The Lady Entrepreneur’s wing of Vidarbha Industries Association had organized a program titled ‘ The Life of an Immigrant Entrepreneur and the challenges of International Business’ a session by Alpa Agrawal , an Indian origin young Entrepreneur, based at Ireland , who is doing phenomenally doing well in the Cork Island through her business Allmin Resources Ireland Ltd. A Chemical Engineer by profession, Alpa had migrated to Ireland for higher studies. According to her while in Ireland she realized that the country offered a plethora of opportunity for Entrepreneurs and Start ups due to the Government Policies and the low rate of taxation. Looking at the opportunities, she plunged into business in Cork Island through her company Allmin Resources which provides a complete solution to the entire procurement process. Her company essentially validates the manufacturing facilities, rigorously test the products and handles logistics and packaging in order to deliver the product at the door step of the customer. With a turnover of over $ 1.5million, Allmin Resources has its presence in SE Asia, Middle East, Poland Bulgaria, Turkey, Italy Czech Republic etc.
Sharing her success story, Alpa elaborated that Ireland has a good Entrepreneurial ecosystem, which gave her the courage to straightaway get into selling by finding out what exactly the customer wants. This gave her a head way in business and she also kept her focus on technical knowhow, price, quality and maintained a high credibility in the market. However all this was not easy as she had to face several setback for nearly 8 months. But Alpa refused to give up and she made use of all her resources to bounce back to do well in business. This eventually led to success and she bagged the ‘Business of the Year Award in 2016 by the Bank of Ireland. Since then Alpa has been featured regularly in leading newspapers, judged various events, conducted several talk shows and featured in TV shows as a panellist.
Alpa has advised the young entrepreneurs is that they must try to find suitable mentor to get a proper guidance in business. She believes that one should focus on one thing at a time and really get it right. She immensely appreciated the encouragement the incubation space offered to budding entrepreneurs especially as Entrepreneurship is a lonely journey. She advised Start ups to have a firm grip on finance and keep the focus totally on sales as it is the heart of any business. Alpa feel that at the beginning stage of business on should not build up too much of liability, but try and outsource as much as possible. She firmly believes in the importance of networking for scaling up business activities.
Alpa also explained the nuance of Export procedure including the export documentation and also the rules and regulation governing exports. She stressed the fact that Exports is the natural progression for all manufactures as it helps in faster scaling up.
Earlier Founder of Think Value creations Pvt Ltd, Baldev Singh Rawat spoke on the ‘10 mistakes Start ups should avoid’ in their business. According any idea for business should be appropriately validated and extensive market research should be conducted before starting a business. He advised the start up to not get caught in false PR image that gets created and eventually fall flat on the face later. He said that start ups should have a resource based planning and understand the needs of the business. Rawat strongly advocated the concept of KRA (Key Responsibility Areas) even for the founders as this is one of the biggest reasons why start ups fail. According to him Entrepreneurs are basically mitigates risk and there is absolutely no harm in demoting oneself to stay happy in life. Rawat further spoke on the importance of finding out what you don’t know and correct all such drawbacks. To be successful, he said that you must have a sound business plan and must know your clients.
At the outset, in her opening remarks VIA LEW Chairperson Reeta Lanjewar spoke about the initiative taken by LEW to promote Entrepreneurship among women by organizing various sessions and talk shows and by holding competitions for women entrepreneurs. She also informed the house about the forthcoming program in March, on International Women’s day The guest speakers were accorded warm welcome by the chairperson and by Past President Mrs Prafullata Rode. Mementos were presented to the speakers by past presidents Vandana Sharma and Shachi Mallik. Shri Ashit Sinha , senior member VIA, summed up the proceedings. The program was conducted by Past President Anita Rao. Also present in the program were Past president Chitra Parate and Mitali Rafiq. The program was largely attended by students, Start ups, Entrepreneurs and other members and concluded with an interactive question and answer session.
