Technology- The Game Changer in the Entrepreneurial World

In an exclusive interview with the Deputy Director, OP Jindal Global University, Yugank Goyal, we were enlightened with the scenario of budding Entrepreneurs and how they can implement their ideas further.

As you rightly mentioned that Entrepreneurship is largely surrounded by software developments, where do we need to put our focus on? What would you like to say about the developments in the hardware section?

Most of the business plans that emerge in this space are often emerging as what is the demand in the economy and this demand is usually fulfilled by an application based or a software based solution that is provided through smart phones. That is only a small insignificant part in terms of volume in the number of people working there. But a large number of Indians are not acquainted with this entire process.

Our society, to look deeper into that we have entrepreneurs everywhere and not to forget that all the small scale industries like the ice cream vendors, shoe makers are entrepreneurs by themselves. Even though there entrepreneurship is not opportunity based but it is definitely necessity based. So, my question is, if you have necessity based entrepreneurs, where do they get their imagination from. Even today, the idea of entrepreneurship or becoming an entrepreneur is not appreciated completely.

The society, in general, cannot think that Entrepreneurship can exist among disadvantaged people. If you look at societies all around the world, poverty and Entrepreneurship are directly related. Poor countries have high levels of Entrepreneurship. They have curiosity, they break the rules and they have high risk taking abilities.

In order to identify these people and recognise their abilities, we need to give them the ideas and imagination. In order to address going into beyond the software realm of entrepreneurship is to teach Entrepreneur in the schools as a subject. By doing so, societies believe that Entrepreneurs can emerge and it is a viable career option.

What role can Technology play in the life of an Entrepreneur?

Today, Technology is synonymous with information and it is because of Technology that we get the handful of information. And this information leads them to understand what is going on. Similarly, they also need to understand that how a small idea can be marketed. This is why innovators are different from Entrepreneurs. Innovators can be extremely smart coders but Entrepreneurs are those who can convert these coding ideas into something that can be marketed which converts into some revenue stream.

So, here, Technology is the game changer. The reason why we have this ‘Make in India’ Initiative is the result of Entrepreneurs.

How do you tell them to implement the inspiration that they have?

In some sense, I am not saying that you can create Entrepreneurs through classroom experiences and infact, there should not be a classroom experience. The curriculum should be designed in such a way that you actually step outside and do things.

Somebody who has this latent ability to become one, will leverage this can be much more bigger then he/she actually is.