Bharat Entrepreneurs

” When I thought of starting a company, I felt India needed 100 people like Narayana Murthy and Ambani. If 100 such people support 2 lakh people each, imagine how many Indians get supported. Entrepreneurship is needed to uplift the poor. It is not easy to be an entrepreneur, especially a first generation entrepreneur. There will be lots of challenges in the beginning but you should learn to look for the light at the end of the tunnel. Never give up even if there are hurdles. There are many who give up within a week. You need determination and a tough mind to cross the initial hurdles.” E.Sarathbabu

E. SarathBabu is not the typical IIM Ahmedabad student you read about in the newspapers. He did not take the easy path to earn mega bucks in spite of being offered plum jobs from top companies. Instead he chose, like a true entrepreneur, to carve out his own path to success. So he started FOODKING.

His mother worked as an ayah in an Anganvadi to educate him and his siblings. Later he went on to complete his higher education in the prestigious BITS Pilani and IIM Ahmedabad.

In the beginning, he took a loan of Rs 20 lakh and started Foodking in August 2006. Initially the losses were poised at Rs 2000 a day. The cafeteria’s he set up initially did not work according to plan and he soon came to the conviction that only by selling in large volumes that any profit could be made.

In 2006 IIM A alumni meet, he hoped to bag a contract but could not.

In march 2007 he got an offer to start a unit at BITS, Pilani. This contract proved profitable. Spurred with this initial profit and with the money that he borrowed from his IIM A friends, he wanted to move ahead. He got BITS Goa contract which was to be his biggest break. He had to cater to over 1300 students and the sales peaked at 65,000 Rs per day.

Then he got an opportunity to serve at SRM deemed college which boasts of over 17,000 students!

Right now he has a turn around of Rs 3.5 crore per annum. By next year he hope to increase it to Rs 20 crores.

At present he has BITS hyderabad in his hands and it all set to be operational by July 2008. So the future does look rosy to this Foodking.

http://www.rediff.com/money/2006/aug/31spec.htm

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The answer to this question changes from person to person. There can’t be one investment style suitable for everyone as every individual have different goals, different objectives, capability to invest and different personal characteristics, which determine the investment style of a person.

But just a second, first a person should find out whether investing in stock market is good choice for him. Before you decide to invest in stock market, ask a hypothetical question to yourself – what will you do if you come to know that stock market has crashed and your investment has reduced to half of the invested amount? Will you panic or will you be calm and quiet? If you panic, then go for mutual funds, government bonds, and insurance products but don’t invest in share market. If you can keep yourself calm and quiet, then stock market is a good choice for you as this indicates that you have faith in the Indian economy and you have the understanding that the market will go high once again. It’s just a matter of time and your share prices will rise and you will recover your money.

Let’s go back to the main topic of our article ‘How to invest in the Stock Market?’

The answer to this question depends on the individual’s objectives which he wants to attain from the stock market. Whether he wants to speculate and earn some quick money or he wants to invest for long term. If a person is clear about his objectives, it will help him in selecting the stocks in which he should invest. Every decision should be taken after doing proper research and money should be invested only in the stocks of those firms who are fundamentally sound. The professional assistance is also available nowadays, but don’t make a move until and unless you are full confident about it, as it’s your hard earn money on stake and you will be the one who will be suffer losses if something goes wrong. So one thing that should be always be kept in mind ‘NEVER DEPEND ON ONLY ONE SOURCE OF INFORMATION’.

There is one who can give your absolutely correct advice as the stock market is a market where there is nothing certain. You will make mistakes, wrong decisions will be taken but the secret of success is learning from those mistakes and never repeat them. Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, a famous stock broker has once said on a TV interview ‘Either you don’t regret (wrong decisions) or you don’t come to the market’.

Some basic things to keep in mind while investing in Indian Stock Market:

1) When the market is very high, it will fall soon.

2) Don’t buy when the market is very high, wait for the prices to come down and then buy.

3) Keep yourself update by reading the financial newspapers, especially about those companies whose shares have been bought by you.

4) Don’t panic if market falls.

In the present scenario, where market is so volatile that it is gaining 300 points one day and losing 700 points the other day, it’s advisable to avoid speculation. In this scenario, it will be good for retail investors to stay away from the market, even if you want to invest, prefer those firms which derive the major amount of their profit from domestic economy as they would be least effected from the recession in the US economy.

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