Every student once a while in college dreams of having his/her own company because to own and work for a company can not match the satisfaction and rewards of a regular job.

The reality is far from the cozy comforts of dreams. It requires a strong will power and determination to think and actually start a business of your own. Business is all about risk. So if one is willing to take risk he/she is already on the path of becoming an entrepreneur. Taking risk is not essential to start but to identify the amount and subsequently taking calculated risk is the important parameter in determining your success.

The college period is the ideal place to start any business because it is the right time when your assets are maximum and your liabilities are minimum. By assets it means you have vast resources and facilities available to you in the form of friends, professors, laboratories, internet etc. which you can utilize fully without creating a burden on your modest financial status. It is the time when you are young full of passion and energy, with your parents ready to support you. You do not have any thing to loose much, but once you are married and reach you thirty's you will have lot more things in your mind then to think of starting a business. You would be less reluctant to take risk and would lack energy and enthusiasm to start something new. So your liabilities are lowest in college.

To start a business you must have a solid business plan and an idea to sell. Without a selling idea you cannot think of making a long way in sustaining the business. You must have a clear vision of what you are doing and what do you want to achieve in you efforts. You must partner with some body that is comfortable with you and trusted as well because it is much easier to continue with some body then alone. Your partner will help you in taking important decisions and correcting you while you are wrong and in additionyou can use his/her valuable business network. The partner can be any i.e. you parents, friends and not necessarily your college buddies.

You must be ready to work hard and unless you are already working hard you should not think of diving into entrepreneurship. To successfully take the business to new heights you should continuously refine yourself on every aspect of business i.e. from managing the business, taking care of finances, sales, accounts etc to making solid business network among the friends, relatives, and people in your and different businesses.

At the end I would strongly encourage you to seriously think and of course dream of becoming an entrepreneur as early as possible and in college itself because it would not only help in making you richer financially but richer in every other sense. The experience, knowledge, network that you would gain would be far more in quantity and quality wise then material gains.

Written By: Lokesh Gupta
lgupta@eugenictechnologies.com