How I became an Entrepreneur : The Incubation : Part 1

All human beings are entrepreneurs. When we were in caves, we were self-employed.... finding our food and feeding ourselves. That's where human history began. As civilizations came, we suppressed it. 

-Muhammad Yunus, Nobel peace prize winner and microfinance pioneer.

Everyone of us are born entrepreneurs. As the quote goes, "Necessity is the mother of every invention", in the same way, we have been entrepreneurs day in and day out. At this moment, "this moment", as you read through my article here, you are an entrepreneur. You and me are investing our time to see what new you can learn from this piece of writing.

2000 AD, I finished my class 8 and was about to enter my summer vacation. I was part of a charity trust that use to run an old age home. Charity means, collecting money from individuals. This was the common norm back in those days when I was in school. So, all that we as school students had to do was go from door to door and collect money from 20 people. Once the 20 rows sheet are done, we can go ahead and get one more or we can enjoy our summer holidays. (A typical British style christian missionary which was attached to our Christian school).

I heard it from my family members that it is common for school and college going students to work past time in grocery stores, ice cream parlours, McDonalds and other such places during their summer vacations so that they know about the value of money and how to earn money for living.

That's it! I found an idea to become an entrepreneur! I bought a book that has home made remedies for few of the things that we need everyday at home. I went through the book taking help from my mom a few times and decided on making "Washing powder" at home. Washing powder from big MNCs were not really bought by Indians. So, I took help from my mom and my aunt - bought the raw materials from a general bazar at Secunderabad, mixed them all at home and sold 1KG for 10 Indian rupees, when "Nirma washing powder", the household name of India, was sold at somewhere at 12-16 per KG.

Because, my mom had guided me so much in this, our quality of the product made sure we had return customers! At the end of the 2 months summer vacation, I made a good fortune. I donated a piece of my fortune to the trust and the rest I have clubbed it with my father's savings to buy myself a new bicycle.

I became an entrepreneur at the age of 12! in the year 2000, when Y2K scared the world and many of the youth in west found new jobs in IT and many of the investors lost their fortunes to it.