Jugaad Inc: Evolution of Frugal Entrepreneurship and Lean Start Ups

Introduction

As with the time people have evolved thus their needs. An entrepreneur is someone who works with the objective of bridging the gap of need and availability; hence it is natural that they also evolve with changing time. Entrepreneurs have been around since there was some need unfulfilled or some advancement seemed possible. They work with the idea of adding efficiency and simplifying life. To commence a discussion on entrepreneurship, it is necessary to answer two basic questions. Who is an entrepreneur and how are they different from businessmen? The difference would lie in the objective they frame in their mind and parameter on which they adjudge their success. Once that is set, we could move ahead talking about the evolution over time. For convenience sake, we can assume a time line marked with other historical events and evaluate the evolution at all these junctures. In recent time, specially post liberalization and recent global slowdown, we have seen a sudden surge in number of people turning to entrepreneurship. This has forced the whole entrepreneurial environment to change radically. A lot of concepts and practices are born to understand the practices the multitude of first generation entrepreneurs are bringing in. Start up, venture capitalist, equity pitch and taking the plunge has become the new buzz words. What was earlier considered as a choice to make when all other doors are close; has now become probably the most respected career choice. Barriers have always been there for most who decided to take a plunge and they still are. So, what could be the reason of this changing scenario? While the barriers mostly remains as they were, new age entrepreneurs found a way around them. Frugal entrepreneurship & lean startup is a couple of new age terms defining approach taken by first generation entrepreneurs to stay competitive in the market with the minimal cost or fund they could arrange for. Though the concepts were born out of approach taken by few enthusiastic and prudent entrepreneurs, it has also become a reason for a lot of people considering taking a plunge. A wheel has been set in motion, but now the question rises in wake of a lot of traditional business housed not doing well and most of startups closing down in first couple of years; are these new approaches really a torch bearer to the future or just a short term hysteria working just on speculative success of model? Such examination can be done only by doing a comparative study of new organizations and developing a frame work which could evaluate them.