How GST impact the wallet of the common man.

Since the passing of the GST Constitutional Bill by the Rajya Sabha in August last year, the country has been preparing itself for the new tax regime. The new GST law is India?s biggest tax reform initiative which is expected to improve compliance levels, increase government revenue in company registration in India and create a common playing field for businesses by amalgamating a host of central and local taxes.

On the face of it, GST seems to be a mixed bag with some of the necessities becoming cheaper, while the others might get more expensive. While in the longer run the Goods and Service Tax might have a favorable effect on most of the sectors of the economy, in the short run, as with the most of the reforms, the benefits seem to be limited. Based on the experience of GST implementation in other countries, India could observe an inflationary impact at the onset of the reform, which might fade away once the legislation sinks in.

The present rate of service tax is 15 percent and is applicable to most of the services, excluding essential ones like cultural activities, ambulance services, and certain pilgrimages and sports events. Under Goods and Service Tax, this rate would increase to 18 percent making the services more costly. For some goods like edible oil, textiles, etc. the excise duty is nil and the VAT in several states is 5 percent. Hence, the total cost of such goods is close to 8%-9%. With GST, the cost of such goods is likely to increase and this might put a hole in the budget of a common man to wholly owned subsidiary in India.

What is the skill of Entrepreneurship all about? Why startups are emerging like never before?

Following the suit of the 9am-5pm job becomes inevitably mundane over the period of time. While some learn to adjust and mould themselves accordingly, some breakthrough and opt for entrepreneurship. However, even if there are 100 individuals who decide to take the route of entrepreneurship there are merely 50 that succeed. Even though there are numerous external factors such as idea, market, competitors etc influence the stand of the start up yet there is one skill that affects everything majorly. The skill is known as – Entrepreneurship.

You may read a hundred thousand articles a day on entrepreneurship that shall guide you through the thick and thins of the business, however, what matters is that ingrained skill which nobody teaches you but you can learn it.

1.    Hocus Focus – A keen eye on detailing and an outstanding focus is the first key feature of the broader skill called entrepreneurship. An entrepreneur must make it a point to keep his focus upright. A 360-degree dedication and devotion lead to the favourable fruits. Whether your personal life is unhealthy or any other issue that is troublesome, there is no excuse to lose out upon focus especially when you are an entrepreneur.

2.    Managing people – One of the toughest tasks an organisation faces is to manage their people. While managing machinery is much easier, managing human is a feature that requires knack over understanding and a blend of compassion, empathy along with logical approach. If you as an entrepreneur make the employees feel as if they are an integral part of the organisation (which they obviously are) your half the battle is won already.

3.    Enthusiasm to learn – Even when you reach the top of the world there are still things that are left to be learnt. Numerous of us do not understand the significance of acquiring knowledge over money. Being an entrepreneur you must discern the importance of learning. Your every move, each failure, every day teaches you something or the other which might turn out to be advantageous 5 years down the line. Hence, never stop learning. Never. Ever. Ever.

4.    Regulating stress – There are times when stressful situations refuse to end and in such times only the ability to withhold yourself with patience is going to work in your favour. Every day is not a day of sun, there are times when it just rains with no sunshine around the corner and yet you should keep your plans preceding.

5.    Adaptability – Countless start-ups fail to mark their existence for longer simply because their inadequacy of matching with the volatile demands of the market. When the entrepreneur meticulously and briskly digs through the market researchers keeping its eye on every new trend it becomes uncomplicated to adapt. Being rigid to own ideas without adding the pigment of flexibility can lead you nowhere in the long run. A sheer balance between originality and adaptability has to be established.

As I was scrolling through the job portals I figured that in the clutter of big corporate and mediocre sized organisations there is a mushrooming trend of start ups. While some start ups do own a small place called office others merely operate virtually but that is not the point of discussion here. With the number of employees ranging from 2-20, these start ups, needless to say, are doing wonders in their own arena.

If we take advertising world, without a doubt Lintas, Ogilvy are some of the well established names that has earmarked their paces followed by other small agencies. However as the start up trend is taking its flight an arrangement of couple of copywriters, a couple of graphic designers, a client servicing executive, an accountant and one or two more people are sufficient to take a shape of startup advertising agency.

On dissecting the problem with our corporate work culture I believe there are multiple layers that turn out to be the influencing factor. However, what majorly makes an individual incline towards start up is the flexibility and space for experimenting. Being under the surveillance of corporate culture even the most capable and creative mind faces the lack of experimenting. On the contrary when an individual opens his or her own start up they can invest the same amount of energy that they used to put in their respective jobs and create something that they would call their “brainchild”

Another reason that was gauged through observation is the returns. It is not an unknown fact that monetary returns are pretty much higher when you own a start up in comparison with your slogging 9-5 job. But, here the non-monetary returns are much higher. When you work in the company shedding your blood and sweat only to see your managers taking the credit for everything that you have done you boil down to the point that putting efforts in a start up can certainly provide your non-monetary returns at a much higher level. The sense of fulfilment of being able to shape something that is “yours” is worth the perseverance you put day and night.

