Gururaj ‘Desh’ Deshpande, the Indian-origin billionaire philanthropist who founded the Deshpande Foundation, has asked fledgling entrepreneurs to spot a problem, fall in love with it, and find a solution to solve the problem.
Deshpande told them to look at entrepreneurship as a career. He says it is much easier to become an entrepreneur today than it was 40 years ago. “You get an opportunity to do it again, and you probably have a better chance of succeeding because you have some experience now. If not the first venture, then the second; if not the second, the third, the fourth, and the fifth, you will be successful. So, it’s a career as opposed to being like a big gambler,” he told businessline.
Deshpande co-founded Sycamore Networks, the Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the Deshpande Foundation.
He says it is important to foster a culture where you convert people who complain into people who can solve problems. Drawing a parallel with vibrant communities, he said that in a vibrant community, entrepreneurs identify problems and find solutions. It is a different story in impoverished communities, where the youth get disappointed after finding not enough opportunities. “They feel victimised. They feel helpless, and then they start complaining,” he said.
“Complaining becomes a dominant culture in impoverished communities. We need to convert complainers into problem solvers,” he said.
Social entrepreneurship
Changing the culture can’t be a top-down approach. It has to be a bottom-up approach. “In any community, you find that one-third of the population really embraces the new ideas, while another one-third of them are somewhat enthusiastic, and the remaining one-third will never buy into that,” he said.
He, however, said that was good enough. “Once one-third of the people embrace it, all the new generations will automatically buy the idea. We need a lot more policies where we promote these bottom-up cultural changes,” he points out.
Hard journey
He, however, cautioned the wannabe entrepreneurs, saying it is quite a hard journey. “Remember, an entrepreneurial journey is harder than you think, and it requires more money than you think and a lot more time than you think,” he warns.
“You need that real commitment to stay on task,” he points out.
Problems of Bharat
Asked how he viewed the challenges that the start-up ecosystem is facing against the backdrop of funding winter and the problems at Byjus, he explained that the challenges are at one layer of the start-up ecosystem. “There are huge opportunities in Tier II cities where problems of Bharat (rural India) are to be identified and solutions found. I see a huge scope for the entrepreneurs from Bharat and those who are solving problems of Bharat,” he said.
Based out of Hubli (Karnataka), the Deshpande Foundation has been equipping underprivileged youth with employable skills. It also set up a start-up incubator, where 440 start-ups have been nurtured so far.
“We have trained over 20,000 people so far, with a placement record of over 96 per cent. But then it is not a scalable model. You can’t keep adding campuses,” he said in a virtual interaction.
The foundation is doing a college-connect programme where students are engaged after college hours. “We have touched 130 colleges so far. We are planning to take it to 200 colleges this year,” he said.
