Stubborn entrepreneurship is all about "breaking barriers" at every step.
I would like to share the story of a little girl.
She has been born and brought up in a small village where her father runs a small flour mill.
It brings tears to her eyes when she sees her father lifting heavy stuff each day. She never saw her father taking a day off from work but always saw him smiling around her. Each drop of sweat rolling down the cheeks of her father crushes her heart million times.
Every passing day raises the same set of questions in her mind.
How can she ease the physical pain of her father?
How can she bring all the happiness of the universe to his feet?
How can she make her father proud of herself as a daughter?
The family spent all the money earned in her education. Took loans when possible but supported her way beyond their capabilities. She was always one of the richest girls in her class when it comes to the number of books a student possess.
She commuted 150Kms daily for her higher education.Many times when she travels from home to her university, if the fare of the bus is Rs.20, she carries Rs.20 only.While in university pursuing her higher education, she came closer to better educational facilities especially the internet, she soon realized that education can transform her life and all lives associated with her.
She was amongst the handful students who couldn’t afford the college fee while studying and only submitted their college fee after completing their MBA.
However, that didn’t stop her from becoming topper of the university. She secured great jobs, earning up to Rs.50,000/- per month, but her vision was grandest.
Situations in her life, triggered her senses emotionally and there she stepped into entrepreneurship leaving the lucrative job behind.
I would like all of you to meet that girl and cheer her up.
That girl is me and the name of the village is Tangra.
The hottest rays of the sun cannot evaporate the oceans and even the strongest storms cannot move the mountains. Entrepreneurs should be like oceans and mountains. Entrepreneurs should be stubborn.
Stubborn entrepreneurs should be those courageous leaders who say “Yes” when the situation says “No”.
Failure is a man-made word. Some have named it and have put down in the dictionary and the world started believing it. There are only experiences, good and bad, both contribute equally to your growth. What matters most in your life is what you have achieved and not what you have earned in the materialistic world around you. Stubborn entrepreneurs do not believe in failures and giving up.
They run, they walk, they crawl and sometimes in life they even halt, but they never look back.
Stubborn entrepreneurs step forward every time they fall.
(The above image has not been used for TEDx presentation as per TEDx rules. This image is strictly for the article to be published on my personal social accounts.)
I and my team are proud founders of our first venture Simbacart an e-commerce portal focusing primarily on high-quality footwear. My husband stays in the US supporting me in growing my venture rapidly here in India. When everybody said NO I said YES. Society flooded my life with awkward questions like, Why don’t you stay with your husband in the US? Why don’t you move to the US? Don't you love your husband? To ignore is important. I feel as I can’t expect others to share my vision. Despite being bombarded with these questions I still chose entrepreneurship, that’s a social challenge for me.
Simbacart has been totally bootstrapped. All the banks ignored my loan requests because as women I do not have any collateral on my name, neither do I have any inherited property to lease. I managed to survive and running my business
successfully for the last 3 years without any substantial help of any bank or investor.
I firmly believe when you have passion everything falls in place. In the very first year, Simbacart did sales amounting to nearly Rs.1 crore. The following year we tried to scale up our business by collaborating with two local investors. The scaling up didn’t go well due to lack of vision and patience of the investors. We faced a major setback in the b