I have seen some really weird excuses from Bong for not trying entrepreneurship. So let me share the top excuses. No 4 will blow your mind.
Be it in my job or when I visited some B-Schools for promoting entrepreneurship through NEN or be it on a cup of coffee with some college friends or co-workers of ex-employers or be it in the famous Adda of Kolkata. I have seen some bizarre excuses from Bong for not trying to be an entrepreneur.
So without much ado, let me share the top excuses that I have seen from my Bengali friends for not considering entrepreneurship.
1. I have a loan
The most common excuse from a Bong working in “Salt Lake Sector V” for not being an entrepreneur is always the loan.
If you talk to a person employed in a good technology company for 3 to 4 years in Kolkata, he has a loan. After passing out, the priority of a Bengali is to get a job, and once he has a job, it is Badi (house or flat these days) and Gadi (Car). Everybody I have met with under 5 years of experience has either a home loan or a personal loan(For marriage), or an auto loan.
The loan is a social trap. If your friend books a new flat, you tend to be doing the same as well. The same thing goes for the car. If you are moved by these social traps so early in your career, you will have a tough time as an entrepreneur. Once you have a loan, I know it isn’t easy to be an entrepreneur. However, it has a loan not to be an entrepreneur, or it is just an excuse.
I found it to be just an excuse because many of them had loan amounts to pay off in a year or two.
To date, they have the loan either the same one or maybe in a different form like they have paid off the home loan and now have an auto loan, or they have paid the old auto loan and now have a new auto loan the new car.
If they were serious about entrepreneurship, they could have avoided the second loan.
So it is more of an excuse.
2. I have a very stable Job (Or an onsite opportunity)
It could be that my colleagues had a stable job, or it is that my Bong friends are all well settled in jobs.
Some of them are still working in the same company, and it may not be a decade working in the same company, which suggests it is quite a stable job.
But if you look at an employee’s career graph, it is bound to get into a stable job after, say 2 or 3 switches. Normally people don’t change companies; they change managers, so you are bound to be into a stable job in a few years.
Is it an excuse or just yet another reason? I think there is a hidden meaning of a stable job, which is an excuse.
It is more like “I am scared of failure.”
If I do it and if it does not work the way I want it to be and if I had to get to a job, I don’t want to be wasting another 4 years to get another stable job.
If you are with the same person, he may be complaining about the politics he is facing in the job. So actually, it is fear of failure. That is an excuse.
3. Business needs capital, and I don’t have one
Wow. Looks so true.
So if you follow up with the next question like what kind of business are you talking about? What kind of capital do you need?
The answer will shock you, which is every business.
I have shared how you can start an online business without investing a single penny, and they say they don’t want to be doing those.
Another excuse is that your answer would have been something different from every business if you had considered some business.
4. Bengali’s don’t have entrepreneurship in their DNA
Being from Gujarat, I get this as an answer quite often. However, some degree of variation as an excuse from a bong for being an entrepreneur and entrepreneurship.
I have a unique answer to this because it is much easier for a Bengali to do business than for a Marwadi or a Gujarati.
I remember this was asked in a discussion panel in one of the B-School. So I asked the person what kind of salary you expect after he passes out of this college.
He says in the range of 30k to 40k per month. So that is under 500,000 per year.
So I asked him if he has to take up entrepreneurship, he will have to make anything above 500,000 per year to convince his family.
He agreed.
I asked him that for a Marwadi or Gujarati if the person joins the family business, he could easily make double or triple what you would expect in your job. So yours is an expectation, and for him, it is guaranteed. So now what you think will be more difficult; Convince Bengali family or Marwadi and Gujarati?
So actually, it is nothing to do with DNA or anything, but it is all in mind.
5. The environment is not suitable for entrepreneurship
My friends are more related to the technology sector. So if I ask them, is the environment suitable for a job?
The answer is always hmmm.
Everybody knows that the job market is getting tougher and tougher. Once you move higher in an organization, you have more chances of being sacked because your output may not increase at the rate you expect your salary. So you may be offered a position that you may not like to be working on, and it is very little you can do anything about it anyway.
So if you expect someone will serve you on a silver platter an opportunity of a lifetime to be an entrepreneur, you are asking for too much.
Conclusion
There can be 100 reasons, but not a single excuse. Humans, by nature, are full of excuses, and excuses for entrepreneurship are everywhere. See it in the article here at entrepreneur.com. So if Bong has an excuse for not being an entrepreneur, there is nothing wrong with it.
