Entrepreneurs are getting younger, and in hordes

They quit cushy jobs, carry bundles of risks to chase the pot of gold like never before

MUMBAI: Rohit George chucked up his job with an investment banking outfit in Mumbai early this year to pursue his dream - to do his own thing.

At 26, George is already the director of a company, Greenbox Realty, that he founded with four other partners. What do they do? Well, they plan to build “Greenboxes” or sizeable retail spaces that would help large format retail players tide over their problems of accessing quality real estate.

“I realised that if I wanted to create wealth, I needed to work for myself and not for anyone else,” said George.

He represents a growing breed of youngsters who not only have the passion, but also the right credentials to take the plunge and give wings to their aspirations and ideas.

After an undergraduate degree from St Stephen’s College, he did his MBA from the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, and then worked for a year at Avendus Advisors in Mumbai, advising real estate clients on how to raise funds.

George was also fortunate in finding like-minded partners. Raman Mangalorkar, who headed AT Kearney’s consumer and retail practice for Asia till very recently is Greenbox’s chairman and managing director.

“The rationale for my move back to India (from Chicago) two years ago was to start something on my own. India, as you know, is where everything’s happening,” said Mangalorkar.

During the course of his work here, he found that retailers faced three constraining factors: unavailability of quality real estate, ridiculously high cost if it was available, and the failure of real estate developers to understand the retail business.

It’s this understanding that went behind the creation of Greenbox Realty.

Mangalorkar also managed to rope in two other enthusiastic colleagues from AT Kearney (Ram Kuppuswamy and Jagadish Nangineni) and a real estate developer (Sriram Chitturi) as directors. The average age of all five directors: 30.

Call it drive, opportunities, pedigree or confidence. The young guns are raring to go.

Another group of four bright youths, with formidable B-school tags attached on them, have also embarked on a refreshing journey.

Anurag Kedia, Saurabh Garg (IIM Ahmedabad), Sunil Rao (SP Jain) and Arnab Mitra (IIM Calcutta) passed out of their respective institutions in 2004, but in two years, they were fed up of their corporate jobs.

They’re now rolling out Four Fountains, a chain of spas that will offer the luxuries of any five-star spa at less than half the cost.

“It was some amount of frustration with our jobs and a lot of ambition that sent us down this path,” said Kedia, who worked with KPMG before he decided to move out 10 months ago. The other three worked with Hindustan Unilever.

“All of us had great exposure, there was a lot of learning happening, but we also realised that much more could be achieved if stepped out of our corporate world comfort,” said Kedia.

For the past many months, the group brainstormed on various ideas and concepts, which they thought would be scaleable, till they finally hit upon spas.

Discounted supermarkets for rural India, ice-cream parlours like Gelato which have a national presence, bringing theatre to the masses, were among the 30-40 ideas that were considered and discarded.

The first two spas will open in Pune in the next few weeks, offering both world and Indian therapies at a price band of Rs 399-799. “Usually, a spa offers its services at around 2,000-4,000, which is the mould we want to break,” said Kedia.

So how do these youngsters fund their ambitions? “We are putting in our own money and we also have investors who are interested in working with us on a project-by-project basis,” said Mangalorkar of Greenbox Realty. 

Kedia of Four Fountains, meanwhile, has not thought of what would happen if his venture fails. “We have put everything we have into this, and with the type of value we’re offering through this model, there’s no way it will fail. Of course, there will be things to improve upon, but we’re talking scaleability here and we’ll be in Mumbai in a matter of months,” he said.

Akhilesh Tilotia of PARK Financial Advisors, a financial planning and advisory firm, founded by him and three of his batchmates from IIM-Ahmedabad a year ago, may have a word of advice for those wanting to throw up cushy jobs to pursue their entrepreneurial aspirations.

“These days, there is a glamour quotient attached to being an entrepreneur. So you should clearly understand what you are getting into, and plan out your strategy in great detail. If you don’t, a lot of your assumptions will start getting questioned when you actually start out,” said Tilotia, who gave up a job at Kotak Securities to start PARK.

For those who do not have the enough capital to put into a business, but still want to play entrepreneur, Tilotia advises less capital-intensive, knowledge and service economy businesses.