How to become a successful entrepreneur in Chandni Chowk?

Since being asked to write a blog on how to become a successful entrepreneur in Chandni Chowk came as a shock, it took me a lot of time to come up with some basic tricks. Now this definitely is not the be all and end all of ways to become a winner in business, but some of the points I made will help you to firmly establish yourself in the world of entrepreneurship, and should hopefully distinguish you from the huge crowd of money-making hopefuls.

Main street view of  Chandni Chowk

In Chandni chowk some people reap the benefits of the business set up by their forefathers, and others struggle hard in establishing new business in the set up competitive market. To be successful, the first thing required is to be clear about what you need to do and how better it is than your fellows. For example- before setting up a business in Chandni chowk, you need to know the following-

•     What your product/idea is?
•    How does it differ from other products and how will it make you successful?
•   Who is your audience?
•   How much money you need to spend in terms of product cost, advertising, shipping, staff etc.
•   How much profit are you hoping to make?

Dariba Kalan 

In business never consider failure as an option. Very often you see businessmen or individuals deem themselves failed if they have not achieved their set of targets. Failure simply is not a word in the dictionary of an entrepreneur, even if a project is not going well, an entrepreneur will find new ways of coping with the situation and will adjust his aims to fit in with the task in hand.

Especially in a place like the chowk, once you start you can’t stop yourself falling in love with the way the market works. It is so competitive that even a day missed can cause a loss in more than four digits.

 Its like in fashion, “One day you are in and the next day you’re out.” 

"Busy chowk" drawn by me

 For instance, on my visit to the chowk on 25/2/2015, I met the owner of Avro India. He told me about how he started his company in 1972 with just 500 bucks as his capital and reached where he is right now. It took him almost 30 years to get the business in a good shape and the losses he suffered in starting till everything worked out for him. He believed in his idea and never considered failure as an option. There were times when he was kicked out of big business houses who didn't believe in his ideas. He had factories producing water heaters in the nineties. All the big business houses didn't believe in his idea because they knew that water heaters were a luxury that no common man could afford and investing in this business was a big risk. Nowadays we see water heaters as an appliance which almost every second person owns. And now he has a successful business running with his two sons as his partners. They also have a website up and running. Funny how this works, isn't it.

Fancy party lights at Dipalaya lights

As the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg once said “If you just work on stuff that you like and you’re passionate about, you don’t have to have a master plan with how things will play out.”

 It is true actually! I surprisingly met a young owner on the same visit; he told me how he ended up owning a big business in a place like Chandni chowk. Before starting his own business he worked in Reliance for two years. Working there made him realize that he was not a person who could listen to his boss' orders and not make use of his brain at all. He could not handle the way the service sector functioned and decided to drop it. He has started his own company of party lights which are imported from different parts of  United Kingdom. He is a post graduate from London School of Economics. He finds his work interesting and is flourishing well in the business world.

 As Steve Jobs once said “I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.”  In the end it works out for everyone. You just need to be passionate enough for your business and have perseverance.  The chowk is like every other market. It’s your skill that matters. Good ideas and firm planning can get you to a big position.