Entrepreneurship is all about a combination of idea, effort, belief and hard work..
A little experience that gave me confidence after 20 years to quit my job and start a business in training.
I was studying 10th Standard and I was 15 years old. There used to be a grand festival in my town and there used to be lot of shops selling lemon juices to beat the heat. The main ingredient of those shops are Lemons. There were few hawkers supplying lemons to those shops.
I wanted to make some money by supplying lemons to few shops. I enquired with my friends and came to know about a nearby village where lemons are grown plenty. I wanted to beat the competition with QUALITY and purchased bigger lemons from that village.
Two of my friends were my investment partners who invested Rs.10 each and I too invested Rs.10. So, with the total corpus of Rs.30, I was very happy to buy 120 lemons...! The cost per lemon was just 25 paise and I wanted to sell it for 50 paise.
The Unique Selling Point was "bigger lemons and better quantity of lemon extract and best quality of juice"... Happily took the stocks in my by cycle and approached the shops.
The shocking response came from almost all the shops that they didn't want QUALITY but PRICE. The practical application was different. The shop keepers told me that the buyers will see just how many lemons are added (they squeeze lemons in front of the buyers) and not seriously the quantity of extract. They were buying lemons for 25 paise, much smaller in size and they were not interested to buy it from me for 50 paise.
Three days passed and I was unable to sell even a single lemon to the shops. I promised my investors to repay their investment of Rs.10 and with a profit of 3 rupees in a week. The lemons became partly dry and lost it's look. The lemons at the corner of my house bothered me a lot and I approached my grandma for help.
She saw the lemons and asked me to buy few empty bottles of Horliks. I purchased 10 bottles for Rupees 1 each.
She helped me in making those lemons into a yummy lemon pickles and she financed me to buy the ingredients for making pickles. Her investment was rupees 16. In just two day's preparation, all the lemons became 8 bottles of pickles.
Now I approached my friend's moms and neighbors and sold them for rupees 10 per bottle. I had 80 rupees and returned my two investors with their profit (Rs.26) and my grandma with her share of profit (Rs.20) and my share was Rs.34..! and a lesson..
by Prasanna Venkatesan
