Uncertainty – The life of an Entrepreneur

I never met V G Siddhartha even though I stay close to his home, was a member of Bangalore Stock Exchange where he started off initially and one I had been part of for more than 2 decades and more importantly, started my journey into markets as a Primary Broker under Sivan & Co, his company that is now known as Way2Wealth.

Twitter is filled with comments & opinions on what pushed him to kill himself – after all, he wasn’t a nobody. While it’s easy to point fingers at his debt as being the reason for the untimely demise, few companies other than Infotech companies are able to grow without resorting to debt at some point or the other.

Entrepreneur’s are attracted to risk as a moth to flame. They know that its risky, but is there a way out is the question that is frequently tossed about. For every dozen failures, there is always one rags to riches story that spurs one to leave the comfort of a job that pays a monthly salary towards a journey where he could end up lower than where he started off at.

For the better part of my life, I personally have been an Entrepreneur and yet, lack of good advise aided in no better part by my own stupidity and inability to think big soured all my journeys. 

What hurts an entrepreneur most is the lack of empathy when one is facing setbacks in business. Everyone and their chacha are happy to throw a few more stones saying, I told you so.

While India aims to be a 5 Trillion Dollar Economy, we still don’t have Personal Bankruptcy laws that ensure that if you fail, you can clean up and start afresh. Rather, most business failures I have seen have ended up with the businessman being cleaned off everything.

Starting a business requires funds and funds are hard to come by. Bank Loans require right connections or pledge of property but smaller loans are actually even tougher. At the City Market in Bangalore, money is lent to vegetable vendors in the morning at what is called “meter baddi”. Basically, they are given 90 Rupees in the morning and need to pay back 100 Rupees in the evening.

Go up a small level higher – say you want to start a grocery store and suddenly you find that there are no real avenues for raising debt at rates that make business sense. Commercial rents are generally high in most parts of the town and just the advance needed to stock up on the essential items can set one back by a few lakhs.

From Personal Loans to Pawn Lenders, most small entrepreneurs have running debits and one that while providing them with a chance robs them of the future for the high interest rate rarely enables them to meet ends meet.

If you wish to start something that requires a corporate setup, you have your first taste of government regulations as they start adding up to your bill even before you have given a name for your firm. Then onwards, its a steady stream of filing things and paying the Auditor, the Company Secretary, the Government among thousand others. 

Starting a business is a pain – from the start when you have trouble convincing your parents that you are better off on your own versus joining the herd for a safe salaried income. Once you cross that hurdle, from the Banks to the Government, everyone wants to trip you up even before your competitor has a chance.

If you somehow are able to sail through those, you are like the fish that finally comes out of the river to face the ocean. By the end of the first year, most fishes are spent force and look back at how their life would have turned out if they had just gone along with what their college mates and took up a 7 to 9 job.

When I started going to the Bangalore Stock Exchange, we occupied 3 floors with over 250 active members. This even though NSE had started off a few years back. In the 15 years I spent out there, I saw member after member basically either running themselves out because they took one risk too many or decided to fold before they were forced by circumstances and took up jobs in the booming brokerage industry elsewhere.

Today, I don’t think there are more than 25 brokers with enough business to afford paying their office rents. The surprising thing for me has been the fact that very few of the next generation of these brokers, many of whom have been associated with markets for decades have shown interest with most of them preferring to join the herd in search of a suitable job than take the risk of running a business where compliance costs have been slowly and steadily creeping up even as the brokerage dried up like many of the Bangalore lakes.

In India, failure is not seen as part and parcel of one’s journey but rather the end of ones’ journey. Failure is a stigma that refuses to go away unless you succeed beyond their beliefs and more importantly show that you have succeeded  – this generally by way of a Grand Wedding or buying a top of the range car.

One of the key issues facing the nation today is said to be unemployment. Yet, with the stigma of having been seen as a failure if they try and fail, few want to risk anything at all. Its time we started embracing the culture of taking risks by allowing those who fall to rise back up again without having to be ashamed at having failed. They failed because they tried.

As the son in law of a former chief minister, Siddhartha could have easily taken up the line of politics like other relatives of major politicians. Instead, he took upon a risk that worked for a while but ultimately burdened by facts that we barely know took his own life. Let’s remember for what he achieved rather than wondering what he could have done different.

As my favorite poem by Robert Frost ends,

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.