Entrepreneurship - Success beyond Struggle

This starts with a story of a man who hailed from a small village of Lower Assam, graduated from B. Baruah College, Guwahati during the early 80’s decade. He had lucrative options of numerous Government jobs that would have earned him a stable salary and reputation. Instead of enjoying about his success of graduation with flying colours he was in deep thoughts. He thought a lot, whether he should walk the same path that everyone did choose or he should try the road that was less chosen by. Finally his far sightedness showed him success in the second path and he chose the road not taken by all. Instead of knocking doors for jobs he chose to open the door for few jobs. He opened registered Rice & Wheat milling machine and named it after his grandmother whom he lost at a very tender age (M/s Pateshwari Rice Mills), the first of its kind in the entire are

a. His education helped him to gather information about the latest equipment’s then and he got them from Ambala. He created daily waged and monthly salaried jobs for many of the local youths as labours. They also gathered skills working with the milling instruments. While his friends were enjoying bank jobs and other government jobs, he also had to spend nights waking up monitoring the productivity during seasonal months. He thought of diversification. He wanted to open more doors for employment. He approached a local financer and got into the transport business. The first few initial months wasn’t any bed of roses for him, he had to work day and night wondering about consignments of loading and unloading. His hard work soon got paid and he got a few trucks. He could find happiness in his effort when he saw so many youths happily employed under his dream. Slowly he surrendered from the transport business and started as a small railway contractor in Guwahati. Today he controls business at two places – the rice mill at his native and small & medium level contracts at Guwahati. The man is Mr. Pradip Kumar Talukdar. I am lucky enough to be born to him as his only child.

My dad has been the biggest inspiration of entrepreneurship for me. His farsightedness has let him earn a livelihood for him as well as his employees and reputation. He has also been honoured with many social responsibilities and awards. He has been the President of his village school committee for nearly two decades and the secretary of Rangia Commercial Transport Committee for a decade.

Entrepreneurship is indeed a good step for today’s youth. Instead of running behind jobs it is better to create a few jobs. Even the new Government has declared huge money for entrepreneurship development. Being an entrepreneur is a matter of self-esteem and pride. All it needs is a dare factor. It needs the guts to look beyond the going trend. Even public and private banks today have made loan schemes easy for entrepreneurs. An entrepreneur needs some basic traits within himself. Those include the ability to think beyond obvious, farsightedness, the guts to withstand a loss, the plan for a better tomorrow, the stamina to work day and night, managerial skills, the mind-set to think big, the capacity for right investment and finally basic mathematics to count the money that he has earned. Entrepreneurship is a better option that inactivity.