For the entrepreneur in you

Most people are happy to work for someone else.

Why should it be that way? Does it have to continue to be that way?

Not if Nandini Vaidyanathan has something to do with it.

Professor Vaidyanathan, who not only teaches entrepreneurship but who has also mentored more than 600 entrepreneurs, has now published what she calls a step-by-step guide to becoming an entrepreneur in India. In Entrepedia, Prof. Vaidyanathan addresses — and offers expert advice on — the issues that can bewilder those who are contemplating a dip into entrepreneurial waters for the first time:

• Why should I be an entrepreneur?
• Where will I get my business ideas from?
• Why do I need a mentor and where will I find one?
• How will I hire good teams when I don't have the money to pay them market rates?
• What is a business plan, why should I write it, how should I write it?
• What are the different ways in which I raise money for my business?

Shorn of jargon and written in easy-to-understand language, Entrepedia is designed to be your pocket mentor, writes Prof. Vaidyanathan. "What I would love to see," she says, "is that it is on the bedside of every aspiring and practising entrepreneur, in every nook and cranny of India, dog-eared, heavily annotated, and looking like every inch like it belongs in your life."

I have never given serious thought to setting up a business of my own. But after delving into Entrepedia I can't help but wonder. If this book had existed when I was younger (much younger, mind you), would I be a media baron today? The mind boggles at the thought.

It may be too late for me, but it's not late at all for those bitten by the entrepreneurial book to take a leaf out of Nandini Vaidyanathan's timely book.

• AN INTERESTING ASIDE: The illustrations in Entrepedia are the work of Commitscion Rachna Prabhu (Class of 2008), who is a professional book illustrator. Read up on Rachna's long-drawn affair with illustrations here.