Being employed is no longer the trend. Living your passion and chasing your dreams is the thing to do! It isn’t easy for someone who is just starting out but thanks to the Internet, the virtual world is turning out to be a DIY (Do It Yourself) guide. Online groups like Headstart, Pluggdin, Sbuzz, Bangalore Open Coffee Club (OCC) and PurpleMango are just a few of them who are being the good samaritans helping these entrepreneurs.
Their idea is “to create thriving entrepreneurial ecosystems”, says OCC, Bengaluru. These groups help individuals network and get their queries answered online. Sometimes they even organise events that are publicised on social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and others. Participants meet, discuss and help out each other to tackle these routine problems. But most of the networking and discussions happen online. “Every Tuesday at 7pm, Sbuzz conducts a virtual conference call. It is lot of fun to listen, discuss issues and get cracking. Most queries get answered, whether financial, legal or human resource related. It started with eight people but now close to 80 people are on the conference call each time,” says Mukund Mohan, participant and mentor to young entrepreneurs.
Whether it is help with hiring, registration, finance or getting advice, just by joining one of these groups you get access to a world where all your problems are solved. “We have close to 4,000 members on our Google group. Not just existing problems, new business and product ideas are discussed too. Physical boundaries are not a constraint. Somebody in Bengaluru who wanted to start a venture in Canada, got advice on the legalities, local networking, overseas formalities online,” says Jyoti Ramnath, Bengaluru lead, Headstart.
It gets easy to find solutions online, “It is getting more and more relevant. Whichever business you start, the problems you face initially are the same. On the Internet, it becomes easy to identify such similar groups that deal with these problems,” says Rajiv Mathew, key member of a support group