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EP101x – Do Your Venture | Prof.

Suresh Bhagavatula
Week 1

The Principle of Equifinality


There's a concept called equifinality, which suggests that similar results may be achieved with
different initial conditions in many different ways. In our research and interactions with
entrepreneurs, we find similar openness and diversity of paths and the means to the end goal
of becoming an entrepreneur. While there are as many paths to entrepreneurship as they are
entrepreneurs, we find a few recurring paths.

The User Entrepreneur


Imagine yourself as a user of a particular product or a service. Let us take adventure sport.
Say you are an avid mountain biker, however, you realize that the product and services
available for mountain bikes in your region are just not up to the standard or the quality that
you would like. In some cases, these products and accessories may just not be available. We
found that many professionals who are passionate about something find themselves
frustrated with what is on offer and decide to take things into their own hands. These are
User Entrepreneurs.

Priyamvada: Hi, I'm Priyamvada here. So, thank you very much for introducing me. So as an
entrepreneur, I would just like to give you a quick recall about my college days where I started
pursuing nutrition as my higher graduation study. So that's when I realized that a nutrition
really plays an important role in everyone's life and that's the time when I had always been
wanting to pursue in the child nutrition space which is really not in India and been at practiced
much in India. So, once I was done with my post-graduation, I had an opportunity to work
with the child hospital for a couple of years so that is the time when I realize that nutrition
really plays an important role and how it’s been like addressed in the hospitals and what kind
of quality is required when it comes to nutrition in children because its most of the sensitive
areas to actually handle and deal with. So, after a couple of years, I moved out of the hospital
and I again entered into the child nutrition segment because my passion was towards that.
So that’s where I felt that you are trying to do something and then you want to justify in the
area of children. So that’s where I begin my journey but at that time entrepreneur and
entrepreneurship was never into my mind. Post which I saw that 'Okay, fine!' Something

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EP101x – Do Your Venture | Prof. Suresh Bhagavatula
Week 1

needs to be done, I mean some problem needs to solved in India, which really cannot happen
only from one end. So, it has to be a collaborative approach that needs to be taken care of.
So that is when I saw that 'Okay. Fine!' In the urban India population, I mean right now I'm a
mother of a toddler so where I put my son into the school and the parents had too many
concerns about my child eating pattern and then the child's eating habits and then my child's
growth pattern, so I wanted to solve this problem which existed in every pre-school so nook
and corner of the pre-schools and that is how I being my journey and I thought 'Okay. Fine!' I
just took a plunge as an women entrepreneur.

Take-A-Break Entrepreneur
This is someone who wants to become an entrepreneur but doesn't have a clue as to what
sort of venture she wants to start. So, this person decides to take a break and be away from
day-to-day hassles that one finds being a part of a regular job and spend some time just
reflecting on what is that big problem that they would like to solve.

Achitra Borgohain: ...And I think the first 6 months was one-person picking up waste from
individual homes and there is no other thing that I can tell you to make the story any more
interesting, but I also wanted to meet customers. I think the whole point was to meet
customers every day. Go and pick up waste and understand from them as to what is it they
are looking for? There is also the existing network also pays people to get the waste whatever
less it is, but there were emails from customers who would say "Thank god! That you are
here" Because people who just take it from my home break it right outside the apartment
gate and take away the metal tubes of a tube light because the glass is not useful but the
metal fetches him Rs. 5/- Rs.10/- and he would give me some penny or some money and then
you just vanish. I don't know what happens to that. So, by meeting those customers in the
first 6 months was the first thing that I wanted to do and since I was alone at that point of
time it was me going and picking up waste and understanding customers need. So, couple of
other things might have happened over that time is I started meeting some people who would
now say what is it that they are looking from a problem-solving point of view for a few that
you have to ensure that the waste is going to an authorized recycler and the fact that you are

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EP101x – Do Your Venture | Prof. Suresh Bhagavatula
Week 1

picking it up we should also know that it is so the point they were trying to connect is this
where does my ways to answer. Right? So when he say that we work with authorized
recyclers and that is what helped doing a back-end tie up with the recycler was something
that was useful in that period. If I would have just said that I am picking up waste from your
doorstep may not have worked really maybe one or two customers would have given it saying
that "Okay. Somebody is coming out doorstep and picking it up" But what we found out is
that people also wants to see where the waste ends up with. So I think those first six months
were complete learning for us.

Moonlighting Entrepreneur
This is someone who has some clarity as to what she would like to do. However, before
committing to an idea completely, she chooses to work on it part-time. Thus, they would
continue to work full-time in their regular jobs or other activities while tinkering over the idea,
seeking feedback on the same, and fine-tuning it during their spare time. Usually in the
evenings or over the weekends. Further, the full-time job serves as a source of either skill or
networks and the savings and if it will serve them well when she finally starts the venture.

