An entrepreneurial seed of thought

If you are a passionate individual who is stuck in life not knowing in which direction you should steer your life to live a life of impact, this write up is for you. This write up is a seed from the tree of a high impact life.

Where to start your business – See any need around you and analyze what you can do to fulfill that need. For example – If you see a lot of people are standing in queue for buying a rail or a bus ticket between two cities (not so far) eg Kanpur to Gorakhpur (350 kms approx.), probably you can start your own travel company. You can buy a second hand bus, hire a driver and start daily route at peak timings. Avoid buying a new bus, avoid spending too much on an untested initiative. If you know how to drive a bus, probably it will be a good idea that you drive yourself for first few days, analyze how many people you are able to serve, how people are buying your bus tickets – Online via your own app/website, via aggregator apps such as Redbus or MakeMytrip or physical on the spot via UPI/Cash. Analyze your customers pain points and how you can address them. Even Zomato founder on somedays went on bike to deliver food to analyze his business, his delivery partners working conditions and customers pain points (if any).

In my entrepreneurial journey of writing a book and distributing it through meetups, more than 300 copies have been distributed and the most satisfying and happy factor for me was that some of the readers came back to me and said they really liked the book and it had put a seed of change in them. The need factor for me was that I felt people around me needed more direct message on God and his spirit. So, I wrote with what God has blessed me.

Coming back to you, you need a plan to start with. Below points can help you to plan better. Market Segmentation – People whom you can serve is the market for you. Those people will have different needs. Some want car, some want bicycles (A travel with exercise), some want a good school (education) for their children in their vicinity, some want medical facilities, some want local and international news daily and some want sporting activities eg Badminton court or a swimming pool. You see need is the basis of market segmentation. Need is an opportunity to serve and thus get a business. Those needs for which you have resources with minimum cost is the most logical for you to start with. Fulfilling those needs and making a business out of it is what a businessman is.

If you have a plot of land and you see in that in the neighbourhood of your plot lot of young people are going to some other place to play sports such as basketball or tennis, it is a good idea for you to convert your land to a basketball or a tennis court and charge money for it. For charging money ie tickets, you can develop an app or a website with booking slots, offers, membership plans etc or UPI/Cash to your business account.

If you are good in medical science or mathematics or any subject you can put a board infront of your house for a tuition or college students education.
If you are good in software development you can launch a software company by customizing your offerings such as an ERP implementation for a retail business, a Hospital management system, School management system etc. A good way to do is to divide each process to a software process. For example instead of noting down students name at the time of registration to a physical register book, have a website that offers registration of students via a webform and stores their data to a database. Similarly instead of taking cash have an online system of payment. Well all those processes implementation can't be described in this note but you have got an idea on how to start and plan around to get your hands dirty.

If you are good in making a coffee or a tea and you see a place where alot of people pass through or gather Eg. near a university or a college, or a bus stop, or an airport it would be a good idea to get a place via rent and start your own cafe with attractive posters.

Don't wait too much nor overplan on starting. Just have a plan to launch or offer an MVP or an MVS - Minimum viable product(MVP) or Minimum viable service(MVS) to give to your customers. An MVP or an MVS is a unit offering which fulfils a unit need. For eg, If one wants to have tea - Offering a cup of tea is an MVP/MVS (A product is generally tangible and is consumed once offered - In our case a cup of tea is a product, a service is generally intangible - Serving of hot tea, how you serve hot tea in your cafe is a service). I have seen hot tea been packed and shipped by ecommerce companies. If one wants a lunch - Rotis, Rice, a Veg or Non veg dish, a glass of water forms an MVP/MVS - A unit lunch which fulfils a unit need of someone who wants to have lunch.

Make sure you are able to get fuel for your business i.e income from your business offerings. Make sure your offering is liked by people and they happily pay you, otherwise soon your savings tank will be empty.

Stopping here for now so that you can start planning your journey.
More to follow..
Take care. God bless you!