Entrepreneurship and its role in the economy
Entrepreneurship is a very wide terminology that has been used a lot nowadays. An entrepreneur is a person who has a willingness to develop, organize and manage and start a new business without any fear. It refers to a person who can take the risk without thinking about profits. He is called as an innovator as with the help of brainstorming, he tries to find out good and innovative ideas that he can apply in his business. Entrepreneurs play an important role in the economy of the country as they have skills and talent to develop new ideas and take initiative to apply those ideas in real life scenarios. It is necessary to develop and bring new ideas to the market for the growth of the economy. Everyone knows the name of Flipkart today and Sachin Bansal is the man behind that organization. He has a great mind and he applied the same to his new business (Wahee, & Bhardwaj, 2014).
An entrepreneur is a person who provides goods or services by combining land, labor, and capital. They create plans for business and then hire labor, acquire different resources and finances and provide leadership and management for the same. (Mawere, 2018) There are various challenges which are found in the entrepreneurship like to obtain finances, hire talented human resources and to overcome bureaucracy (Agarwal, 2014).
India has started online shopping a lot and Flipkart is one of the most amazing destinations for the same. The person who started this was one of the first people who started online shopping website in India is Sachin Bansal. He is an IIT graduate and a reputed businessman who has created a revolution in internet shopping. He is born at brought up in Chandigarh and did his software engineering from IIT Delhi. He has worked in Amazon as a senior software engineer. Afterward he and his colleague Binny Bansal left Amazon to start their own company ‘Flipkart’ He has the vision to take the business by using proper cyber computing system gave the chance to the people in India to do online shopping (Hughes, 2014)
He with his team started their website to run the online business. They started their website in October 2007, with two lakhs investment each, that they got from their family. In the starting, the only sold books. That time software industry was on the boom but that online shopping culture was not developed. People were not so much open to browsing products and shop them online. But they have created trust as well as a new culture of checking goods online and buy them. They faced all the challenges related to their business line. Sachin Bansal is an entrepreneur as he took the risk and left a well-paid job to start something on his own (Amudha, 2013). He was a type of entrepreneur who wants to do something at the highest level of perfection and start something new that involves a lot of risks. There is much strength that made him successful. He was very clear in his mind that what he wants to do and he has given a lot of flexibility to his employees so that they can easily come up with new innovative ideas. One of the major reasons for their success was to focus on the delivery of the products. They thoughts that every customer wants to get their product delivered as soon as possible and they can get an advantage if they can do so. They have launched their own supply chain management to deliver products in a faster way. Flipkart was the first to provide Cash on Delivery option in India. Their priceless efforts made them successful. Sachin was so much clear about the goals and objectives and he knows where he needs to focus to satisfy the needs of the customers. Increasing customer base was the things that have motivated him always and create an enthusiasm within him to work more hard.
Sachin Bansal and the birth of Flipkart
There are some basic things that he believed on or these are the necessary rules for him-
- Raise funds when available- According to him, it is important for an entrepreneur to raise fund whenever they are available rather than to wait for a suitable situation. It can be the reason for the success and failure of a business.
- Concentrate on good times- He believes in focusing on the business more when it’s going well. According to him, an entrepreneur should always focus on capital issues and the quality of the business. He always thought that improvements should take place whenever things are really good. He follows a mantra ‘Customer is King’. He says that an entrepreneur should never get emotionally attached to solutions; he should get emotionally attached to the problem.”
- Main focus aspects- According to him, for an entrepreneur, the main focus should be on team building and the conditions of the market. There are a lot of changes in a business life cycle so there should be a continuous focus on the market opportunities and grab them when there is a crucial time (Wahee, & Bhardwaj, (2014).
- Importance of boundaries- Some people said that there are no boundaries for entrepreneurs but according to Sachin, it is good to have some boundaries as it helps a new startup from committing big mistakes (Koteswari, & Savitha, 2013).
- Take criticism in a positive way- Flipkart faced many issues regarding Big Billion day in 2014 due to server issues and the website was not working properly. In that situation, the company came out of it and focused on the improvements. Afterward, they took some necessary steps to not to face the same problem in future. Sachin believes that criticism and feedbacks are good for every organization as it gives an opportunity to become better.
- Keep your personal and professional life separate- There are a lot of things to do in the life of an Entrepreneur like meeting investors, decision making, and management. He accomplished this entire requirement with managing his personal like too in the best way. He has a son and a well family. He is a healthy human being and loves his family a lot.
- Keep an eye on the competitors- Every entrepreneurship organization focuses on its objectives but it is necessary to keep an eye on the competitors also as it can teach many things that we are doing wrong or we can learn a better way of doing things by that. Sachin Bansal uses to shop from all the other E-Commerce sites and grasp all the positive points of the same and sends to his team for improvements.
- Think Big- Sachin Bansal believes in thinking big and having the biggest dreams. He always dreamt of success and big achievements and he got the same. Big thinking creates a lot of differences in life.
Sachin always considered teamwork as an important thing in the success of the organization. He observed that if all the employees could work in a team then they could easily mitigate the issue and problems which they would face while doing individual work. The collective efforts of team members will also increase the overall output and create the synergy in the business. He believes in working in a team and gives equal importance to each team member. (Mawere, 2018) According to him, the importance of teamwork is (Jha, 2016)
- The efficiency of teamwork- When a teamwork for a specific purpose then its automatically increases the efficiency of the team as they start working faster. It also develops new skills in employees. Teamwork helps an organization to complete the work in the best possible way.