Thanmaya: Brewing for a while so because the industries space that I have been working in.
So although, I've always work for technology companies. It actually took us 2 years to narrow
that big thing down. Right? Over many discussions. Over many conversations. Right? And in
terms of in preparing for that "Okay. Since at least for me, for my sake, I knew that okay. I
know that I want to be out and I want to start doing this." So I didn't start talking to my co-
founders about a year or later. Right? We were talking but we just talk of anything specific so
once we started to do that so in that time frame also I realize that technically I had lost a lot
of my technical abilities over the years because you are just in a different mode. Right? We
are in a corporate, you are in a job, you have people doing stuff for you. So you move away
from the fun side of it for some part you know the coding and everything or the technology
what is a new thing it is there. So I feel lost touch with that. So I started spending a lot of time
in earning those skills again. It is that's the way it was so that is what I spent the time. Right?
Trying to preparing myself. Right? So preparing myself, preparing a family, talking to people.

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EP101x – Do Your Venture | Prof. Suresh Bhagavatula
Week 1

Accidental Entrepreneur
An entrepreneur who perhaps has never thought of being an entrepreneur. They start with
some action and then A leads to B leads to C leads to D, and before they realize, they have a
functional venture.

R. Sundar: Handful of things that sort of came together around the same time. So, a cousin
of mine who’s a lot more adventurous I would say chose to step out of work and then, he
said, “I just want to step back and give some time for myself.” I used to be a member of a
library near MG Road and I used to also buy books regularly from bookstores. So, Crossword
and Landmark, and the regular book retailing outlets we used to go to. And then there is this
Eloor library which is there on MG road. Its been around for quite some time. We go there
and pick up books as well. So, in one of those trips, I remember I had taken my father along,
who is also a voracious reader. And then he was just making a casual comment that “If I could
get all the books that is there in Crossword for me to read without actually having to pay for
buying these books. If I read it and return it back, it would be such a wonderful experience.”
And then when I took him to the library, the experience, the collection. So he just felt that
having a library like how a bookstore looks, access to a similar collection would be a lot more
interesting experience for someone like him. And post that, keep having conversations with
my wife on what does it mean to run a business, and what does it mean to do a business plan
and things like that. And my brother, my sister-in-law, we keep talking about it once in a while.
But somebody stepped out of work showing the way that is an option. Somebody is talking
money with my wife and others. Father was talking about books and library.

Sometimes, just a series of small inconsequential conversations just start leading you onto
something. So, I and my wife keep talking about just how much of money would we be willing
to spend if we were to do an experiment like this and then it starts getting a little more
serious, so there is an idea, there is a conversation on money, there is a conversation on what
does it mean to step out of corporate life. So these small, small conversations, kind of
eventually come together.

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EP101x – Do Your Venture | Prof. Suresh Bhagavatula
Week 1

Make a Dent Entrepreneur: The concept of make a dent comes from Steve Jobs, where the
expects ventures to put a dent to the universe that the life before and the life after is not the
same thanks to this venture that the entrepreneur starts. One such venture that we will come
across in our course is Amagi. So Amagi incubated at NSRCEL and then they went out. They
are a very large company, they are into contextualize advertisements on television and many
other offerings.

Baskar Subramaniyam: So, we spent the first three months trying to say what did we do, and
what do we want to do? So, these three things came kind of the first thing. Then what we did
was, we went looked at 40-50 business plans. So, we didn't look at one or two. So, it was not
a serendipitous way of getting into stuff, but we looked at 40-50 business plan. we are into
mobile, internet. We kind of looked at all of those options, and said, "Okay. What's going to
be the most impactful in some sense?" And the DNA of three of us as founders is that we
always wanted to do something unique and differentiated. So, we don't like somebody's
already done a business model. So, we were very clear. We don't want to do commerce
because Amazon has already done it. No big deal. We don't want to do this, do this. So a lot
of ideas got killed because it's already been done somewhere else. So, we didn't want to do
something. So, went through that plan. And then, when we looked at television and we were
new to television. We didn't know anything about television. I don't think we would have even
imagined that we would do anything related to television in our lives. But at that point in time,
television looked very laggard-ish in terms of adoption technology. We thought it's going to
get disrupted any which way. So, why don't we peep out of the change? Clearly, it suited two
things. One is we can disrupt the space because it had very laggard-ish attributes. Second, it
was large enough. It was a 500 billion-dollar business, so it's almost half-a-trillion dollars of
business. Clearly, a big space that we could go after. Third, we saw in India, which, there was
no targeted advertising at all. So, why is targeting not available in a country which is so
culturally diverse? So, at least the problem was jumping out and saying, "There needs to be
targeted advertising. Why is it not existing?"

© All Rights Reserved, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore


EP101x – Do Your Venture | Prof. Suresh Bhagavatula
Week 1

Each of the above paths has its own upside and downside. The key to remember is that each
of these paths worked for that particular individual and her individual context. Similarly, each
one of us need to evaluate and identify our own individual context before deciding to choose
either one of this commonly occurring paths or a completely different path altogether. To
each, her own.

So, in this MOOC, we're going to take an iterative process. So, you will have to think up of an
idea, go out and talk to people, come back, we'll analyze it together, and you take this input
go out again and very soon you will realize, you are quite deep into your venture and very
close to starting it.

So, come. Let's "DO your venture."

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