The 25k Bucks Entrepreneurial Question

The Question-As an Early Stage Entrepreneur how on Earth can you survive on 25k per month?

You know it's strange that this thought never crossed my mind so long as I was a part of the corporate utopia.I'd never think twice about buying an expensive book, eating out at an expensive place or gifting something exorbitantly expensive to someone close. But I must say leading an impoverished entrepreneurial life for the last 4 years made me a pro at money management that most of my bets today could make me a fortune in the hedge fund industry(don't buy that shit :)).

I have been reading all about stuff on the web about entrepreneurship in India. Stuff about how the valuation of a certain eCommerce player is going down and causing ripples everywhere. I also read about how an underwear startup lost it's CEO in the recent past.I also read about innovation or rather the lack of it in the Indian ecosystem.Then the founder of a certain mid sized Services company who bailed out after trying to revive the company he had founded and then went on to launch another one with happiness at its core -makes me wonder perhaps it takes one 3 decades of their lives to understand what happiness is all about. I have read an investor turned rogue who talks about anything but politics just to get some attention which he clearly did not get as a toddler.I have read about Indian techies getting an orgy over Elon Musk's achievements only to have them go ahead and build a lackadaisical social network. I have read about how every one in the tech space wishes to build groundbreaking products in ML/Deep Learning/IoT/AR/VR but no one is really solving any hard problem that we see around us. I have heard stories from some Silicon Valley dude who got fired from an Indian eCommerce startup only to blabber about his next venture 24*7 as opposed to building a solid product.

The post Rahul Yadav era if not anything is seemingly boring despite of having its fair share of spicy stories.But despite of everything that I have read and heard I never get to read about one particular aspect of entrepreneurship which is inevitable-how do you survive before you make it big? I mean there are gazillion of stories talking about billion dollar exits or how some eCommerce king bought a 32 Cr mansion purely out of VC money but no one talks about how difficult it is to survive for millions of startup founders every single day till they break even. I mean I have faced all the wrath of being bootstrapped so I understand how difficult it is to run a startup in India.

Only people who have bootstrapped can understand the pain points of an early stage entrepreneur. I see it as a humorous experience and in the next couple of minutes you'll get why.You know as a bootstrapped entrepreneur whose venture is yet to see the light of the day you try anything and everything to survive. Just so you know every time you go down to a founder's profile on LinkedIn that reads working on a 'Stealth Mode' venture it means it's a guy desperately trying his guts out on either dad's money or PF funds/Savings from the last couple of years of job to make it work.

I remember the happiness that comes to my face every time I am invited to a conference where some technology and management dude will come down and talk about shit I already know. Its because towards the end you'd get free food and if you get lucky, some amount of booze especially on a Sunday when your appointed cook takes off for a mall trip with her family. I have attended such conferences religiously and its not that I go down and attend every other conference in the city. I do a proper cost benefit analysis to see the hidden benefits I'd get visiting such a place as opposed to the costs I'd incur transportation being a major one(surge pricing is a bitch).Mostly in a 5 KM radius its alright to visit a certain conference where free food is promised. To add a bit of authenticity to your demeanour you could ask a few questions so people mostly notice you for your participation than your abdominal cravings(done it quite a number of times, works out just fine).

I also remember I have become a stickler for discounts and cash backs in my entrepreneurial life-things I never cared in my earlier lifetime. Now unless Swiggy or Zomato don't give me at least a 15 percent cash back I never order food online.I find myself tracking discounts as a leisure activity most weekends and the moment I see a good book at 49 bucks on Amazon I never leave any leaf unturned to buy it. This also reminds me that for the first time in my life I purchased shoes worth 300 bucks which are an abomination.The only consolation being they are from Provogue and every time I hurt my leg while walking in these son's of bitches I compare myself to the BPL guys feeling proud I at least have the capacity to buy shoes. The other day I got a free ticket from Makemyshow and it felt like happiness I haven't experienced anytime in the recent past. So when Ola slashed its prices one fine day and I discovered my Ola money reduced by merely 61 bucks in a royal ride from JP Nagar to Forum, my happiness knew no bounds-might have shed a tear or two.I mean saving 30 bucks off a 100 rupee note could mean infinite happiness as now you could use those 30 bucks for your evening snacks.The only disappointment I have faced till date is with Freecharge and Airtel-these assholes never provide any cash backs or any kind of offers. On the contrary Airtel is such a blood sucking Leech that every time you recharge your digital TV, in approximately 5 days they'd put up a communication on top of your screen asking you to recharge as soon as possible so you can avoid discontinuation. Same is true with their monthly broadband plans as well.I mean every time I watch Netflix or the recent Amazon Prime Video(which Sucks by the way-thanks to the outdated collection they have for third world denizens) I am petrified as to what message Airtel would send me next. Even when I am in deep sleep I get nightmares about Airtel sending me a message that I have inadvertently choked my entire bandwidth-made me wake up in horror many a times in the middle of the night.

