The entrepreneurial game doesn’t begin and end with starting your own company. Some young graduates prefer to join a startup instead for a novel work experience, say Vijay P Olety (left in pic) and Santhosh S who joined tech start-up 8KMiles after finishing their courses at IIIT, Bangalore. “I value my freedom and like to work on interesting products.
Having worked in an MNC earlier, I had an idea about how established companies work and the various processes that are in place. It did not suit my personality and the way I would like to work,” says Vijay, while Santhosh says start-ups offer immense learning opportunities, adding that “the freedom and responsibilities one gets in a start-up are unmatched.”
As for what excites them about working in a start-up, Vijay feels it’s not just about the product being built or the technologies leveraged but also the freedom, “no hierarchical menace, friendly atmosphere, excellent all-round career growth and no dress code”.
According to Santhosh, working in a start-up feels similar to working on academic projects with friends in a college. “It feels good to work in a small team of highly ambitious and motivated people where everyone is pulling each other up,” he says.
Sharath Coorg
QVC Realty
“I didn’t take up any job offers on campus,” admits Sharath Coorg. “With investment banks and consulting firms doling out huge pay checks, the pressure to settle down with a job was immense. But in 2006, the setting seemed perfect to dream about starting a business.”
Coorg, who opted out of placements at IIM Ahmedabad, had worked for a couple of years after finishing his B Tech course at IIT Chennai. During his IIM-A stint, he enrolled for a course called LEM (Laboratory for Entrepreneurial Motivation) conducted by Prof Sunil Handa and considers this as a great motivating factor in his considering entrepreneurship as a possible career. After some research, he chose real estate as an area of focus because he felt the largely unorganised real estate business could do with some professionalism. He was exploring the idea of starting an FDI venture fund to invest in real estate projects, but ended up joining QVC Realty started by serial entrepreneur Prakash Gurbaxani and funded by IL&FS. Coorg feels there is a “romantic” side to entrepreneurship.
“There is an image of an entrepreneur who works out of a garage, struggles and faces a lot of hardship, but eventually overcomes all odds to make it big. In college, this image of an entrepreneur is what attracts most young people,” feels Coorg, who thinks the India of tomorrow is built on entrepreneurship. Like many others, he says failure is no longer a bad word. “As in the US, failure is being seen more as a result of having tried and hence the learning from the failure is considered an asset for future ventures,” says Coorg.
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