Entrepreneur in Kerala? I don't believe you!

Last evening I was watching the Malayalam movie “Mithunam”, a satirical movie showing the plight of an entrepreneur struggling to set up a factory amidst bureaucracy, corruption and family’s standpoint.

I could relate the movie to my initial days of setting up Parivartan Corporate Training Academy. This movie made me think! In my case, the entrepreneurial venture did not face as big a problem with bureaucracy and corruption as I did from the society. It seems like Kerala society is scared of taking risks and distances itself from those who do dare to take risks.

Most people in Kerala don’t take risks, but then love to mimic anyone or anything that has been successful. If a bakery or a textile shop becomes successful in a particular area, within weeks you will see a dozen of them opening beside and around. The result- no one makes any business as the customers get divided, price war starts, the competition gets intense and ultimately the market falls.

One of my friends once told me “if you want to test the Kerala society’s mimicking nature, just stand on a busy road, point at a tree and murmur once in a while. Within no time you will see a flock of people around you and what’s more funny is that they will actually believe they are seeing something up there.”

During the IT Boom, the trend was to enrol the youth for B.Tech and B.Sc in Computer Science courses. The marriage market hopped on the hunt for IT professionals. Families were proud to have an IT professional at home. Then the IT recession hits and Ola! The scenario changed; Engineering colleges were left out craving for students. The wedding market flip-flopped for IT professionals to the extent that online matrimonial advertisements started mentioning “IT professionals need not respond.” Ahem! so people started pushing their kids for management and other professional courses.

Now that the scene has changed once again, with the IT industry picking up, you don’t need to be an Einstein to predict what will be the trend now. Every few years the trend keeps changing and people change their point of view. This blind chase results in today’s youth being forced into an educational stream which is not of their choice. The result is that a seat gets wasted for a student who doesn’t pursue that stream as a career. Another noticeable trend is families sending their daughter to study engineering or medical course not to pursue a career but to get a groom from the same line of work. This girl who sweats out 3- 5 years pursuing and passing the course ends up in a kitchen of an Engineer or a Doctor.

The phobia of getting their daughters married to an entrepreneur or a businessman is obnoxious in this society. People prefer a groom earning a fixed ‘peanut’ salary than an emerging entrepreneur earning a five digit income. One of my friends who is an IT entrepreneur in Bangalore has a very funny incident to narrate. He had a marriage proposal from Kollam breaking off because the bride’s father did not want to bet his daughter’s luck on an entrepreneur who could probably make millions or probably get into debt. Two years on when his company became 130 employees strong, he found out that the same girl has got married to one of his new employee. Isn’t it an irony? I couldn’t stop laughing when I heard this!

It’s high time; the society matures and starts thinking with an open mind. We will end up churning money making robots out of today’s youth and not ‘living’ humans. The individuality of the youth should be respected. They should be set free to dream their dream, pursue it and achieve that dream. Else this life is just not worth living!

PS: I am lucky to be blessed with a life partner who understands and supports; more than that her family who could see my dream and place their faith in me! Sadly not many entrepreneurs are as lucky as I am in this ‘God’s own country’!