Every Last Thursday of the Gregorian month, Bikalpa – an Alternative jointly organizes the “Last Thursday’s” event at Biratnagar in collaboration with Hotel Namaskar, Makalu Television, Nepal Youth Entrepreneur Forum (NYEF), Biratnagar International College and with the support of Atlas Network. The objective of the program is to disseminate the ideas and knowledge about entrepreneurship through the personal sharing of successful entrepreneurs. Also, the program creates an opportunity to do networking and share ideas among the participants.
The 50th Last Thursday with an Entrepreneur was held on November 28 , 2019 Biratnagar. The Guest Speaker for the program was Mr. Mahesh Jaju, who is the Managing Director of Asian Thai Foods Pvt.Ltd.
Mr. Mahesh Jaju shared his personal story on the journey of his entrepreneurship. He was born and raised in Biratnagar and also completed his schooling and college at the same place. From early teen, he was compelled to look after his family business as a cloth trader. He reminisced the Royal family visit at his shop 3 decades ago as members of the royal family used to visit his shop to buy new clothes. Also, at some point of time, his clothing business was the most reputed one in Biratnagar. However, Mr. Jaju had other plans in his life. “I always wanted to be an Industrialist and loathed my traditional family business. Due to lack of capital, it was impossible for me to take the risk at that time. Later on, I partnered with my brother-in-law and set up our own Industry and named it Quality Biscuits Pvt. Ltd. I was only 21 years at that time“, he recalled. He also said that for seven years their industry made no profit. “So, I learned from there that starting a business takes courage, and hanging onto it till it succeeds requires even greater courage and patience.”
Secondly, he also shared about his Asian Thai Foods business industry. He told that in the beginning phase, there were only three staffs which has currently risen to include four hundred fifty distributors and two hundred fifty sales personnel throughout the country. According to him, he also has distributors outside the country and his noodle brand, Rumpum, is able to garner a good brand-image outside the nation. He also shared about his experience from this. “The biggest learning for me is that the kind of person I have become is the direct result of starting a business. Many entrepreneurs give up too early in the journey or didn’t take their time to find out what the market wanted. There are dozens of Ideas, and having a great idea doesn’t mean it will succeed. You might have a passion for your product or service but you need to learn the crucial skills required to run a business. Also, always remain open minded so that you can make things work the way you want them to work.” he shared. From his experience in business, he also diversified his focus into building brand of the product. He stressed on the importance of building a brand. “Build a great brand! For yourself as well as your business. Today, brands are more important because trust is at an all-time low. If you can create a brand that people trust and recommend, you’ll always have customers.”
The other thing he stressed about was the need for the government to make conducive environment for the industries and businesses to flourish, and only then would we be able to retain the youths leaving this country to work aboard as laborers.
Jaju concluded his experience sharing by saying that to be successful, people need to take risk and perform their karma. From his initial failure as an industrialist, he learned that there was risk everywhere. And he knew that he was a risk-taker. ”Thus, I didn’t see entrepreneurship as very risky because I see risk in everything. Luck is not everything. It will always work out if we perform our karma. The most important thing to possess is the passion and vision to become an entrepreneur, because it is not going to be an easy journey.”
After he finished talking about entrepreneurship, he took in questions from the audience as well. The audience, eager to participate, asked insightful questions. More than 96 people attended the event held at Hotel Namaskar Biratnagar.
