The Entrepreneur

[We are happy to have Nagesh Banchhor as contributor of the inaugural article on our blog. Nagesh is founder and CEO of Pro C Education Pvt. Ltd.  Nagesh has done MBA from Indian Institute of Management(IIM), Kozhikode, Kerala, India. He worked with Torrent Pharma for an year at Ahmedabad befor starting his venture at Raipur, a small city and the capital of the state of Chhattisgarh in India. From one shared rented premises and a bunch of students in 2003, Pro C has grown to 18 centres across India. His is an interesting and rich experience of six years. In the present article, Naagesh has shared his views on the idea of entrepreneurship. ]

From Dead Mouse to Billion Dollar: Nagesh Banchhor 

Nagesh Banchhor, CEO, Pro C Education

This is something from Panchtantra (or Jatak Kathayen). A boy was told by a big merchant that ‘business can be started with the help of a dead mouse on the roadside also’. The boy took it to his heart and went on using that dead mouse to become one of the richest persons in the state. 

When I read this almost a decade back, I thought that like many other stories, this was just a story to be learnt as a kid, and to be forgotten as an adult. I, however, had many experiences during last couple of years that the basic difference between a businessman and entrepreneur is that a businessman requires capital to start his business, whereas an entrepreneur is a capital creator. The story actually was not about a businessman, but was about an entrepreneur who converted dead mouse into capital. 

Entrepreneurship, as defined and also understood rightly, is the ability to spot the opportunity in the environment (in the ‘market’ as in business parlance); and the grit to carry on the mission to exploit the opportunity before someone else bigger/taller/stronger moves in and takes the ‘lady’ (opportunity) away.  

There are basically two stages involved, i.e., that of identification, and that of exploitation. Both of them require different skills/character/psyche to be successful. And before someone gets a structure in his mind, let me tell you, they do not occur in sequence. 

I took plunge in the world of entrepreneurship in May 2003 when I started off with an MBA coaching centre in Raipur (Chhattisgarh, India). This grew on to become an 18 centre strong institution by 2008. Running an MBA institution from a low-key place such as Raipur wasn’t an easy task. People will have reservation about the quality of a brand which comes not from one of the six metros of India. However it required grit and support from some fantastic individuals from family and within the organization, which has helped me in getting over the psychological barrier within minds of people across the nation, and we stand tall with an institution, capable of targeting 50+ centers in next one year. 

The strength of will and ability to toil are the factors essential for success like this. For an entrepreneur, they are essential like salt is for food. 

These are not the skill-sets, however, which can take an organization to the heights of being the best in the country or the world. There is more than hard-work that is needed for achieving such heights. The key, according to my experiences, is the ability to spot the opportunity and act fast. Mind you, this is not going to be an easy task, and not everyone is capable of doing that. There are one kind of people who accidentally strike the jackpot (like Sabeer Bhatia did), and there are another kind which is capable of scanning the environment continuously and identifying the opportunity (one is required to spend significant amount of time into a system). I believe we can be lucky to be the former type, but aspire to become the latter type. 

Before I sum up with this article, I would like to emphasize that this article is purely based on experience gathered over my 6 years of entrepreneurship experience, and not based on any research. The experience has its limitation in a sense; they are bounded by time and space, and thus can be different for different individuals. It can only be complete, if complimented by many more such experiences. I hope, we will have an opportunity to see many more variants of experiences on this blog in the days to come.

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[This is what Nagesh had to say about our blog:

"Noble. If anything can be learnt about entrepreneurship, it is experiences. I hope this initiative by Hitendra and Kapil will create a forum all the entrepreneur-aspirants would like to visit & read regularly and entrepreneur-baptized would love to contribute regularly. My warm wishes to the blog." ]