The presentation lays down the various charms of being an entrepreneur and the difference between working in a quintessential job and being self employed. This presentation is an intellectual property of Entrepreneurship Training and Rural Development Initiatives (ETRDI) and myself along with three of my colleagues.

1. CHARMS OF BEING AN

2. DEFINITION
An individual who, rather than working as an employee, runs a small business and assumes
all the risk and reward of a given business venture, idea, or good or service offered for sale.
The entrepreneur is commonly seen as a business leader and innovator of new ideas and
business processes.
Entrepreneurs play a key role in any economy. These are the people who have the skills and
initiative necessary to take good new ideas to market and make the right decisions to make
the idea profitable. The reward for the risks taken is the potential economic profits the
entrepreneur could earn.

3. 5 Skills To Be a Successful Entrepreneur
• Time Management Skills
• Self-motivation Skills
• Administration Skills
• Financial Know-how
• Sales And Marketing Skills

4. Independence
• One of the reasons for being an entrepreneur is that you get to work for yourself rather than
working for someone else
• Freedom to try new things
• You can schedule day’s proceedings according to your schedule

5. Wealth
• Not tied down to fixed income
• By working hard and smart, you can reward yourself with more money
• More money can help you in expanding your business in diverse areas

6. Relationship building
• Helps in meeting new people and travel to new places
• Helps to partner with other business owners
• Helps to increase knowledge about outside world

7. Control
• You are the owner of your company
• You have the rights to take control over decisions
• Freedom, flexibility and social responsibility drives people to work hard

8. Satisfaction
• Your service or product can benefit many customers
• Knowing that your work touches the lives of many other human beings gives a wonderful feeling
at the end of the day

9. Continuous Improvement
• To improve your product, service you need to continuously improve on what you know and how
you do things
• You will learn new things
• Past business decisions can help in improving future strategy decisions

10. Work from home
• Work from home eliminates hours of commuting
• Time saved can be utilized in doing something valuable for the company
• Freedom to dress in whatever way one feels comfortable in

11. Differences between wage employment and self
employment
Basis of Difference Wage Employment Self Employment
Nature Self-Saturation Self-Actualization
Scope Limited Unlimited
Tendency Routine or Status-Quo Imaginative, Creative or
Innovative
Earning Fixed Generating/Flexible
Satisfaction Through compliance of
rules/Procedures
Through converting one’s
creativity to reality
Status Employee Employer

12. Major charms of being an entrepreneur
Opportunity to create one’s own destiny
• Owning a business provides entrepreneurs both the independence and opportunity to do and
achieve what is important to them
• Entrepreneurs know that they are the driving forces behind the success of their business
• They believe in Swami Vivekananda’s dictum: “You are the creator of your own destiny”

13. Opportunity to make a difference
• Entrepreneurs start their business because they see
an opportunity before them to make a dent and
difference in the cause that is important to them
• It may be providing low-cost houses to the middle-
class families or establishing a recycling programme
to preserve the earth’s limited resources
• Example: Mr. Deepak S. Parikh (pic), CEO of Housing
Development and Financing Corporation Limited
(HDFC)

14. Opportunity to reach one’s full potential
• Owning a business gives entrepreneurs a sense of
empowerment to do what they can
• In his ‘Need Hierarchy Theory of Motivation,’ Abraham Maslow
termed it ‘Self-Actualization’
• Doing business becomes entrepreneurs’ play. It also becomes
an instrument for entrepreneur’s self-expression and self-
actualization
• Example: N. R. Narayana Murthy who left the job of a System
Programmer in the prestigious Indian Institute of Management,
Ahmedabad to start his own business with three other
partners, says, “Starting my own business was a sort of spiritual
awakening. I found out what was important to me-being follow
my own interests and harness it to its fullest extent possible”

15. Opportunity to reap impressive profits
• Industrial surveys show that the entrepreneurs earn much
more income than if they work for others, say some
organization
• Michael Dell, the owner-entrepreneur of Dell Computer
Corporation is one such example of richness reaching the list
of the wealthiest people in the United States. (Late) Dhiru
Bhai Ambani and N. R. Narayana Murthy, among others, are
such examples of rich entrepreneurs in India

16. Opportunity to contribute to the society
• Entrepreneurs by running their businesses in an honest and transparent manner and serving the
customers faithfully earn recognition and respect in their communities
• They contribute to the well being of the society as well by providing jobs to unemployed, utilizing idle
resources, reducing differences in the levels of development of different regions, and producing and
providing goods and services to the people in the society
• The well-known entrepreneur N. R. Narayana Murthy started Infosys Foundation to render services in the
area of education and health care. It’s Chairperson, Sudha Murty, the wife of Narayana Murthy says: “We
have a responsibility to give back to the society. Wealth is only a means to an end and we are just
trustees of that wealth.”

17. Opportunity to do what one enjoys
• Entrepreneurial history is replete with the instances that most of the entrepreneurs
entered into business because they have an interest in that line of work
• For such entrepreneurs, Harvey McKay’s dictum seems worth quoting: “Find a job doing
what you love, and you’ ill never has to work a day in your life. The journey rather than
the destination is the entrepreneur’s greatest reward.”

18. Shri Dhirubhai Ambani
Dhirubhai Ambani’s life inspires us to dream and dare.
He went to Mumbai with Rs 15,000/- to start his yarn
business and lived with his family of seven people in a
one-room tenement in Mumbai. He created Reliance
Industries Limited, i.e. the India’s biggest private
sector organization.
Somefamousentrepreneurs

19. Dr. Karsan Bhai Patel
The Nirma man was an ordinary factory chemist in Gujarat Mineral
Development Corporation (GMDC). He started conducting experiments
in his kitchen to offer an affordable detergent to rural harried
housewives struggling to balance to their monthly budgets.
His efforts finally yielded a pale, whitish-yellow detergent powder that
he named ‘Nirma’, after his then one-year old daughter ‘Niranjana.’
Today Nirma is one of the world’s biggest detergent brands. It sells over
8 lakh tones of detergent product annually. It holds 40% of the Indian
market with turnover of more than Rs 2,500/- crores.

20. Lakshmi Mittal
The son of a scrap dealer today is the world’s
largest producer of steel having plants in 15
countries including India producing 18 times
more steel than Tata Steel Co. Also his
companies make two and a half times entire
steel production of India.

21. Opportunities available for prospective
entrepreneurs
• Pottery
• Repair of mobile phones, electronic and electrical goods
• Hair Stylist
• Entertainment industry
• Taxi Driver
• Carpenter
• Mason
• Plumber
• Armed security guard
• Vehicle cleaner and washer

22. • Gardener
• Tractor Operator
• Paddy Farmer
• Stitcher (Leather goods and garments)
• Hand Embroiderer
• Beautician
• Rural tourism