Are you thinking about venturing into Entrepreneurship and start your own Business Venture, here is preliminary list of questions which one needs to answer and get clarified.
Step 1 - Checking Time Availability & Commitment to Start-up
1. Are you currently working Full Time or Part-Time ?
2. Are you looking to start a Business Full-Time or Part-Time ?
3. If you are working Full-Time, do you have enough time to put effort & time on the Business Venture?
4. Are you committed enough to take the additional workload & new challenges that comes with starting a Venture (more working hours, investing money upfront, no salary or no sales for initial few months , making mistakes on the way, learning various nuances of running a business like concepting, administration, people management, purchasing, marketing, accounting, selling etc ).. in the early days one has to be prepared to do all the necessary work themselves )
Step 2 – Choosing Product/Service & Identifying Customer/End User
Now that you have analysed you time availability for starting a Business, lets go to the next step of questions.
1. What is your idea of Business Venture – Product or Service? find out what Exactly you want to Sell as a product or service?
a. Product – means physically manufacturing something and selling or buying from elsewhere and selling - if you are buying from elsewhere – then who will be your supplier? If you manufacturing it or hand making ( like a hobby) – then do you have the infrastructure and setup to do so?
b. Service – can be any consulting or technical support or some kind of service assistance like accounting, data entry, drafting, photo shopping, content writing , design, analysis, analytics, data mining etc.
2. Either product or service –Who will be target user of the product or Service you have chosen ? Will it be an individual end consumer or will it be a small business unit or medium size business unit or large corporate?
Step 3 - Find out marketing & sales channels
Now that you have chosen a product & Service now we need to decide how you will market it or brand your product/service? What medium/channel to use to reach the Target Customer/End User.
1. How will you market your product? Will it be your own e-commerce website or online sites like Amazon or Flipkart or Indiamart or Tradeindia or JustDial or Sulekha or any other affliation sites or your own physical retail store or distribute thro other physical stores or Social Media Shopping etc.?
2. How will you market your Service? Will it be thro your own website or e-commerce sites like JustDial, Sulekha, Indiamart, Tradeindia or network through friends, contacts etc?
Step 4 – Cost Analysis and Business Feasibility Study
Now you have decided the product/service and mode of marketing/sales next is to plan the investment required
1. If you are selling product What will be the cost of either Manufacturing or Cost of Distribution , cost of having an office or godown , cost of people for support functions
2. If it a Service then what is the cost of office space/people etc
3. What will be the total marketing cost involved ? Website Costs, Advertisments, Digital Ads, Banners etc
4. Find out the total investment required to setup the business, using assumptions for sales margins & expenses what will be the profit or loss for a 3-5 year horizon
5. This picture will give you rough information on the overall business feasibility and how to finetune further or change course depending on the outcome
Step 5- Securing Funds based on the Feasibility Study
1. Once the feasibility study is done next step is to determine how will your secure funs for the business . is it own funds, funds frm family, friends or Banks or Unsecured Loans or Angel fund etc
2. If you are getting funds from external sources keep in mind you will have to shell out interests for the funds which needs to be factored into the Profit Loss Analysis.
Step 6 – Startup and setting up the Organization
Once the Initial Feasiblity Studies are done, fund sources are identified then it is the time you can start your business and then follow through the actions that will be needed as your initial plan or based on the challenges & issues that you will face during the course of the business and accordingly steer the ship.
Depending the need you can either start a Proprietorship ( if it just one person ) or Private Limited or One-Person Company or Partnership ( if you have multiple partners ) or LLP- Limited Liability Partnership. Easy Organization has its own merits & demerits. That can be decided with the help of an Auditor at that time
Remember - THE IDEA IS NOT TO OVERPLAN – THEN YOU WILL NEVER START. It is important to have a rough idea, conviction and come what-may attitude to make it work. You can fix the small shortcomings during the Journey. And if you fail or struggle that’s Ok, can learn from it and restart or pivot. It’s the journey that matters.
Disclaimers – this is a very basic level guidance based on my experience of starting my venture. This is how I went about on my on venture, made some mistakes, fixed them along the way, found new areas & added them and it is a continuous learning journey.
Good Luck
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