Ideas and Good Planning Are the Key to a Good Business: Career Chat With Prajakt Raut

We caught up with Prajakt Raut for a very enlightening chat on entrepreneurship. Prajakt happens to be an Entrepreneur and Entrepreneur Evangelist, it is his passion to help people plan and start their businesses. He mentors start-ups on strategy, business model and monetization, fundraising and preparing the company for growth. Prajakt aims to instigate and assist 100,000 people to become entrepreneurs. Here is what the chat was about:

Women and Entrepreneurship:

According to Prajakt there are a lot less women in business. He says, “When I attend events and conferences for entrepreneurs, there are hardly any women in the room. We definitely need to have more women starting up which is possible and practical even when we consider the practicalities of life including family and home management.”

Prajakt has generally observed that women aim very small, despite being competent and having the ability to build larger ventures but they typically tend to think of starting very small and then see if it works. His view is that if one plan’s to start small, then they build their eco-system and resources for that small beginning and it is difficult to break out of that later. He further adds for becoming a large venture it is essential to plan at the beginning itself how one intends to scale.

Prajakt says, “I think one of the main reasons why women think of smaller goals is because they think that they may not be able to manage the complexity and time pressures of a larger venture. But that is not a valid fear, it is possible for every person to define what their time availability is, people need to plan their resources according to the time they can commit.”

Finding an idea that works:

It is good to start with a number of ideas but one has to decide their own criteria based on which they can make a decision and what is right. One of the key points to consider will be what one is most passionately interested in. Prajakt says, “Often many people make the mistake of selecting the idea that is most popular or what they see others do with some degree of success but unless they have an interest in that area, it is almost always not sustainable.” Every business will go through its phases of ups and downs and unless one is interested in what one does, they are unlikely to have the passion to push through tough times.

Converting an Idea into business:

Prajakt feels ideas are a good starting point but ideas by themselves mean nothing, a start-up is not about the idea, it is about the business built around that idea. One can have a great idea but not be able to build a good business around it, or the other way round one can have a mediocre idea or product and still be able to build a great business around it. Many brands are doing great not because of their ideas but because of the business strategy adopted by them.

To convert a good idea into a business one needs to keep in mind the few things including:

a)      What you are going to do

b)      How you are going to do it

c)      How will you make money

These may seem to be very simple questions, but when one gets into micro granularity of these, they will have a lot more questions and answering them in detail will give you an elaborate plan.

Taking an example Prajakt says, “One can decide to be a premium brand or a mid-market brand or a low-end of the market brand, all three options can be possibly lucrative businesses but  strategy, plan, positioning, branding brand personality, resources, supply chain, services, everything will be very different in each of these three options.”

Alternative investing formats:

Many businesses can get started with very limited capital that can be raised through small investments from family & friends. If a business needs Rs.10 lacs, one can raise that from taking Rs.1 lac from 10 friends or Rs.50k from 20 people or Rs.25k from 40. There are fairly evolved models and templates that one can use for shareholder agreements even in a family and friends round, when one gets funding from venture capital; they have their own share holder agreements.

Prajakt thinks it is possible to start without external funding; a lot of people can manage resources well enough and get started. These days the cost of starting up is far lower than what it used to be even a few years ago

If you have any more questions for Prajakt then drop in a mail at prajakt.raut@thehubforstartups.com.

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