ENTREPRENEUR BEHAVIOR (APT2013)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Firstly, I would like to thank Mr. Mohamed Dahlan Ibrahim, the dean of faculty of
Entrepreneurship and Business, who gave us this great opportunity to get known more
about an entrepreneur. By having this kind of project, we as a business students are able
to know more about an entrepreneur and their business. Besides that we also can get more
knowledge and information about, the technique used in business, an entrepreneur’s skill,
and the strength and weakness of a business.

Secondly, I would like to thank Mr.Rafi, our Entrepreneur Behavior lecturer and
Mr.Hakimin, our Entrepreneur Behavior tutor, for their kind help to me in completing my
Entrepreneur profile assignment successfully. Besides that, both of them help me a lot by
giving all the information and resources that I need in completing my assignment.

Thirdly, I would like to thank Mrs.Gayathiri Raghavan, the owner of Gayathiri Silk
Sarees Palace. She had help me a lot in completed my assignment successfully. She gives
her full commitment with me when I have interviewed her. Besides answering my
question, she also gives me a lot of information about herself and her business. The
information she have given, had really help me a lot. She also gives a lot of advice and
suggestion on how to face the problems that occurs in the business
.
Finally, I would like to thank everyone who has helped me in completing my assignment
successfully. This includes, all my family members, friends and others who have helped
me to complete my assignment.

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ENTREPRENEUR BEHAVIOR (APT2013)

DATE: 28/3/ 09
PLACE OF INTERVIEW: GAYATHIRI SILK SAREES PALACE (THE OWNER
OF THE SHOP MRS. GAYATHIRI)

THE ENTREPRENEUR BEFORE STARTING THE VENTURE

Most of the famous entrepreneurs that we know are mostly male, and entrepreneur mostly
refers to male, but I have choose a female entrepreneur as my model to do this
entrepreneur profile. Mrs. Gayathiri is owner of the boutique sarees shop which located at
7 kilometers from Ipoh, Perak. Mrs. Gayathiri doesn’t have strong education background.
She only has completed her SPM. She said even though education very important to start
the business but people need more business knowledge and the most important factors are
experience. But she agrees that education that related to the business also important to
extent business. Mrs. Gayathiri said English is important and every businessman and
woman must be able to speak fluent English. It is because English is very important to
attract more customers and extent the business at international level. Even she doesn’t
have strong education background, but she is able to speak fluent English. Mrs. Gayathiri
has working experience. She worked in small “sarees” shop which located at Ipoh. She
work for three years and learned more about business techniques, skills and knowledge.
She said in her business, the experience that she gains while she working is helping her a
lot to improve the business. She learned the proper way to attract the customers, serve
customer, to do proper account and so on. It’s because the place that she worked was
every big entities which have lot of branches around the country. The entity name is
Gayathiri Silk Sarees Palace and the main branch is in Kuala Lumpur. This store selling
sarees which import from India and this store also well known silk store in Malaysia.
Mrs. Gayathiri start this business because she influenced by her role model. Her role

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model is the owner of the Gayathiri Silk Sarees Palace. She had influenced by her role
model because the business technique and skills that used by the owner was really
effective and efficient.

So, Mrs. Gayathiri decided to start business. Mrs. Gayathiri has entrepreneurial mindset.
She always aims high, moderate risk taker, innovative and always identifying the
business opportunities around her. This is on of the factors that influence her to become
an entrepreneur. When she was sixteen, she takes arts stream subjects in form four
because she doesn’t do her PMR very well. Although she was not happy with her
achievement, she tried to improve herself. One of her teacher name is Faridah. Miss
Faridah was teaching “Commerce” subject. The ways she teaches and promoted the
business subject was very interesting and influence her. Almost all the students influence
by the ways she teacher but not all students were plan to start up business in their future.
Mrs. Gayathiri also one of the student who really showed her interest in start up business
in future. She starts to aim to become a successful entrepreneur in future, this is not only
because she interested but also cause her father also a businessman. In her family she
doesn’t have any siblings or relative or even their parents doing business as a job
currently but her father had do business before he married her mother. But the business
was bankrupt because so many debts were given to his close friends and relative and
finally him unable to collect all the debt to pay back loan.

