Businesses Are More Like An Affair Than A Marriage In Today’s World: Kunwer Sachdev
Kunwer Sachdev, a seasoned Indian entrepreneur and the founder and Managing Director of Su-Kam Power Systems Ltd, always speaks his heart out. At the 4th Young Entrepreneur Summit & Awards 2017 hosted by BW Businessworld, he was quite upfront in stating that the era of doing business from scratch has changed as some entrepreneurs treat their business as an affair than a husband-wife relationship. However, he also acknowledged that entrepreneurs today are known more for creating jobs than earlier.
Addressing the occasion he stated, “The culture of entrepreneurship has changed. The (work) culture has changed drastically. We used to be literally wedlocked to our business (by sticking around). But today’s entrepreneurs treat business more as a girlfriend as there are chances of exits. Having said that, not everybody is like that. During our times, not ‘Entrepreneur’ but ‘businessman’ was the buzzword and was connoted ‘crooks’. But now times have changed, and the same ‘businessmen’ are respected and are known for creating jobs, I think the current (business) scenario was better than ours.”
It may be recalled that Su-Kam is a homegrown power solutions provider founded by Sachdev in 1988. Due to his contribution towards creating solar technologies in India, he has been called 'Solar Man of India' by one of the magazines. He has also been awarded the title of 'India's Most Respected Entrepreneurs' by a media publishing group.
Talking about the genesis of the company he maintained, “I dipped my hands in Cable TV industry and later got into the inverter industry. I was very obsessed with R&D activities. During our era, there wasn’t any trend of getting funded (by VCs, angel investors, etc). I built the organization brick by brick. From inverter, we later got into UPS and then solar power.”
The session, in which Sachdev delineated his views, was moderated by Sajan Raj Kurup - Founder and Creative Chairman, Creativeland Asia Group. The session was also addressed by other prominent startup founders who shared their own views.
Binod Kumar Homagai, Co-Founder and COO, Wow! Momo Foods Pvt. Ltd, revealed, “After passing out from college, my batchmate (Sagar Daryani) and I thought of a bakery shop in Mumbai, but we eventually settled for momos as I knew how to make them. When I bounced off this idea to him, he was game for it. Furthermore, Sagar’s father chipped in with Rs. 30,000 as the seed fund necessary to start the business.”
Ishaan Puri - Founder & Director, White Rhino said, “I started this business because I was passionate about it. We wanted to have a beer brand. It is a great opportunity to drive the growth and consumption in India. Although there were sustained challenges, I really worked towards it. It is a great opportunity and goes hand in hand with economic development and the rising disposable income (of the people). Unlike before, we have more exposure to the global economy. We are now mirroring global trends. I always had the option of finding a larger brewery and turning it into a marketing entity. But opted a different route and launched our own bottle of products and the response was overwhelming.”
Divya Gupta, Co-Founder, Momzjoy.com said, “We did a detailed research and realized that Indian pregnant mothers are anxious about certain aspects. So we (Co-founder and I) spoke to numerous doctors and expecting moms and found out that there is a gap in the market for fashionable yet comfortable and functional maternity clothes. We realized how we could use address these issues by creating the right kind of trendy, fashionable yet comfortable maternity wear with easy nursing access and how this would be a step towards resolving these worries.”
Viraj Behl - Founder & MD, Veeba Food Services Pvt. Ltd. shared, “When I started Veeba, I was very clear that Veeba will be a retail brand. But to enter retail, you need deep pockets and it is a long battle. We chose the B2B route and later diversified into the B2C space. Today, almost 40% of our business comes from B2C business. The first two years were riddled with full of struggles as we were looking for investors. But after some time, the industry has changed as a lot of fund houses started looking at brick-and-mortar players.”
