there are 130 million women entrepreneurs started new businesses and in 69 economies in 2014. This number is increasingly proving that women love being
the boss of their own and the anticipated growth is 2.2 percent per year. Till 2020 the number will likely touch 160 million. The study also shows that there are few issues which are impacting women on their road to becoming business owners and they are: - Work-life balance - Lack or insufficient knowledge/exposure on how to start a business or run it. - Leadership skills - Access to funding - Mentors to guide them These women in survey have very different perspective as most of them think that by pursuing their passion and the chance to make more money for themselves rather than working for somebody else they will find the opportunity to spend more time with their family. Women are better and very much efficient at networking than men because women tend to focus more on their primary objective. Women believe their emotions completely, so being concerned and helpful for an employee or a customer is a very comfortable notion for them. This ability to connect emotionally and psychology also means that the bonds that are created by women are certainly stronger and they keep on nurturing it as that it becomes a part of their natural instinct.
response from their customers and prospects. Smart companies are witnessing an increasing trend of women entrepreneurs. These companies found that women entering the economy as employees and entrepreneurs — dictate their business successfully and enhance it as well. Coca-Cola observed that four million women entrepreneurs were partnering their global supply chain. Wal-Mart understood the capability of women-led firms to innovate their compelling products. Itau predicts that 50% of Brazilian entrepreneurs are women, and the members of the Global Banking Alliance for Women think alike. And all firms are realizing that in the era of fierce competition, women are increasingly looking forward to entrepreneurship as a compelling alternative if a career path appears to be stagnant. Entrepreneurial activities create growth and prosperity for the greater good of our society and the people residing within while providing solutions for social problems as well. Trends imply that women will be a huge driving force of entrepreneurial growth in the near future and will boost the growth of world economy to the next level.
Women are also less focused on their personal success and they give more importance to business and the people around them. They are willing to share credit and innately work better as team members than their ego-driven male counterparts. Women tend to be more socially connected, which dovetails directly into digital and social media marketing (SMM) for their start-ups. Women seem to enjoy and engage more in their Face book, Twitter, and blogs, and this involvement clearly receives a favourable
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Entrepreneurship, A wise option! omkar tawade, editor in chief
It is probably the wisest of decisions but sure
it takes guts and courage to be called an entrepreneur. Here the discussion would be the most agonizing and sought after topic in the Indian scenario today, to be or not to be an entrepreneur! With the increase in the number of youth graduating from premier B-schools and engineering colleges wanting to take the most unsought after non-traditional path of being an entrepreneur, we know the times have changed in the country. But being a student and an aspiring entrepreneur myself, I want you to know the practical demeanor and the
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thought of becoming an entrepreneur. It may sound dynamic and spirited but it sure is by its own, a roller coaster ride. Ok, getting back to the topic, there are practically two dimensions of a career, to be an entrepreneur or work for one. You get a fixed pay and you work for money. The real game is trying to make money work for you, that’s where entrepreneurship comes into picture. One is always in demand of something more and feels satisfied at achieving perks and timely bonuses, forgetting for the time being that he actually deserves more and his need for money is satisfied temporarily and it has to pop out at some point in the near future, considering loan payments and EMI obligations. There is never a point in the life of a salaried employee where he does not have monetary problems. Remember salary hike is just a short term fulfillment of proliferating needs and demands. The problem with working professionals is, they just simply don’t act or think about why they are facing the tax burden and a person
who has his own business on similar earnings ends up paying less, simple class two arithmetic. A person’s dreams get shattered ever so often witnessing this, but he doesn’t care as he is happy with his piece of bone. Remember it is a crime being a salaried employee, for you end up paying much more to the Government in the form of taxes and other deductions from your salary which actually renders your salary slip useless. This only aggravates as one tries to work hard and move up the corporate ladder, you sure would be earning more but the commensurate disposable income would be low, all thanks to the democratic government ideology of progressive taxation which says the rich should be taxed more! Now understand this, you get the pay and before you know anything a certain taxable amount is deducted, you can’t do a thing about it. Think of this like an entrepreneur, you are only taxed after all the expenses are deducted which obviously you can tackle if you are smart enough. One of my friends, doing a C.A internship was once telling me about the tax returns he was filling. That was one surprising conclusion which he drew and managed to seize my attention. He had taken up return fillings of a Chartered accountant and an IT professional. The revenue generated by the chartered accountant firm was about Rs.0.55 crores, approximately half the salary earned by the IT professional. It was surprising to see how the chartered account managed to pay Year-onyear tax of only 0.75 lakhs whereas the IT professional paid a tax of about 30-33lakhs Y.O.Y. It acts in a way that the chartered accountant can conduct his board of directors meeting in Goa, where he can actually go on a trip there, show minor expenses of the meeting and actually end up enjoying the vacation and end up paying nothing as tax. Now think for yourself, is the IT professional exposed to such favors? Well the answer is no. Obviously this does not bring into account the risk factors and the agonies of starting up. But surely there is an upside. One has to take this gamble and wait for it to payoff. One
