An Entrepreneur’s Mountains

I got a nice email from Anand (Aeroprise): “It’s amazing how entrepreneurship seems to the only way that otherwise well educated and talented people can consciously stop themselves from getting stuck in a rut and solve problems that lead to quantum leaps rather than incremental progress…How it gives us a chance to make differences in technology and in the lives of people that linger long after we are gone.”

Many times, we think about the financial gains that an activity can give us. In entrepreneurship, it is just the opposite. The focus needs to be on doing something different, something to change some aspect of the world. Monetary benefits, if they occur, are a by-product. We have to do something we strongly believe in. It is that inner passion that drives entrepreneurs.

Personally, I have not known any other life. I spent two years working in the US, and that was it. If I look at the past 11-odd years since I quit NYNEX, most of the years have been an uphill struggle against the odds. Sometimes one manages to climb a mountain (only to find another one ahead), at other times one falls and realises that one has to take a different path. This is what one has to enjoy and like as an entrepreneur.

On a related note, Pradyuman Maheshwari writes about the interactions we’ve had during the past decade, in response to my post on 4 years of the IndiaWorld deal.

Published by

Rajesh Jain

An Entrepreneur based in Mumbai, India.