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THE ENTREPRENEUR AT THE TIME SHE STARTED THE VENTURE

The primary motivation for starting business was to earn money as much as she can. She
said people can buy everything by the money expects loves. In her opinion she said
people will respect us if we have money otherwise people won’t respect us even we are
kind person. She was victim because once upon a time she was poor. Now she has existed
from the boarder. One of the factors that influence her to become an entrepreneur is
financial problem. When she was child, her family has faced so many problems
especially financial problems. Her elder brother dropped his studies because of financial
problems. Every incidents that happens in a family was effected her a lot. So, she decided
to exist from the situation and the only one way to exist from this situation, is starting a
business.

When she starts her business, she was only 23 years old. Now she is 28 years old.
When she starts the business, her goals were only to earn money as much as possible. But
after three years later, her goals were to become the number 1 sarees selling shop in that
area which called Silibin. She aims to become a famous boutique sarees selling shop in
Silibin town. Although she not yet becomes a famous boutique, now she has three
workers without including her family members. The special thing that made me proud of
her self is she starts her own business without any shares even with her husband Mr.
Prakash. She starts business without any partners even she gets married. She never
depends with anyone even on her husband. She is seeking for ‘rapid growth’ business.
She wanted to develop her business. She also wanted to develop her business as well
known boutique sarees selling shop “Chennai Potthys” which is a big and famous sarees
selling shop in Perak. She worked very hard to develop her business in few years. It’s
very hard to developed this kind of business in that small town area because the target
markets are is more to Indians and there are so many competitors which doing almost the
same business. She also worked smartly to attract the customers in only 3 years. She was

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worked hard and smart to grabbed market shares. Sometimes she worked overtime until
10 pm to make sure satisfy her customer’s needs and wants. She always gives full
concentration on customer’s satisfaction and customer’s loyalty. She only inverse
RM50 000 as capital to starts the business and few furniture that already fixed inside the
shop. She rented the shop and she paid RM 2 000 as deposit to start business at the shop.
The RM48 000 she was used to bought sarees and other accessories. She also had applied
for the loan from bank and she only get RM 10 000. She has keep that money for future
use but finally it was used for pay doubt. She doesn’t use any network to promote her
sarees and shop because she believe that she can attract more customers with her kind
behavior, quality sarees and good customer services. Mrs. Gayathiri very concerned
about the customers need and wants. She always focuses on customer satisfaction. She
faced high risk to compete with competitors. Firstly, she didn’t prepare the business plan.
But she has to prepare because she realized that the capital is not enough to start business.
So, she do the business plan to get the loan from bank again for around RM10 000. After
she has done the business plan, she realized business plan is very important factors to
start a business.
She said it was a guide for her to run the business. At the time, she start the business, she
feel prepared and satisfied with all the preparation that she had done. For the first three
month when she has started the business, she was worked for about 12 hours and six days
per week. She was really worked very hard to attract customers from the market share.
She didn’t bother about her family needs even she was married at that time. She said her
families members give full commitment and encourages to her in develop the business.
She had handle the businesses by self for six month and finally she decided to employ
three workers to help her manage, conduct and satisfied customer’s needs and wants.

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THE ENTREPRENEUR AS SHE GREW THE VENTURE

