Chapter 1: Why Entrepreneurship Should be a Preferred Career Choice?

I have been asked often why I promote entrepreneurship to an extent that I don't even give career guidance to employment seekers ... Answer: Entrepreneurship creates employment, and to know the importance of entrepreneurship you need to imagine the pain, humiliation, and misery experienced during unemployment ... being unemployed is a horrifying experience, to know it, you have to experience it God forbids ... and it gets even frightening when you have a family dependent on you ... often we hear about individuals committing suicides, killing their children, or giving them to orphanage houses, let alone selling them in the market, etc. as it is too difficult to bear the pain and anxiety of seeing your loved ones going hungry because you are out of work ... It is a little surprising why employment is one of the topmost crucial problems of modern macroeconomics theory, the other one being inflation.

Chapter 2: Financial Capital vs. The Entrepreneurs

More than often, when I try to motivate undergraduate, and executive students toward entrepreneurship, they complain about the lack of capital, which they argue is necessary to start a business. Asking for capital without experience, without necessary execution skills, without a workable idea, etc., is like asking for a sports car, without knowing how to drive (in traffic in particular), and without knowing where to go. Even a layman can anticipate what would happen eventually. My doctoral research, my experience of working with entrepreneurs, and previous literature suggest that access to capital from an institutional investor, in particular, can do more harm than good for inexperienced entrepreneurs (angle investment is a better option, but please wait for a moment). This may sound counterintuitive, particularly when traditional textbooks on entrepreneurship tell you to make a business plan to convince a bank or a VC when the government. initiatives exclusively talk about the investment to promote entrepreneurship, and when every incubation center incubates its start-ups to make them look attractive to potential investors. Money is generally believed to be the most important ingredient of an entrepreneurial process.

Chapter 3: Three Reasons Why Business Plans are Ineffective

Business Plan is a lengthy document that is prepared with lots of brain muscle to work out the market gaps, competition dynamics, financial feasibility, expected profits, projected cash flow, tentative organizational structure, etc.

The purpose is to provide an economic justification for establishing a business to a potential venture capitalist to invest in business ideas for possible returns in the future.

The major problem is that the effectiveness of this document is more hypothetical than real! and can cause trouble in the following ways if you are new in the business.

Chapter 4: Some Myths about Starting A Business

Many new students often share these apprehensions about starting their own business or becoming an entrepreneur. They rather prefer to become an employee of an already existing business, preferably a large famous corporation. I would rather call these apprehensions as myths, as I have read, and seen myself in numerous business start-up experiences, here they are:

Chapter 5: Some Broad Guidlines

If you want to start a business all that you need to do is to commercially connect three stakeholders (a) supplier/vendors, (b) yourself (or your team), and (c) customer (that’s the first step, of course, employees will come later) ... so ask yourself (a) are there any supplier available within your easy reach of the product or its raw material who can give you supplies necessary on easy terms or perhaps on credit? (b) Are there customers of the same product available within your reach or of some of your contacts, who can also agree to pay an advance against your product or service in case the supply side such facility isn't available? (click here to learn more about how to find a business idea) If you have a big idea in your mind, consider scaling it down into something so simple that you can handle it with ease but outside of your comfort zone. For example, if you want to start a fast-food chain, start with a small french-fries or burger-cart which would not take more than Rs. 30,000 - 40,000 to establish. If you're feeling some shame, check how KFC and McDonalds started, or Shaan Foods or Sitara Textiles started. Dr. Amjad Saqib’s book ‘Kamyab Log’ is full of such examples …

Chapter 6: The Alternative Paradigm

For quite a while we have been exploring, and experimenting with an alternative methodology for a start-up for those who don't have many resources, and experiences to initiate with. Though the method can be used by anyone. The conventional method taught in MBA programs where involving a venture capitalist is necessary also has a spectacular failure rate of more than 75%[1], and according to some more than 90%[2] in their first 5 years of inception.

This desperately demands an alternative method as well for the newcomers who also can't afford to lose much. Besides the amazing failure rate of the conventional methodology itself is a good reason to find an alternative methodology. The following are some differentiating features for this alternative approach. Some of the organic approaches have already explained above, however here it is contrasted with the conventional method to see how different it is.