You are in 11th standard, get fascinated by money and start following stock markets. Take some seed capital from your family, make money and start borrowing money from friends and family. Then 2008 happened. Seven lakhs of parents hard earned money is worth few thousands.
That was my first experience of going broke, I was devastated and frustrated. Felt like a loser whenever my parents used to ask "Kiya hua stock ka ?", too ashamed of telling them I lost it all.
The super energetic guy of 20, an would-be entrepreneur who wanted to make it big went on to join a B School. Promising my parents, I would soon return to join the family business. Thought the world will change post MBA, was too naive to know that there are lakhs of average MBAs and starting salary is not of 1L not even 50 thousand but Rs. 17390. I was happy, could again feel the exciting world of sales in my veins. Slowly within 5 years rose up the ranks and salary went 4x.
On a Sunday afternoon in 2017, my phone rings and my Mumma was on the other line, she was crying. "Beta tu ghar aaja, sabkuch barbad ho jayega". Although I was asked to return home before as well, but I was too comfortable with my monthly salary and Delhi metro life. This time it was different, after the call I resigned.
Went home to realise we were broke, had a bankruptcy situation. There were piles and piles of debts to pay and most of our debtors became bad debts. We owned few trucks few were new with overdue bank loans, rest were scrap. Cumulatively vendor dues, bank loans were so huge that the monthly emi would equal my annual job salary.
I had sleepless nights, didn't know what to do. Slowly I started learning about the business, first goal was to streamline the current bank emis. Made some changes, had technology enabled gps machines, worked on fuel savings, internet banking, driver verification and few other tweaks. Small things lead to other and within a year, bank emi and household expenses were sorted. But it was not enough to pay off p2p and vendor debts.
Took further loan from other family member who could trust me, revived our coal trading business. Assured creditors that the money will be repaid in installments.
As we had very limited funds, we started working on negative working capital with little margins, but the money would rotate 5-7 times a month earning us a decent 5% margins monthly. As soon as we were doing decent, my father was diagnosed with Stage 3 cancer. Year 2021 went in juggling hospitals and handling business, never felt so alone in life doing all alone. He left us within a year in Dec 2021.
Last two years were interesting, repaid most of the loans. Now that I had some time went on to my first love - started building Biryani Babu.
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