Story#40 : The Business Consultant
It was in the middle of his graduation, Prasad was bitten by the entrepreneurship bug. It doesn’t have anything to do with his falling grades. He just got inspired by the stories of Bill Gates, Ambani and others.
As most of the entrepreneurs were college dropouts, he decided that, it is the right thing to start with. He dropped himself out from college. He had the will, the boiling blood, aggression and a knack for business. The only thing he didn’t have was the capital. But, he was sure he can compensate that with his brain.
Now, if I don’t describe Prasad’s background, it will be a gross injustice. Prasad was born in “Lower Poor Class” family. No.. it is not a mistake. If “Middle” class can have “Upper, Middle and Lower” sub classes, why can’t “Poor” class have such luxury?
In essence, Prasad was very poor. His father, Das was a “parrot astrologist”. That qualification doesn’t disqualify him from other professions. Das was also a milkman, a paper man, an agriculture specialist, a country doctor, a porter … you name it.
His profession changed season to season and sometimes, many avatars on a single day. Prasad got his camouflaging ability genetically from his father. But, Das in particular was not so happy with his life. He wanted Prasad to have a better life. That’s why Das sent his son to school. Fortunately, Prasad was his only son.
Prasad’s mother was a housewife. She had a part-time job of “scolding” Das whenever he is at home. Remaining time she kept herself busy by dreaming about Prasad. She was sure that, her son is a gem. Even though Prasad had his doubts whether he is a gem, he played along with his mother’s imaginations.
As the decision to stop study will not be accepted in an amicable manner at his house, Prasad decided to keep it to himself. After all, that will allow him to keep asking money to his father, just incase, if he incur some capital expenditure.
Also, he made sure that, he will start the Entrepreneurship at a faraway place where his parents will never be able to reach. He lied at his house that, he is going pursue further (not ‘higher’) studies in a faraway city.
So, Mr. Entrepreneur had a discussion with his friends and decided that, the best business to start is the pirated CDs. The capital requirement is very less. Only one internet connection, one computer, few CDs and a human network is all what he need to start the business.
The street children became his human network. Prasad managed them. He was a savior for the street children who were deprived of online porn unlike their rich counterparts. Prasad managed to repair an abandoned house and created a small room which became his office.
He started his Entrepreneurial venture from there. To create the initial capital, he downloaded the porn movies and allowed the street children to watch it in his office, for a premium price. Over a period of 3 months, he repaid the money spent on computer, internet connection etc. Then he started cutting CDs of the same porn movies.
It is time to expand business. He started employing the same street children to record the movie from theaters and cut CDs of new movies. This was an instant hit and the business grew.
Later he started giving commission to the theatre operators and recorded movies through them, and thereby cut off the middlemen. His business grew and he bought a bike. He moved to a rented shop and started making real business.
Initially his business didn’t attract any attention, but when business grew, he got enemies. One day police raided his place and Prasad was behind bars. He was there for 2 months. The police waited for somebody to come, pay the money and release him. But, nobody came. When Prasad’s parents came to know about him, they abandoned him. So, police lost interest and released him, after taking all the CDs.
The hallmark of a good businessman is, he will never fail to try. This time Prasad decided to serve the people by supplying country liquor. He found his suppliers and customers and he linked them. The premium he charged was good enough for him to get a decent earning. That is when his business mind started performing again.
He approached the 3 star and 5 star bars and offered them country liquor in foreign bottle for half the price. They took the bait and soon Prasad had his “old bottle recycling factory”. He employed 5 woman who will clean the old bottles in the day and 5 men who will fill and sticker the bottles in night.
Again the business flourished and Prasad earned enemies. This time, the business buster was not normal police, but excise department special police. Again, nobody came to free him and police let him off after few days. Of course, their treatment to him as their punching bag had a lasting effect on Prasad.
