Mr. Vishal Devanath
Co-Founder and CEO, SMERGERS"With experience across technology, consulting, and investment banking, Vishal has built his career at the intersection of entrepreneurship and finance. Prior to founding SMERGERS, he worked in software engineering at National Instruments, strategy consulting at PwC India, and technology and outsourcing M&A at Avendus Capital. "
What Is It to Be an Entrepreneur?
Elon Musk. Steve Jobs. Dhirubhai Ambani. Narayan Murthy.
We all recognise and celebrate them as entrepreneurs.
But what truly defines an entrepreneur?
Is it the size of the company? Is it the funding raised? Is it only those who make headlines?
Or is it something much simpler?
They all did one thing: they built something humanity wanted. They solved a problem and served a need. They did it with honesty and with principles.
So, by that definition, isn’t a restaurant owner who wakes up before the city does, prepares the food, feeds hundreds of people, an entrepreneur?
Isn’t a grocery store owner, handling hundreds of WhatsApp orders, arranging doorstep deliveries, and spending the entire day in the store to ensure families get their daily essentials, an entrepreneur?
Isn’t the 60-year-old precision components manufacturer, whose phone never stops ringing, an entrepreneur?
Look at any business listed on SMERGERS: a small factory, a school, a packaging business, a clinic, a travel company, a machine shop, a cloud kitchen. They are not always on magazine covers or startup podcasts. Not always raising millions. But they are all doing something useful for humanity, whether big or small.
MSMEs are often called “small businesses.” But there is nothing small about what they do.
Collectively, they are the largest economic force on the planet. According to the World Bank, MSMEs represent roughly 90% of all businesses and more than 50% of employment worldwide. In emerging economies alone, formal MSMEs contribute up to 40% of GDP.
The global economy may look like it is run by large corporations. But beneath the surface, it stands on the shoulders of millions of MSMEs. They drive innovation in niches where giants hesitate to enter. They form the supply chains of giant corporations. They create local jobs. And many times, they become tomorrow’s big companies.
An entrepreneur is not someone who lives high above us in a penthouse, keeping the economy running from a distance. An entrepreneur lives here, on the street, amongst us, always present, but rarely recognised.
Small or big, if you are building something with honesty, solving a customer’s problem, holding your principles high, and putting a smile on someone’s face, then you are an entrepreneur.
So the next time you look in the mirror, be proud to say:
I am an entrepreneur.
Recent Big Take