- Self- Monitor- When a single person is responsible to do a task then sometimes he gets bored and start working slowly but if there are numerous people who have the responsibility to accomplish a task then they basically depend upon the quality of the work done by other employees. When one employee’s performance takes a slow pace then automatically other employees start improving them by applying appropriate knowledge and skills.(Marletto, 2012)
- Innovation- According to Sachin, for a single problem, there are so many solutions. When a person works individually then he can find out the best possible solution by applying his knowledge only but when a group of people works together then knowledge of many people applies to a single problem. This is the reason that so many innovative solutions can be generated by working in a team. (Wilcox and Beckstrand, n.d.)
- Learning perspective- When people work in a team, they come up with the new things and the new set of knowledge. In organizations, where people work in a team, it has been observed that they are more knowledgeable in comparison to the employees who do not work in a team. They can correct each other’s mistakes and performance will automatically get improved.
- Healthy competition- Teamwork results in a healthy competition as everyone wants to prove their performance and capabilities. When people work in a team, they always want to perform better than each other to get a good promotion.(Hjorth and Stewart, 2008) To promote a healthy competition, there should be a rewards and recognition policy that creates a motivation within the team.
- Strong work relations- Employees working in a team usually creates a good bond with each other as when they succeed in a common goal then the bond turns into a good friendship. It is the strength for an organization if employees are friends with each other and they trust each other. They will support and co-operate each other at the time of need. (Schoonhoven and Romanelli, 2001)
There are some basic features of entrepreneurship which needs to be engraved by the persons while running the business. Sachin Bansal has explained the same with some of his viewpoints as follows-
- An economic activity- Entrepreneurship is an important activity as it involves activities related to optimum utilization of resources in order to create value or money. (Coates, 2001) The business environment is so dynamic so it is important to perform economic activities at the same pace.
- It consists of innovation- An entrepreneur needs to do brainstorming and continuously find out new ideas. They always motivate their employees to find out new innovative business models and compare them to the existing one. This makes them unable to find out the most effective and efficient way to grow. (Alvarez, Agarwal and Sorenson, 2005)
- The potential for profit- Profit refer to the return or basically the compensation that an entrepreneur gets out of all the efforts and taking a risk. It can be earned by converting an idea into the real business venture. Without the profit motive, an entrepreneur never wants to spend so much of time (Banerjee, 2013).
- Risk-taking- Risk taking is a major part of entrepreneurship. No business venture can run without taking risks. New ideas are always risky as no one knows the success of the same after the applicability of ideas in real life situations. There can be the positive or negative result of the new ideas and no one can predict the same. There is always a requirement of being patient. The risk is equal to return as we all know; there are no returns without risk-taking.
After assessing these features, it is inferred that if the entrepreneur fails to have these intents then he will also fail to run his business. He needs to assess all the internal and external factors before starting of new business such as capital, human resources and business process (Gokhale, 2016).
Sachin has used networking in his business as he needs some sellers to rely upon him and sell their products via Flipkart. He approached many business houses and creates trust in their minds for Flipkart (Hisrich, Peters and Shepherd, 2017). The trust he had for his employees was the pioneer of his success. He was accompanied by the best supporting team who were always there to take care of all the issues starting from the minor cases to major cases.
With the help of this study, I have learned a lot about entrepreneurship as it is an important part of the economy of the country. Entrepreneurs play an important role in the growth of the economy. They develop new ideas, take risks, and apply those ideas to the real-life situations. They innovate and they succeed. Not everybody has the same courage to take risks and start a new and innovative business venture. Some people have fear not to take risks and they are the ones who just spoil their dreams. Entrepreneurship is really a broad term. It involves many things. (Hughes, 2014) Sachin Bansal has left a really good job just because he wants to turn all his thinking, dreams and imaginations into real plans. (Fernie, 2005) He took really a big risk but he was always confident enough about his plan and him always and trust in himself. He thought out of the box and started different approaches to attract the customers in India as India was not very much used to online shopping websites. He started cash on delivery option that seems to be a very flexible way of shopping for households. Flipkart has created a good image in the eyes of customers. (Royer, 2013) People started shopping from the same without any hesitation. Today it is one of the reputed online shopping websites. Now, everyone knows Sachin Bansal and his great achievements. People can learn a lot from him how his courage made him a big successful man. I have learned two main important things after reading his career. I came to realized that if a person wants to achieve something then firstly he to see the vision and with the help of team he could covert that vision into reality. Sachin Bansal was the person who trusted himself and his friend to achieve extraordinary results. He broke through the shell again and again whenever he had to confront the impossible issues and problems in his life. He came with the new ideas and encountered all the possible problems to run his business effectively (Koteswari, & Savitha, 2013).
Strengths that led to Sachin Bansal’s success
Conclusion
Entrepreneurship really plays an important role in the economic development. They are the people who directly contribute to the economy of the country. They develop new ideas with their skills and knowledge and bring the same to the market. There are many big Entrepreneurs who are really doing well just because they took the risk without thinking about the profits and fear. It is not so easy to invest money in a new idea without fear but people like Sachin Bansal use their courage to take such initiatives and now they are the owners of big companies. He has also faced many challenges but ultimately he is successful and his business is growing at a good pace. Entrepreneurship can help a person to learn so many things that are very important to grow in life or get success. It also makes a person learn that how to take risks in life and learn a lot from it.
References
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