Muses of Murari

Today, I had a chance to meet an entrepreneur, who until recently was my supervisor-like. He recently bootstrapped a book and toy lending venture, BrainVilla. This start up is kinda unique one, in the sense, it not only rents & sells books, which other companies like librarywala.com, flipkart.com does, but also rents toys. Interestingly, he has opened a physical store in a residential locality in Bangalore. He said he is running various activities like brain games, puzzles to the members in the store and he claims he already has impressive number of customers in short period of time.

It was nice half an hour chat with him. I learnt quite a few aspects about running one’s own venture. He told me how it all started and how he struggled to get things going so far. His current worry is about getting right staff to run his venture. Like need for developers to develop & maintain the portal, sales people and support staff. Now, he is playing all these roles himself!

Despite his HR issues to handle, he displayed quite a character, which I think is an entrepreneurial one. He is ambitious and yet has practical goals. Every time he mentioned that he will be achieving this goal & other goal, he specified few months time period. And if the goals are bit higher in reach, he mentioned longer time frame like a year or two. He told me that he is planning to open more stores in Bangalore. He told his competitors are moving into the market fast and he also wants to race before them. And if he gets a chance, he said he can participate in the consolidation phase in the market. Phew! quite a gutful thinking. He has vision to try on few interesting things in a year or two and at the same time he wants to scale his current business and become one of the leading book & toy store in Bangalore city.

Wonderful. Though he looked weary, his warm smile, his open way of talking, his attention to details and the way he handled my advice that to involve his company activities with the social media early, reflected his maturity. I understood from the conversation, that running a company needs relentless dedication, tremendous patience, never ending enthusiasm, constant focus and personal sacrifice. In his case, he repented for only one thing. He said he is not able to spend enough time with his family, which he had expected.

Later, I tried to relate his current role, businessman talking to a customer with the one earlier, which commanded his subordinate to do project tasks. What a turn around!

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