Startup after Graduation!

 Again this is based on my perspective & Experience!

I was thinking about to write on this topic for a few months but procrastinated it. Actually, this subject came to my mind as a Perceptual Diversity. 

oh, what's that Diversity means???

Perceptual Diversity means some of our most creative thoughts/insights from our subconscious mind which strike our mind during our casual activities like walking, during shower etc., 

Let's get into the story.....

I choose this title for this blog when my friend asked me to give a seminar to his brother's college on 'Start-up after Engineering.'

I don't want to bore you guys by explaining the terms start-up, business, innovation etc..,

My Start-up Experience:

I had 5 experiences in my life which is not a professional start-up kind of experience.

1.) Sold Exam sheets to my classmates

It's during my 8th grade when we used to buy a bundle/quire of papers for our class tests from our school store. It costed us Rs.10/quire which has 24 sheets, if we buy separate sheets it is 50p/sheet i.e Rs.12/quire. 

I am a hostel student. I get to know from one of my Day scholar friend that in his town the paper quire costs Rs.7 only. So, I used to buy a bundle/quire from him for Rs.7 which has 24 sheets and sold it as separate sheets in hostel for same 50p which made my turnover of  Rs.12/quire i.e I got Rs.5 profit for each bundle.

2.) Writing Record Notebooks for classmates

It happened in my 11th or 12th grade where we used to have a huge task of writing record notebooks for Physics, chemistry & Computer Science. 

One day my friend jokingly asked me to write record notebook for him and for that he promised to pay Rs.25. I started the task with his one record notebook but soon the demand for the job was too high as followed by him many of my hostel friends gave me the assignment and I used to charge upto Rs.300 for 3 record notebooks. 

3.) Getting Chappathi Gravy for college Hostel

It's during my final year college where in our hostel mess we've chappathis twice a week for dinner. For that, the gravy won't be good in mess. So we prefer to get chicken gravy from the city if occasionally we went for outing. It's a 10km travel by bus and also 2km walk to our hostel from bus stop. 

As usual one day, I was going out for a personal work when my friend asked me to buy him chicken gravy and one of my friend jokingly asked me to collect a service charge for it. The gravy costed Rs.40 & he didn't have change for Rs.50 so we made the service charge as Rs.10 for a gravy. Soon every chappathi day I got orders increasing upto a max of 20 to 25 gravies with Rs.10/gravy as my service charge.

My 4 & 5th experiences are Ideas,

4.) Navigating to our Home

It was in my 10th std when I and my friend used to draw the whole picture of our village/ his area in town in a big A4 sheet with routes and landmarks mentioned in it. We exchanged it within us and I being a hostel student used it to visit his home.  I never asked for route or guide from anyone. The sheet guided me with landmarks & distance to his home from nearest landmark.

5.) Voice Based whatsapp group

During the 1st COVID, I tried to help Fresh graduates in upskilling them to meet Industry expectations. For that I've created a whatsapp group (it's a small group with around 25 members) with a basic rule for it, that is every message in this group should be shared via Voice not via text. I made this in purpose to improve their communication. 

Start-up before Graduation:

But I didn't do/know/realise these activities as a business or an initiative rather I did it just for pocket money.

But in current scenario these activities have become a Industry segments,

• Selling papers- Dropshipping
• Writing Record Notebooks- Gig Job
• Delivering chappathi gravy- Food Delivery (Swiggy, Zomato)
• Navigating to home- Google Maps
  
• Voice based whatsapp group- Clubhouse

If I was able to have a vision in my school days of making a successful business out of these activities I would've dropped out. Like many visionaries/ successful Entrepreneurs are college & school dropouts.

Think Big:

I'm not insisting to drop out of studies to start a successful business instead we've to create a mindset to start Thinking Big and have a vision in our early stage of life so that we can be able to apply our knowledge to scaleup our idea. 

Earlier in schooling we were taught to get marks but nowadays things have changed. Students have lot of resources to explore about what's happening around the world. The ideas are now getting recognised with funding & guidance. 

How the IIT students can do it before Graduation?

Most of the recent successful start-ups are built by IIT alumni and they start doing this when they're doing their graduation itself. How they can be able to do it? It starts from the basics when they clear JEE/AIEEE exams in which those students try to understand the problem before solving it but most of us try to recap the memorised shortcut formula to solve it. 

Train your mind to think:

As I mentioned in my other articles, we've to give new inputs to our brain consistently to train it to Think. 

If you're a graduate studying Engineering or any other course and willing to build a start-up, start doing your final year projects as your career building Idea/concept. 

Some of my recommended YouTube Channels to incite your minds are, 

Mindvalley, Garry Tan, Ali Abdaal, GaryVee, Think School, the Futur & Grant Cardone