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Indian Grassroute Entrepreneur

Entrepreneurship is the new buzzword amongst Indian literati.

However, the truth is that Indian Entrepreneurship has had a very long history and has always been flourishing. The only difference now is that this is turning into corporatisation and scaling up with external financing.

There was a great 3 hour conversation I had with a 30 something entrepreneur who is into his 3rd business model. His acumen in keeping it low cost as well as taking risks has been phenomenal. As I have said earlier, Indians are one of the greatest value seekers and therefore, entrepreneurs also need to deliver extra value.

This gentleman told me

- he was 21 when he started
- Gold interested him so he got in jewellery retailing in a large (1m+ city)
- got fed up with customers spending a lot of time before buying and that even with aconversion rate of about 1.5% (mind you he rattled these statistics)
- he started a new business after disposing off his assets in the shop being a supplier to shops in the same town
- he created a USP with timely deliveries and "buy back" from trade within a week if not satisfied
- chose his model for servicing small village retailers spread across a neighbouring state (and he has not read Bottom of Pyramid)
- he covers 100 villages with more than 300 clients
- the car he drives delivers running economy and is a low cost one. He is quick to add that this also helps in his customers trusting him even more as he is seen as "not prifiteering" at their cost
- he drives about 5,000 Kms per month (all by himself)
- his car is loaded with goodies (low cost) from one of the villages he visits to be distributed amongst other villagers. This time he was carrying 20 boxes of a local made sweet speciality
- he keeps two mobile phones, one for personal use and other for business contacts and maintains a water tight difference
- has built business on purely "no credit" basis though it led to a slow start
- he has developed a vendor base across the country for their local specialities of jewellery. I gained my knowledge towards what kind of jewellery is best made and at lowest cost in which city of the country. He was quick to rattle of specialities from Rajkot, Surat, Mumbai, Kolkata, Amritsar, Hoshiarpur and Patna. Some places were a complete surprise to me.
- he recently moved to a new city as with the new highways coming up he found that he could serve better if he relocated to this new place.

And the result - his business has doubled in the last 6 months after shifting as customers passing by his city on highway pick up stuff from his place even when he is travelling.

So, he has made his wife of 4 years into another entrepreneur.

So much learning.

Kudos to Sunil.
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