Fall of Rupee: Are we headed towards another Entrepreneurship era?
When economists and socialists compare India’s economy to what it was before liberalization, leaving all the economic downturns aside, it brings a small smile to me. Not because I don’t want our nation to grow but to the fact that we are heading towards another Entrepreneurship era.
In any B-School jargon, they will teach you the types of entrepreneurship:
1. Opportunity Based
2. Need Based
When the economy was growing at 8% with a very positive investor sentiments it gave birth to companies like RedBus, FlipKart, MakemyTrip etc where the founders left there existing jobs as they saw an ‘opportunity’ in the market at a macro level.
Unfortunately, the same ‘opportunistic’ macro environment does not exist at present. The fall of the rupee has impacted the stability of Indian economy with stagnant job opportunities where many of the potential entrepreneurs who are not getting satisfying jobs will build their companies because of the need and not opportunity.
As I recall my readings and experiences of my father, During 90s or during liberalization period there were no Google, Microsoft to provide lavish jobs for a sustained living. Then what did the people do way back then to feed their families? They turned entrepreneurs!
In 90's many entrepreneurs saw the demand of various products within their geography, as logistics were still a hassle. This gave birth to several manufacturing units all across the nation serving within their geographical area. People might say that ‘liberalization’ in itself was an opportunity but actually it was the only way to run a family then. Setting up a manufacturing unit or trading house were the only options people had. The only jobs were railways and other PSUs unlike now. Speaking in management terms, they turned need-based entrepreneurs and it can be proved from the fact that most of the SMEs having revenue between 10Cr – 60 Cr were started during liberalization.
What happened now?
When you ask people what they want to do, they will either say an MNC job or Service sector based entrepreneurs but never will they say they want to setup a manufacturing unit or for that matter want to work in a manufacturing unit. Why is that so? Simple, there are better opportunities than manufacturing in market.
With stagnant jobs, fast firing in MNCs and unsatisfied jobs, the talented youth force of this nation is poised to become entrepreneurs as what we see, the talented people don’t get satisfy with mediocrity for much time and they are willing to risk to uplift their careers and that’s where entrepreneurship starts!
Entrepreneurship is need of the hour and it will happen. When our government becomes populist and forgets economic conditions, the FDI sinks as the industry loses faith in capability of the government resulting the world’s largest youth force to be unemployed. We have to create jobs for each other and this will happen because necessity is the mother of invention and feeding yourself and living a quality life are necessities of talented individuals but without a great job market their necessity will lead them to entrepreneurship! And this has already started. In Hyderabad, engineers are turning to salesmen or clerks! Some out of them will come out and take a leap ahead to entrepreneurship.
Indian economy might have moved back to ’91 like crisis according to economists but we the people have not! We live with technology, confidence and dignity. Lets get going and create a smarter and better India. It’s our chance to be part of an economic revolution.
Thank You
Siddharth Maheshwari, Alum – IIM B
NM Metal Works
CAclubindia
