Daring to Win

Home furnishing and furniture firm Wakefit’s founder Chaitanya Ramalingegowda’s first tryst with entrepreneurship was at the age of 16 when he started a spoken English class at his aunt’s garage in Mysore. Though the venture had students, he decided to fold it up and focus on studies. After engineering, he worked with two IT firms and then studied MBA at ISB Hyderabad. For a brief period, he worked with Deloitte in the U.S. and that’s when the entrepreneurial bug bit him again. “I was being paid to give advice to a global CEO who was listening to a 29 year old, because I had something to say based on logic, data and analysis. I began to wonder why I couldn’t use all that logic, data and analysis to start my own consumer-facing business,” explains Ramalingegowda.

He gave entrepreneurship a second shot in 2011 at the age of 30. Over the next few years, he launched two start-ups, but both failed. Left with just ₹800 in his bank account after the closure of his second venture, he had no option but to go back to a full-time job. It was then that he met Ankit Garg, the co-founder of Wakefit. “When the idea of Wakefit came about, we decided to try again. There was a stubborn streak in me to try one more time.” There has been no looking back since. Wakefit currently is a ₹416-crore profitable enterprise.

As IIM-A’s Karna points out, the sweet-spot for most B-school grads to embrace entrepreneurship is after acquiring professional experience of at least 3-7 years. By that time they are mostly in the age-bracket of 27-30, done with their educational loans, and are all set to jump into the entrepreneurship bandwagon.

Manish Taneja, Rahul Dash and Suyash Katyayani, co-founders of online beauty and personal care marketplace, Purplle.com, were 27 and 26 year olds when they launched their venture. By then Taneja had worked with Avendus and Fidelity, and Dash with Tata Administrative Services. “I got an opportunity to set up Tata Sampann’s supply chain in Pondicherry and also got a chance to participate in a lot of its other 0-1-year-old businesses. In fact, the TAS experience drove me to entrepreneurship,” says Dash.

Katyayani is, however, the classic engineer-turned-entrepreneur, who stepped into the world of entrepreneurship within months of his professional role at telecom firm OnMobile. “The year I joined was their IPO year. It was a company incubated out of Infosys and within eight years the founders had brought it from a start-up stage to IPO. I could see young people getting rich, which was inspiring. Also, I was in Bengaluru and every café you went to would have a venture capitalist conversation happening.” By the time Katyayani joined Purplle as CTO and co-founder, he was a serial entrepreneur who had launched and shut down three start-ups.

Once you are an entrepreneur, the mindset changes from being risk-averse to having an insatiable risk appetite. “Today, it is socially acceptable to fail, and that is making all the difference,” says Rohit Bhayana, founder, Lumis Partners. “If they fail they can go and work in a firm or join another start-up. An ecosystem of entrepreneurship is getting created and this will get accelerated,” he adds.

Retention Tool

Even legacy companies such as Unilever, ITC, L’Oréal and Marico are creating entrepreneurial opportunities for employees as a retention tool. Hindustan Unilever has a concept of CCBTs (country category business teams), which straddle across home care, laundry, hair care, skin care, naturals and food and function like mini-boards within the company. Each CCBT is headed by a general manager (the average age of a GM is between 27 and 30 years), who has his/her team of finance, marketing, innovation, supply chain and digital professionals. The CCBTs are not just empowered to run their businesses like entrepreneurial ventures, they also have a say in mergers and acquisitions.

Singh of Fireside Ventures says large corporations are more than happy to hire a failed entrepreneur. “The person with his/her learnings is considered an asset,” he adds.

The writing on the wall is clear — while legacy companies will continue to flourish, millennial Indians will increasingly embrace entrepreneurship. Just as you will find in the journeys of Fortune India’s 40 under 40 winners for 2022.

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