How to make Bhubaneswar Entrepreneur Friendly City
“Ideas to
Execution”
BIKASH CHOUDHURY
One
cool morning met an unusual young man in the living room of a prominent
architect in the
city;
apparently, he came to persuade the Architect for sponsorship and in the din of
the moment he drew our attention to his venture which was no doubt impressive
and Idea was brilliant with a dynamic business model. But, he was desperately
searching for a last mile funding to launch his product on 1st
April 2013 . Later, it was
known that he got the last minute funding in the zero hours of 30th
March 2013 from a salaried employee who
withdrew cash from his savings
earmarked for his son’s education and daughter’s marriage; while many
stinking rich person, business men turned down the request for Investment on a
genuine and path breaking business proposal. Where does one go with a
bright business ‘Idea’/ proposal in the city? Banks would ask for
assets and documents which most of the time no entrepreneur could comply with.
Risky investments normally abhorred by middle class white collar group and
Govt. remain inaccessible to an educated entrepreneur even today.
There
is an urgent and immediate need to have an Angel Investment Network in the city
of Bhubaneswar; that could fund entrepreneurial initiative and at the same time
can create an “Institutional Mechanism” in the private sector to assist
new entrepreneurs with organizational issues like HR, Finance, Operations,
Marketing, Logistics ect., by deploying available talent pool in the city in
each domains. There are Entrepreneurship Development agencies in Govt. sector;
but, they fail to attract entrepreneurs and guide them in the uncharted
territory of creating a new business enterprise. Need a ‘plug and play’ arrangement;
wherein an entrepreneur would come just with a “Business Idea or a Business
Plan” that should be given a concrete shape by a private institution so
created for the purpose to make ‘Bhubaneswar City’ an entrepreneur
friendly one, to Global Standards; where dreams are brought into the real
world.
Practicing
‘Chartered Accountants’ of the temple city could get together to
constitute an organization named “Bhubaneswar Angel Investors Group”
that would have mandate to create an Investment Fund in order to deploy in the
start up firms in MSME sector. They can easily rope in their clients having
surplus funds to create a corpus of Rs.50-100 Crore annually to give a fresh
lease of life to Business in the city. There can be a series of collaboration
possible with Institutions working in the domain Nationally and even Globally.
Any takers?
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