Finding a business opportunity

[Dr.Jose Sebastian]

I have been running a small Not for Profit organisation promoting enterprise culture & entrepreneurship in Kerala, one of the Indian states. The economy of the state offers tremendous opportunity for starting business; a huge market for consumer goods, lot of money in the banks, several important raw materials and educated unemployed youth running to 4 million in a state with33 million people. Almost 80% of manufactured consumer goods come from other states and countries.

Yet, people are not coming forward to start businesses. Start up rates are very low. All are after education and government job. Entrepreneurship development programmes are there but it is for the educated unemployed graduates.Those who enter are copycats. They contribute to falling margins and stunted growth of enterprises. So many reasons are there from the communist past(Our state is one of the first in the world to elect a communist governemnt through ballot as early as 1957) to globalisation. To cut short the story, my problems are the following.

1. How to help people to look at business opportunities in a more rational and systematic way ?
2. Is there some competitions or incentive systems to make people look around for innovative productlines ?
3. What are the interventions which an non-profit like us can think of to address this problem ?

[Rob]

Jose,

You have a huge task on your hands. Essentially you are trying to create an entrepreneurial mindset for a whole country!

The key reason why most people start their own business is that they want to be their own boss, they don't want to answer to anyone. Yet in India the mindset is that they want to have a boss and presumable a 'job for life'. Working in government I guess brings prestige and being an entrepreneur smacks of desperation i.e. 'I'm running my own business because I couldn't get a job'.

The UK was very much like that and it has only been in recent years that running your own business was seen as 'cool'. The media coverage on the trials and tribulations of setting up and running your own business has help here with a raft of TV programes.

So the problem you have is the Indian culture is not inherently entrepreneurial by nature. Seems you are a one man crusade!

[nickyd]

Dr. Sebastian

You are extremely blessed in what you are trying to do but charity does begin at home. I am not sure of your financial circumstances but regardless of whether you can afford to be non charitable or not you need to change your introduction to all and sundry first and foremost. It is very honourable what you envisage doing but I do believe your approach should be more pro-active and that your charitable side should take on a "new look". Use the charitable side as an incentive to lure people. Make your initial introduction business like and to the point and offer a variety of courses, etc., as incentives/prizes etc. In this way you will be running a non profit organization without telling it the way it is. Your profit can then be used to promote and market your business. Let me know if there is anything more I can assist you with; my above observation is only based on the brief detail you have given in your post.

Blessings
Nickyd

[strategic]

I applaud what you are creating here. And with some support you can create the interest and committment for people to take on entrepreneurship as an answer to their own financial security.

I used to manage a not-for-profit organization that was funded to provide structured skills training for long-term-unemployed people.

So truck drivers would be taught computer skills, and stay-at-home-moms were taught retail sales skills etc. etc. for a job market already competetive with skilled workers looking for jobs.

So as someone who has ALWAYS got her Company operating one some level of entrepreneurship, even when I would be employed like in this case, I started training programs for 'enterprise skills' and had people trained in small business skills, marketing, sales, recordkeeping, and preparing a business plan etc. Then if they decided on a specific business/service enterprise, and prepared an appropriate business plan, and demonstrated the ability and enthusiasm to start up the business, we would provide an 'incubator' for them to start their business, free of charge.

It meant they had access to office space, photocopiers, computers, phone lines, all the things that cost most people the maximum of their set up budget at the start. This way they only really had to commit their Sweat and Effort into the business, along with minor specific requirements for their business eg: tools or printing/stationery.

And we provided the administration support, phone answering, helped them to manage the administative aspects of their business, and especially focused on showing them free or cheap marketing and sales and overhead costs.

We also arranged for a member of our business community to MENTOR the new business/partners.

So it cost us as the organisation, very little money, but the people had much more support, assistance, training, mentorship, than most of the well financed businesses that start and crash in normal business set up.

It is labour intensive, but you would be surprised how many business people and community organisations (eg: Toastmasters, JayCees etc) that will come and provide structured training for the classroom, as well as personal mentoring for individuals, all free of charge. We 'repaid' these volunteers at our quarterly 'graduations' where our enterprise attendees were also certified, by inviting the business mentors to come to the events, they were presented with small gifts, they were written up in our Annual Reports etc. as a token of our gratitude.

If you have a committed staff and BOM you will find most of the resources you need you already have right now. Then when people learn that you will actually provide them with a Business Incubator or virtual office support system with ongoing Mentoring and Marketing, they know you are also committing to support them long-term. We had accounting services and cleaning services for instance, that were very successful because they had very small cash investment to make with a SERVICE business.

You can do this.

- Helene Malmsio

[Dr.Jose Sebastian]

Nick,
I fully agree with you, i know the financial condition of this infant organisation. I shall be in touch with you.

jose

[Dr.Jose Sebastian]

Helene,
Thank you for extremely workable idea. We shall definitely give a try of it.

Jose Sebastian