Go(a)-getter youth prefer to open own shop

Gone are the days when people used to believe that government jobs are the best. With information flowing in easily and young graduates armoured with more risk-taking abilities, entrepreneurship is on the rise. If we look at Goa about two decades back, there were few people who started their own entreprise. But over a period of time the interest among the youth to venture into entrepreneurship has drastically grown. 

“This is a very welcome change. Parents who are into service industry (government jobs) tend not to encourage the children into entrepreneurship. However, I believe that now things have changed,” said the Raj Kumar Kamat, Managing Trustee of GEMS and Executive Director of BNI. 

The prime reasons which seems to have pushed this trend further are; (A) The parents of today are having enough money to fuel their children into entrepreneurship; (B) The youth are exposed to various courses and vocations which helps them understand their business plan; (C) In the last two years this trend has escalated because of the start-up hype and (D) Due to information technology development, youth are getting huge amount of guidance through the Internet, with success stories.

“The emergence of NGOs has helped in entrepreneur creation. We have CIBA, GEMS etc. GEMS have started a Biz Club at five institutions like RIT College, Government Polytechnique, ITI Bicholim etc. On September 1 onwards this club will start functioning. The idea is to initiate interests among the students when they are in the college itself. We plan to spread it to 20 institutions by the next academic year. This will create more entrepreneurship. This will also include making their parents aware,” said Raj Kumar Kamat.

If we take a closer look, for the past one year in Goa, there seems to have been a spate of business ideas flowing in and most of them are either coming from the students or young graduates. “Most of these ideas are not technology related but brick and mortar ones that aim at solving day-to-day problems in Goan society. From garbage recyling to senior care to bicycle rentals,” said Rajula Gupta, lead mentor of CIBA.

Local organisations like GEMS, CIBA, GITIC, GEIT and ICreate conduct regular programme in schools and colleges to train students to explore their potential in starting their own business. Even the State government is encouraging the young people by providing them platforms for competition and incubation centers. 

“Since its inception, CIBA has been a very active hub for the student start-up community in Goa. All throughout the year, CIBA conducts entrepreneurship workshops in schools and colleges all across Goa. Every year more than 2000 entrepreneurs with an average age of 30, visit CIBA centers to seek advice and directions from their in-house experts. This is a very healthy trend and it helps us understand how the young community in Goa is emerging,” said Rajula Gupta. 

There are examples which are well within the boundaries of Goa where people could have easily gone for a ‘cozy’ government job but chose to opt otherwise. Lucio J Mesquita an electronics engineer who graduated from PCC Engineering College in Goa is one such person. 

“We had that “Keeda” (worm) to do something of our own. In government jobs there is very less appreciation of meritocracy and people there grow on seniority basis, whether capable or not. Merit hardly gets a chance to overcome a ‘senior’. So, I thought to get ahead of the curve was to use our talent,” said Lucio Mesquita, CEO and Director Homdroid.

Similarly, Ajay Naik a computer engineer from Bangaluru who is now doing business in Goa feels that, “It is difficult to do something inside the system of government as the system is too corrupt. So I took the private way and I could achieve a lot because we do not have crab culture in business. And not only do we achieve our dreams but we also managed to give something back to the society at a very young age.”