Dhruvam Thaker, Founder, The Smart Taxi

Mr. Dhruvam Thaker, Founder of The SMART Taxi, is a risk-taking and self-motivated individual who started his own bootstrapped venture which aims to become India’s ranked 1 cab-service in terms of customer satisfaction. Along with a degree in Business Administration and skills which he learned during his education; his professional experiences also helped him establish his startup. Prior to starting the company, Mr.Dhruvam did not have any formal education, nor a family background in entrepreneurship. From his professional life, he brings strong experience in supply chain management, planning, and purchasing.

Within a span of 3 years, The SMART Taxi operates in 17 cities in India, with more than 480 cabs and serving MNCs, Fortune 500 & Fortune 100 companies.

The right approach in business can mean a world of differences. Knowing where the problem spots are will help you set up a long-term plan for your business, along with which business philosophies work better with which industries. This is one of the reasons why having a strong group of peers and mentors is very important for leaders as they give an insight into the outside perspective or they give you tips based on similar experience. They can help you differentiate between struggling and finding success.

Being successful often means learning from those who have already achieved their goals. Having a mentor is an amazing blessing to an entrepreneur, but not everyone can find one in person. If you haven’t yet found your personal business guru, here are the top 10 tips for the young or aspiring entrepreneurs to help get you started.

  1. Let go of the Fear of Failure

Entrepreneurship is all about taking risks, experimenting with new things or doing something which no one else has done before. Getting Failure or Success in it, are like part and parcel of this process. Having Fear of Failure will restrict your experimenting ability, which in turn will not allow you to bring or adopt changes into business, from time to time. So an entrepreneur must overcome Fear of Failure and develop a ready to go approach.

2. Create a Vision for the company

Your vision is your driving Force. It is the vision that helps the entrepreneur & Team to stay focused and aligned for a common goal.  Think Big, yes that is what should reflect in your vision. Vision must be formed in a way that it should be traceable, time-bound & customer-centric.

3. Finding the Right Team

Making people believing in your dream & recruiting the right ones to work with you, is the most important and tougher process for any entrepreneur. As the right team will work in the right direction, which in turn will make your business grow in the right direction. For an entrepreneur, it is important to define & offer right Salary Structure, right Work Culture & Employee Benefits, which will play a vital role when it comes to quality outcomes. Right Distribution of work as per the individual area of expertise, will also help to get Faster & Qualitative outcomes for an entrepreneur. 

4. Set up Road Maps

Convert your vision into milestones & set a timeline to achieve it. This process of setting roadmaps kept entrepreneur & team focused & aligned. It also becomes easy to track progress. Setting short terms, midterms & Long terms, makes it convenient for an entrepreneur in setting up targets for the company, for the team, distributing work, performance reviews & business progress, etc.

5. Adopt the Latest Trends

Change is inevitable to keep your venture up & running, an entrepreneur must be ready to adopt the change. He/She should constantly follow the market trend & should update the business strategies in line with it, from time to time. Companies that could not adopt the change, have shut down their operations.

6. The Customer is King

Whatever you do, do it for your customers. The customer is the one who is going to use your product or service, gives you revenue and flow your references within his/her inner circle. So it is very important for an entrepreneur to serve the customer with the highest care. Starting from Responding to the customer inquiry till resolving the complaints, in every aspect of a business, an entrepreneur must focus and believe in achieving customer delight.

7. Control your Expenses

Expense plays a very vital role in the survival of a startup/ business. As an entrepreneur, keeping the expenses minimum will make your business survive for long, as well as it will also result in fund availability so that you can invest it in areas where it is actually needed. Invest only in the things which you feel are genuinely required. Fixing up the budget and spend as per allocation is the best way out to control your expenses.

9. Follow The Compliances

Do the business as per regulations & compliances formed by Govt. Authority. Initiating a business, avoiding compliances, will lead to legal complications that no business or entrepreneur can afford to have. 

9. Business Ethics
Doing business with the highest ethics is what every entrepreneur must be focusing upon. Good Ethics brings Good Culture in business and the same will create the atmosphere in which you & your team will love to work. Following business ethics will also keep your venture away in falling into legal complications and keep you focused on core business.

10. Keep Faith

As an entrepreneur, he/ she must keep faith in his/her self first. Second, believe in your team. It is this self-belief that will help you put the best efforts in the business and will grow.

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