The biggest fear I have had in the recent past is when I am inside a super market. After I have purchased the essentials I really am scared to face the cash counter guy. Soon as he rants out the bill amount I get into instant depression. I mean no matter what you buy the fucking bill always tends to touch 500 bucks.That's really not fair.I mean we are the startup guys-shouldn't we get some kind of concessions on basic grocery items. I barely remember the last time I had a fruit.I mean a friggin apple costs you 80 bucks and a bootstrapped entrepreneurial mind would rather buy a soap, a detergent and some shampoo sachets for a similar amount than keep the doctor away.I never knew liquor could also be procured for as less as 100 bucks in small bottles till 4 years back. Now I never buy a quarter bottle of liquor as I can still make 4 pegs out of 2 small bottles and still save close to 200 bucks.I wish I could define the orgasm you get out of this simple economical exercise. I also remember I wasn't a big fan of buying vegetables from the locality markets. But when Bigbasket delivers you a handful of ladies fingers and cauliflower and charges you 300 bucks its time to pay a visit to the nearest Mandi. Now anytime anyone comes to my place they can find onions, tomatoes and potatoes in abundance.I mean if that aint sound hedging activity-I wonder what is? I really wish the Government starts a new scheme called 'NaMo Bootstrapped Entrepreneur Bachao' Yojna' as part of 'Startup India'.

I recall these zillions of times I have met with these investors with deep pockets. I mean come to think of it, its a long shot just like marriage. Might not work out as planned but then there aint any alimony to pay so worth a shot.The only problem being that most of these meets happens in a Starbucks kind of a place and most of these investors tend to order some really alien drink that costs around 300 plus bucks that you as an entrepreneur is supposed to pay. Now a guy like me who could have saved that money to buy vegetables for the entire week ends up spending that on some God forsaken drink only to get some 10 minutes with an investor who'd have invested crores in some other portfolio companies but doesn't have the money to pay for that drink at Starbucks.So while the intellectual conversation is happening and the investor seems to inundate you with several out of the world questions-the only prayer that's resonating in your head is-"God I really wish he doesn't order anything else". I mean every single time I have gone and met an investor save a few times in the recent past that is before the recent #DemonetisationDrive, a healthy thousand rupee note suddenly transformed to few thin 100 rupee notes.God it sucked-mostly because I never heard back from the investor let alone secure some seed funding for my startup.

So from getting a real six figure salary to making my ends meet in 20k/month, I guess I've come a long way. I recently went to another free food conference that happened in an accelerator started by two ex Infoscions and met a renowned Harvard Professor. He told me that the Startup India funds that the current Government has is not to fund startups but to merely bear the cost of the 'Startup India' program which basically means for traction based startups run by impoverished founders like me it might take a while before I make it out of BPL :) On top of that every time we have had the opportunity to work with the Government to eradicate poverty from the state using our app Galijob(now that's classic-since we ourselves are the impoverished ones) , I realised I barely have the money for native app integrations(2 lakhs plus for app level integration and 5 lakh plus for API level integration).At one stage to track our growth metrics I barely had the money to subscribe to a marketing automation tool so I went ahead and built one-so whoever said 'necessity is the mother of invention' was bang on. I guess we should start selling our CRM as opposed to our original app to make money :),while we do our growth hacks from time to time

So on a serious note while I have multitude of stories to quote the larger question is-Why is it such a difficult deal to run a startup in the initial stages in India? The answer being- no one really knows how you will end up making money. Most of the management crap that we keep reading about doesn't really apply to startups in India. It's a serious problem and there is no solution to it. I remember applying to an idea to POC grant by the Government 6 months back and 6 months down the line when my startup actually made it to the final list and I made the demo citing reasons I need the grant, an elderly gentlemen oblivious to my situation, cried foul over why the grant should not be given to startups like mine who would use it for marketing as opposed to startups still in their infancy who would use it for product development( the point being no company would sit 6 months idle without any activity and if it does go ahead and launches the product it stands for disqualification-a classical paradoxical situation).

So today before you go ahead and launch your own startup its imperative to think about your own survival as well. Not everyone is Elon Musk and not everyone ends up being a lucky son of a bitch as Evan Spiegel and most of these examples are in first world economies where entrepreneurial ecosystems are radically different from India. Over here it is imperative to make money through a business that could help you and your business survive and that is precisely why a vegetable hawker on the street knows far better economics than a certain Bansal duo running a loss making entity. If you still wanna give entrepreneurship a shot-do it at your own risk as it aint an easy path. I really don't remember the number of rejections I have faced and I really don't know what keeps me going despite of living like a pauper. So unless you have similar grit and determination don't really step into it.It takes away a large portion of your life and does not give much in return.In the end what matters is happiness and entrepreneurship does not translate to happiness if that's what people think.