An interactive session on Entrepreneurship and its highs and lows with Mamta Mamta
Introduction
Mamta Mamta, an entrepreneur with over 30 years of business experience, shared the experiences and challenges she faced in the area of entrepreneurship. She has inspired and empowered many women entrepreneurs to pursue their dreams. She believes in the Blue Ocean Theory and strives to take everyone along in her journey.
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History-Present
In college, Mamta studied textile design. In 1984, she decided to venture into business. She has since run four businesses- the first lasted for 20 years, the second 2 years, the third 3 years and the fourth business is in operation having completed 2 years. She hopes that this fourth business will be her last. But according to Mamta, the most important thing is that she has enjoyed what she has been doing for the last 30 years.
Her latest business facilitates startups. Currently, her business has facilitated 60 startups, most of which are run by women entrepreneurs. Mamta started this business as she recognizes the risks involved in starting a business and is keen to help other entrepreneurs on similar journeys. She has lost much capital after four business ventures but takes that as valuable lesson along the path.
Business Finance and Funding
When asked about funding, Mamta was clear that her preferred means was crowdfunding. However, she has had experience with obtaining loans from banks and pointed out the most banks have loan schemes for women. While answering a lot of personal queries she emphasized on having a sound Business Plan in place as well as to know how to present herself to the bank.
Mamta touched upon many reasons for a business to fail. However, she does not consider any business a failure. Everything paves way for new and better opportunities.
Business Advice
It being an interactive session, Mamta gave her point of view on challenges many budding women entrepreneurs put in front of her. That included information on legalities, rules and procedures, business and common sense.
Mamta cautioned that “no brand will give you income in the beginning” so it is important for one to be committed if one is to succeed. The initial years would require much capital outlay with little income from the brand.
When probed on how she manages her time, Mamta believes it is discipline. She offers training and mentoring for others in her spare time.
Social Media and its Uses
“I am because of social media.”
In Mamta’s words, social media affects everything in a business. She started out with Ryze Networking in May 2004. Fascinated by the prospects of such a wonderful social media tool, Mamta spent lots of time to update her company’s profile and to connect with other companies on such sites. She spent so many hours doing so that she was sometimes blocked for exceeding the daily limit of online interactions. She believes that an entrepreneur needs to take time to read what other companies/entrepreneurs do so that they have a common topic to connect.
Since then, Mamta has used social media extensively and has also attended numerous networking events. She remarked that she networks for an estimated 4 hours a day. In her words, it is important to “build a network before you need a network”. She has met over 1500 people in last 3 years. Mamta is mainly focussing on FaceBook now and she encourages young entrepreneurs to spend a minimum of 2 hours a day on social media.
