Entrepreneur Spotlight: My Grand-dad :)

DigiWhirl has recently entered its third year of operations and since sometime now I feel I have done a decent bit of challenging work to consider myself an entrepreneur. I have also been noticing that there are so many entrepreneurs around me, I never really thought much between job and running your own company until now. So decided to write about these people, and the first one I decided should be my grand-dad – Bipin !!

My grand-dad is the eldest of three sons who left their Gujarat home town of Bharuch and came to Mumbai post their education. He successfully ran a business for many years and his is a rags to riches story. Being a common village boy with a sliver of land back in the village he grew his business sucesfully enough to be a decently wealthy south mumbai resident!

Business: Selling novel goods to interested parties.

How did you start your business?

I was a cotton salesman and visited many big companies as part of my job. During one of my visits to Raymonds I met Mr. Singhania – the owner of the company. He was fond of certain novelty pens and other products. He was looking out to buy more of such stuff. I had a contact who sold these things and thus I made my first sales! The profit was a lot more than my job, so just continued on this new line of work from then on!

How did you sustain your business?

Customers kept coming via word of mouth. Never needed any other form of marketing.

Business secret: gave the customers products without collecting money at the time. I would collect the money later, sometimes even after months! Hence, they would only buy from me and no one else. Others would insist on money there and then!

Advise to other entrepreneurs

Tell all your contacts about your business, on its own work will start coming in!

Grand-dad is 85+ currently. I love his business secret – collect money whenever client wants to pay! Over here we all keep breaking our head on timely payment but how does it affect our business?