On the contrary, however, it is worth scanning that setting your foot in the startup trend is going to be much more demanding that your normal job. A life of an entrepreneur certainly is everything that his or her start up is. You cannot afford to take a break or move out of the focus for a period of time. You have to be there with an imperishable passion day in and out.

The startup trend is definitely a positive sign that is in a way contributing to the economy of the nation. With numerous of individuals eventually starting something of their own if are quite evident that being a nation we are the pool talented minds that are well versed with the ways of carefully channelizing it in the right direction.

Being an entrepreneur is ten times more demanding than your 9am-5pm job because here you are the master and the slave both.

Original Source: http://bit.ly/2gS2cK5

Startups and mentors: Experience never gets old

Robert De Niro and Anne Hathaway, through their movie, The Intern released in 2015, gave a very interesting lesson to startups and entrepreneurs all over the world.

The message was very simple – experience never gets old.

A majority of startups all over the world are founded by young men and women in their twenties and possibly in their early thirties. While the ideas are excellent and their energy levels are great, most startups start to falter within a couple of years because of poor/inadequate control systems, over aggressive scaling up, weak financial planning, insufficient focus on people management etc.

At the same time, thousands of senior managers are retiring from the corporate world at the young age of between 60 – 65 years after spending almost four decades in specialized and general management positions in major and smaller corporations yet, at this stage of their lives they clearly have at least another decade of work inside them. This aging and retirement of senior managers is happening in all parts of the world. These people know what it is like to run businesses and tackle the challenges of building businesses. They have functional expertise in finance and accounts, budgeting, packaging, branding, sales, human resources, governance, legal matters and general management.

Read also: Government proposed amendments in Income Tax

There is a huge opportunity to bring together the vision of the Startup Entrepreneur and the experience of the older manager in an unobtrusive and non-threatening manner. Not every senior manager has the energy or the risk taking capability to start off on their own. The older managers, in the twilight of their careers, are not yet ready to hang up their gloves. They are looking to stay occupied, earn some money (which could be in the form an equity option as well) and give back their life’s learnings. Further, these senior citizens will be much more stable for a startup – they will not resign and walk away in a hurry because they did not like the way they may have been spoken to or because another exciting opportunity has come up.

In addition to watching the back of the startup entrepreneur and guiding them when the ship hits troubled waters, such individuals will also bring in strong subject matter knowledge, from the domains these senior citizens would have spent decades working in, they will also bring to the table their knowledge gained through several years of experience in some of the areas outlined below.

1. Good Governance Practices – All Startups should normally be started with the objective of building a strong and stable business which can mature into an institution. A strong senior partner will ensure that the entrepreneur will build good governance and transparent practices in the organization. Even something as mundane as ensuring board meetings are held on time and minutes are properly recorded is an area where startups have been known to slip up. This comment would not apply to those entrepreneurs who are looking to create a valuation and then flip the company to someone else.

2. Fund Raising – While most startups are looking for funding from Angel Investors and Private Equity Investors, there is a large domain of raising funds from banks though debt and working capital financing. A good finance senior citizen will bring in much-needed contacts and experience to reach out to the banking system.

Read also: Investment Solutions for NRI 

3. External Relations – Most businesses, irrespective of the sector they are addressing, need a strong connect with the external world. These connections could be with bureaucrats, politicians, environmental activists or the local councilor. A strong and experienced senior citizen will have the patience to handle these external challenges. This could also include developing a strong public relations contact programme with the print and visual media –while another group of people would handle the social media contact base.

4. Legal Processes – In addition to hiring legal help during formation and fund raising, most businesses are faced with a lot of legal challenges. Once again, an older and more experienced manager will bring wisdom in handling such matters – which cases to pursue and which ones to drop is a critical decision to save valuable managerial time, resources and of course, money.

5. Playbook / Standard Operating Procedures – In the hurry to get started, very often standard operating procedures get lost in the detail. These need to put in place very early in the game so that mistakes are not repeated. An experienced manager tasked with this will be able to put in place such a manual / playbook that would serve the company well into the long term.

Having mentored several startup entrepreneurs, I have seen the value a person who has “been there done that” can provide to a startup entrepreneur. For the entrepreneur, it is a very lonely job and there are very few people he can trust (other than a co-founder). Most young entrepreneurs need a sounding board in a non-threatening manner with someone who has no agenda with the individual or the business.

I have often said that the combination of young energetic legs with grey hair would be a win-win combination for all Startups. To draw a parallel from hockey or football, the entrepreneur is the centre forward rushing to shoot goals and win while the older manager is the goalkeeper who will protect the companies turf and ensure that self-goals are not scored!

What is important for both the parties is to mutually select the right set of individuals. What is important is to develop mutual trust and confidence between the two individuals to build a win-win combination for the success of the business.

For more information: http://bit.ly/2gSFKOA