Its roughly around 5 years since I decided to move away from Full Time Employment and focus on building my own enterprise. When I first set out I gave myself 5 years’ time to see how things are proceeding and is it possible to stay afloat and gain traction for the long run. Phase 1 was my first three years of Entrepreneurial Journey and I wrote down my experiences and learnings during Phase 1 in 2016 – Phase 2 Marks completion of 5 years and mostly covers the learning & experiences from years 4 & 5.
During the first 3 years it was mostly about trying out different things and kind of experiment with your ideas. During the 3 years there were many difficult times to even stay afloat and not sink and constant thoughts of quitting and getting back to a Full Time job.
During the last 2 years / Phase II it was mainly about sticking to the ideas /ventures which sounded meaningful and which had business traction & growth. In the last two years here are some core learnings
- Focus on the Task at Hand- During the end of Phase 1 I had two business ideas which worked and which had good demand and there were definite growth opportunities. Thanks to the good management & execution team I had, the last two years have been fruitful. The sales numbers have been pretty strong, added very good customers and solidified the existing business. It was more about process efficiency and sticking to the basis of business. ( Maximize Sales & Optimize Costs )
- Staying away from new experiments – As an entrepreneur there is always a continuous stream of ideas that you would want to experiment. But staying no to those ideas and keeping the focus on the existing ones have helped to grow the existing business. It does not mean that one should not completely move away from new projects & experiments, the keys is to handle allocation of priorities and bandwidth. Once a good team is built around the existing businesses the experiments can start again. Key is to Expand Vertically first and then horizontally
- Execution Team is as important as the Management Team – this is one area where I have been partly successful and partly not. Over the last 5 years I have had good management team/co-founders/partners who have been able to lead different aspects of the business. On the other hand the execution/admin/operations teams have not been able to be operate independently. They have to be constantly hand held or be trained or be watched for expensive mistakes. This actually puts a strain on the management bandwidth. That will be the focus for the next years – building a dependable second level team which then allows to think in newer streams of business opportunities.
- Managing Cash Flow and the constant need for Finance – Any MSME in India which is running on Self Funds and Bank Funds and supplying to B2B Companies in India is always struggling with Cash-Flow problems – Either Customer Payments are delayed or GST Refunds are delayed or the Operating Cycles are sometimes negative – i.e. pay advance and get money later – this puts a heavy pressure on the business operations. Managing Cash Flows and staying on top of the Funds needs focussed attention all the time. Remember every penny received late is compounded with the interests and hits the profit margin directly.
- Challenges & Business Impediments are from all directions- Mostly during the startup phases a company has challenges within the company or the related business environments. But it is not the case always. Most impediments are out of your control and there is hardly anything we can do about it. Companies have to find alternate ways to work around the issues which are arising from external factors and impacting. For ex – impacts of demonetization, impacts due to GST implementation, impacts from Vardah or the 2015 Floods for ex. These all have different impacts to the business in the short term. We have seen many of our friends get impacted severely and shut shop.
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