understands this after actually getting into the rat race and the monotonous nature of 9 to 5 jobs. Another fact finding mission, one more example is, outsourcing done nowadays by multinational corporations. If one were to carefully observe the payment made to the outsourced company by the vendor company, he will understand how labor has become cheap in emerging economies like India. The payment is usually made in the form of $1,000 to the work done @Rs.55/$ and the employee actually ends up getting about 22,000 to 25000 in hand after all the deductions. Now one can call this as commission and bear in mind that the agent is actually charging more than the person doing the work. Simple yet life changing stuff, well entrepreneurship is not easy as it sounds, it is way more complicated. It takes a toll on one’s health, anxiety, need to perform, peer pressure, family expectations etc. all come into play and person succumbs to the whims and fancies of Job. It takes patience for a person to understand various parameters of successfully starting a business from scratch like the business plan, cash flow statements analysis of markets, vendor details, credit facilities, breakeven points, right from where to find employees, how to retain them until the opportunity cost of time and money invested up to the estimated return on capital employed. This is often the reason why a job seems to be more appropriate than entrepreneurship. It’s ultimately up to the individual to take the right way or the high way. The choice has always been open!
Successful people don’t fear failure, but understand that it’s necessary to learn and grow from – Robert Kiyosaki
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What students think about us: Snehaa Tripathy, student - ibs, hyd
Entrepreneurship does not emerge and devel-
op automatically and spontaneously, its emergence and development purely depend on supportive conditions. Entrepreneur is one who innovates and takes risks in developing a product or business. Being an Entrepreneur is one of the most exciting and popular things to do. Though starting and maintaining own business isn’t easy. Through such an outstanding cel like Macon, I have gained knowledge about entrepreneurship from the guests lectures. This cel and the lectures they conduct has truly inspired me. Thanks a lot Macon.. You rock!! Owning a business requires a lot. There are more requirements to starting and maintaining a business today. A business owner is a person who organizes and manages a business undertaking and partaking a risk for the sake of profit. They also show improvement on a daily basis in how they serve customers, manage employees, and try hard to improve their operations. But in my opinion, Entrepreneurs are everybody’s favourite heroes. But what exactly is an entrepreneur? Here the warm glow of enthusiasm dissolves into intellectual confusion. There are two distinctive views. The first is the popu14 • L’ENTREPRENEUR - IBS, Hyd
lar view: that entrepreneurs are people who run their own companies, the self-employed or small-business people. The second is entrepreneurs are innovators: people who come up with ideas and embody those ideas in high-growth companies.There is a distinction between “replicative” entrepreneurs (who set up small businesses much like other small businesses) and “innovative” entrepreneurs (who upset and disorganise the existing way of doing things). There is also a difference between “small businesses” and “high-growth businesses” (most small businesses stay small). Both sorts have an important role in a successful economy. But they are nevertheless very different sorts of organisations. Entrepreneurs tend to be highly educated: 45% of people are self-made entrepreneurs have advanced degrees, a sharp contrast with the early 20th century, when men like Henry Ford dropped out of school to become tinkerers. They also tend to focus on high-tech and finance. Entrepreneurship is all about innovation and ambition to turn small businesses into big ones. Small business entrepreneurship is all about flexible employment and poor opportunities.Some flourish ,some are just unable to reach to the top. But as it issaid- Nobody talks of Entreprenuership as survival,but that’s exactly what it is and what nurtures is Creative Thinking!! Thank You & Have a Nice Day!!
DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in the article are soley those of the author and donot necessarily reflect the official policies of the Cell. Reasonable Care has been taken to provide accurate up to date information at any time of publication , L’ Entrepreneur does not take any responsiblity of the decisions or outcomes based on the content herein. No part of the magazine is to be copied , stored or format without the prior permission of MAÇON The Entrepreneurship Cell of IBS Hyderabad. For any feedbacks and comments mail us at: ecellhyd@ibsindia.org Connect with us at: https://www.facebook.com/TheECell . Our Website at: htttps://theecell.org. You Can access our Exclusive videos Interviews at:
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