Spirit Of Entrepreneurship

In the second part of our series, the Mentors, we meet Manish Gupta, a business coach and mentor who’s leading the cause of empowering entrepreneurs in India.

India’s start-up story is nothing less than a fairytale. Not many nations today enjoy a more colourful portfolio than India when it comes to start-ups. Yes, there are success stories and there are failures, but that isn’t stopping Indians from ditching their 9-5 jobs and trying to make a mark on the world stage. In fact, it shouldn’t even come as a surprise that a growing number of Indians are now becoming entrepreneurs, as historically, India was a nation full of entrepreneurs.

“India, once upon a time, was called the Golden Bird and it was mainly because we were an entrepreneurial community across the country,” says Manish Gupta, a renowned business coach and mentor. While gardening in the backyard of his home in Pune, he persists that “back when there were no jobs, people were either into farming or entrepreneurship, and we were the ones supplying spices, silk and cotton to the world. It was also the time when India’s contribution to the world GDP was more than 22 per cent, whereas today, it stands at two.”

Now that’s a disturbing figure, however, Manish is slowly and steadily trying to spread the spirit of entrepreneurship that can help make India great again. It all started back in 1997, where he started his humble beginnings by taking up a franchise of a company that was into training and development programmes on sales, marketing and various aspects of self improvement. One fine day, a classroom full of corporate executives and an absconding faculty gave Manish his first taste of interaction with people, where he shared his own experience in sales and marketing. There was an instant connect and there’s been no looking back. Manish went on to become a corporate trainer for business coaching and entrepreneurial mentoring.