8/9/2019 Syberspace Write Up- Himanshu Garg

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Why is Kumar Mangalam Birla a great Business Leader but not an entrepreneur?What makes Sachin Bansal a great Entrepreneur? What diferentiates the two?

Entrepreneurship- the term has been thwarting the masses since a very long time. Whetherit be waiting in queues for tickets, or sipping tea, everyday, thousands of ideas bu up inthe minds of people and everybody wants to be his!her own boss, but most of these dont

see the light of day due to various reasons such as family pressure not to leave their secure"obs, or lack of capital or they "ust laugh those ideas o# by themselves. $midst all these,%achin &ansal ' the co founder of (lipkart has shown a glowing path for the budding ideacon"urers.

What ) believe Entrepreneurship is, that it starts *rst of all by observing ones surroundingscarefully and *nding out a problem, a lack or depravity that one is quite certain that theothers might also have felt +consciously or sub-consciously and then decide analytically andlogically the solution to the observed problem. hen the person should be able to have agood knowledge of his resources and resource generation and whether this idea of his wouldbe economically viable. hen comes the part where the person tries to align his resources+and the generated ones with that of the idea to make a business model out of it and thenshould be able to promote and launch it in a manner that most of the target audience of hismay be able to connect with the idea. his would ensure the success of the entrepreneurialidea. $lthough, such a venture is certainly prone to a lot of diculties and risks, because /out of 01 entrepreneurs fail in the *rst 0/ months, but ) am of the opinion that if 0112 of thee#orts, focus and acumen are aligned with the proper process and then the success wouldfollow.

3ow, coming back to %achin &ansal, ) believe he, along with his $maon co worker &inny&ansal, observed that there was a dire need and a void in the e commerce industry with onlyone big player e&ay in the market and the increasing number of tech savvy people in )ndiaand more and more merchants wanting to e4pand their businesses by coming in the e retailmarket and decided to start his small e commerce website in his &angalore apartment in5116. 7e had to wait for quite some time for the *rst sale and then never looked back. herewas a time in 5100 when (lipkart got investments close to 0111 crores and started incurringlosses and the people started doubting the structure. hat tested his entrepreneurial spiritand he took action, by tightening his employee base, using more technology for cuttingcosts and shutting down its music downloads category, which was not scaling up. 8oreimportantly (lipkart, which started out as a direct seller of goods, he changed it an asset-light marketplace model where multiple merchants, along with the company9s own W%:etail, sold to customers on the site. $ll these e#orts bore fruit and he got funding close to;y and stay budget. 7e is con*dent and open toe4ploration. ?ue to this, he has made his organiation worth ;= billion and stilldi#erentiating and venturing into various sectors. ?ue to all these, %achin &ansal may betermed as a great entrepreneur, willing to take global bulls like $maon and e&ay by theirhorns.

$s far as 8r. &irla is concerned, he has

the ability to successfully integrate and ma4imieavailable resources within the internal and e4ternal environment to attain organiational andsocietal goals. )t is not that he has had it easy with the whole world looking down upon himas a very young and ine4perienced successor of $ditya &irla but he proved these cynicswrong in an e4ceptional manner. 7e had a previously set up business to cater to and make itbigger and e4pand into various horions. 7e had capability, assets and reputation in themarket that helped him to grow his company to his present mammoth form. )n these aspectshe di#ers from an entrepreneur like %achin &ansal who had to pave his own way in terms offunding and create a masterpiece from his own idea. his by no means presents a picturethat 8r. &irla has had it easy on his end because when he had "oined as the @EA thecompany had a market cap of ;5 billion and in a span of 51 years he has made thisconglomerate reach new heights with market cap of about ;B1 billion and in B1 countries.

7e has also diversi*ed his business to various verticals such as telecom and all these thingsprove him to be an e4cellent business leader, but not an entrepreneur due to the lack of anoriginal idea and the di#erence in the process of becoming a great leader.

8/9/2019 Syberspace Write Up- Himanshu Garg

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he di#erences lie in the fact that 8r. &irla de*nes success in terms of *nance andstakeholder satisfaction whereas, 8r. &ansal doesnt de*ne success. 8r. &irla sees the worldas an opportunity for pro*t, but 8r. &ansal sees it as a canvas for change to make it a betterplace. 8r. &irla takes calculated risks whereas, 8r. &ansal has always been some sort of askydiver. 8r. &irla hires his employees for pro*t making and there is a visible di#erencebetween him and the employees whereas, 8r. &ansal *nds and treats his employees like

friends and his customers as a part of his source of duty and ful*llment. $midst all thesedi#erences too, these two have made a mark for themselves in history and due to theire#orts the world is seeing )ndia in a new light where not only the people make opportunitiesbut the opportunities have made people and these two role models and are both needed intheir respective domains to make the country grow faster and more prosperous.

7imanshu Carg

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