At the time, she started the business; her goal was to become rich but later she wants to
become a famous boutique sarees seller around the area. She achieved her goals in three
years time. She still keeps on changing her business goals. Recently she decided to buy
one more big shop because the shop she owned now is very small and not enough space;
so, she wants to enlarge the space to keep the accessory neatly to make customers feel
comfortable with the environments. At the time, the business grew up; she had change the
working time as ten hours. When festival seasons arrived, such as deepavali, Tamil new
years and for other events, they will fix the canopy in front of the shop and decorate it
with colorful lamps to attract the customers in festival seasons. She said she was makes
wrong assumptions about the tastes of peoples who live in Silibin area. She though the
people who live in that area will buy low quality products and wont wear dress followed
by the trend because people mostly staying in estate. But she was wrong even though
they live in estate, they able to buy expensive things and wearing fashionable dresses.
She realized when festival seasons arrived, people looking for branded accessories. She
doesn’t have many customers on the festival season. So, she started to found supplier
who selling high branded accessories. She bought accessories on credit and unable to pay
back the doubt. From this she has learned how to do business in proper way.
Once she knows that the doubt will troubles her business, she tried to solve all the doubt.
She said every entrepreneur is doing the same mistakes and they learned from the
mistakes. The worst moment that she had faced was in the second year. The business
almost running in loss because she couldn’t finish the stock which had been old trend
dresses. The Indians traditional dresses are always change followed by the trend. If the
trend is become old fashion means people won’t make purchase of it. To overcome such
problem she decided to sell it at cheap price to increase the demand. Finally before
festival season she has sold all the old stocks and order new trendy dresses. She also
promotes the old stocks as a prize to those who makes purchases more than RM 200.
Mrs. Gayathiri is a good leader because she able to handle high risk and problems that
she faced with a good skills and great leadership. She also innovative and creative
because she able to safe and develop the business which is running in loss.

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THE ENTREPRENEUR TODAY AND TOMORROW

Mrs. Gayathiri believes that experience is more important than education in starting up a
business. She said that her 10 years experience in the business has helped her a lot in
starting up the business. She said the experience make us perfect. She said if she gets the
opportunity to do it all over again, she will definitely convert selling boutique sarees and
all the Indians traditional cloths brick and mortar to click and mortar. In her opinion,
click and mortar business is safe a lot of money compare to brick and mortar business.
This business can attract more customers because nowadays people start to use internet.
The personal character that I could see in herself that lead her to become successful
entrepreneur are self-confident, information seeking, sees and act on the opportunity,
efficiency orientation and so on. Mrs. Gayathiri had work hard to safe and developed her
business from running in loss. She always seeks information about the new trend, new
suppliers, strengths and weakness of competitors and so on. The information that she
seek help her to develop the business. Mrs. Gayathiri always tried to grabbed business
opportunity. For examples, in Ipoh there was a carnival that arrange by Indian Society
especially to promote Indian cultures. She had used the opportunity to promote her
accessories.
She also shows her interest on new trends and the supplier those who supply new
and trendy cloths. She is a successful entrepreneur because she always finds ways to do
things faster, using fewer resources and with low cost. She wants to become the most
famous boutique sarees shop in Malaysia. She wants to have many branches in Malaysia
and even in our neighbor countries. Besides that, she also interested in tailoring. She
wants to learn more about tailoring and sewn Indians traditional dresses because
nowadays teenage girls like to sewn traditional dresses compare to buy traditional
dresses. She is also interested in social services. She always advised, for those who really
interested in a business field, to have some experience in business field before starts
business. It’s because business cannot be describe by words or cannot simply do business
with knowledge that we learned from books. As a graduate we should work hard to get
experience in business field. She also said graduate should inverse their own money to

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starts a business not just depends on parent’s money and bank loans. She said that cause
if we want to earn money to start up the business, then we have to work first, so if we
work, we can earn both, money and experience, that’s what she really means. Mrs.
Gayathiri said doesn’t easily give up and as a graduate, we must have confidents and
good skills. In her opinion, business is the best way to earned money. Other than that, the
entire graduate must able to communicate in English because it is very important in
business field. If graduate failed to speak in fluent English, they will definitely fail to
develop their business in international level. The advice that she gave to student was
really influence me a lot. The way she handles the business by herself, the skills she used,
the way she solved the problems and her creative thinking had really influence me to start
business in future with my own money. In my view, she was a really successful female
entrepreneur which all business students should takes as their role model. As a
conclusion, she had advised to all, that to be a successful entrepreneur, we should always
see things from different perspective, able to try new ways of doing something, don’t
ever get fear of failure, seek and act on opportunities around us, and the most important is
our attitude.

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APPENDIX

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