Out of the jail, Prasad started a clinic. He paid money to get some fake degrees and Prasad became Dr.Prasad. Luck was with him. Prasad never gave prescriptions to his patients on the same day of appointment. He will ask the patients to come next day to collect prescriptions and medicines.
That gave him a night’s time and he goes to different medical stores and asked for medicines for specific illness. The pharmacists who were in the trade for years always gave him the right medicine and Prasad promptly prescribed those medicines to his patients.
His business grew and the enemies. This time, villain was a small hospital who lost their customers to Prasad. Prasad’s clinic was raided and he was again arrested.
Prasad’s ventures continued and by the age of 30, he tried his luck on the business like cigarettes, pan masala, old books, new books, country liquor, CDs and movies, quotation, fish, chicken, mutton, beef, footwear, readymade, bakery, handicraft, cooling glasses, smuggled articles from gulf, salt, old paper, Tupperware etc..etc…
Every business flourished, but was shot down by enemies. That is when Prasad decided that, entrepreneurship is not his cup of tea. He decided quit and thought of working as an employee.
And that was when he met Gokul. Gokul was running a chain of readymade shops and he was in loss. He was bankrupt and was about to shut down his business. They met in a local bar and Gokul told Prasad about his problem. He promised 10% of the profit if Prasad can revive his business. Prasad accepted the challenge.
Prasad’s business mind woke up again. He decided to en-cash Gokul’s current situation. Next day, on all the shops of Gokul, a new board was placed which read like this..
“Gokul Ready-mades going out of business soon. Clearance sale in progress”
Then Prasad asked Gokul to replace the price sticker with 3 times prices on each item sold there. Then he asked to sell the items for 40% of the listed price. In a week, everything was sold. Gokul bought new stocks and that was also sold. In 6 weeks, Gokul made profit to the tune of 80 lakhs and he awarded 10 lakh to Prasad. Then Gokul introduced him to other business people. That’s when Prasad understood that, his call is to become a business consultant.
Over next few months Prasad revived the following business..
1. A “Thambakku” seller was advised to sell the same under a different banner saying it contains “Kesri” and get it advertised with a movie star
2. A drug supplier who was chased by narcotics was advised to start and Ashram and become a Godman.
3. A blade company which was about to bust, was asked to change into as Share trading company with a lock-in period of one year
4. A massage parlor was asked to change to Ayurvedic treatment center
5. A vegetable shop chain was asked to change the name to “Organic & Healthy” and sell the same old poisoned vegetables after applying little mud on the items so that, they will look like, bought from farm directly
6. The owner of a packaged food supplier was asked to wear dress of a Yogi and talk about Yoga more than his products and add “Herbal” in front of every product name
7. A publishing house was advised to start a self-publishing business where the aspiring writers will pay all the money including the publisher’s profit
8. An school was asked to rename it into a Sanskrit name and asked to conduct classes under trees instead of classrooms
9. A printing owner was asked propagate a message which as the reader to print 1000 copies of the same notice, else, God will punish him.
10. A mobile company was advised to drop calls deliberately so that, again the call will be done as the tariff was calculated based on number of calls.
11. ….
12. ….
In all these endeavors, Prasad took a cut of 10-20% profit. Soon he had a few crores in his account. With that, Prasad employed a small team of MBA graduates and they started giving proper advices to the business people. Prasad morphed some of his employees’ degree certificates and created his own. He opened an office and registered his company.
He advertised his success through media and the business owners whom he helped, vouched for his expertise. Soon, he was called for guest lectures in premier business schools across the world. But, Prasad insisted to talk only in his mother tongue. This was taken as his patriotism and love of language. It was even more celebrated by the media.
Today Prasad has honorary doctorates from 14 universities in India and abroad. He travels around the world in first class. He own s MBA College. He has got business consultancy offices in 372 locations across the globe. Next year, on his 49th birthday, he is going to contest in election. If he wins, he will be the finance minister.
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Biju Vargheese (Pazhayedathu Paramban)
