The Mistakes I Made As an Entrepreneur Which You Can Avoid Like many entrepreneurs, the idea for Bhukkad emerged from a personal need – for food that tastes good, is healthy and natural and easy to make – something that I was able to crack. Today, in its present avatar, Bhukkad as a company aims to help people lead a healthy and fit life by serving them wholesome food in a quick service format. However, when you start something, little do you anticipate it going wrong even though it looks great from outside. The problem becomes acuter if you are a solo founder. At Bhukkad, I too made mistakes. Ok, but what next? I was able to correct them in time and use it as organizational and personal learning. Here are the mistakes I made, learned from and moved on…
I DID NOT KEEP A CHECK ON MY FINANCES: I faltered on this one and initially, like many other startups and did not monitor the P&L. The finances took a hit and I realized it’s very important to start looking at P&L early on. Since the past six months, this has become a practice with me and has helped a lot. It’s also good to have an efficient finance resource who can analyze for you and tell you – this is how much we have and for how long. Any cost saving is good for a startup. I feel for most startups it’s largely about raising money and growing. However, do not ignore P&L in this equation. I HIRED TOO FAST AND EXPANDED TOO QUICKLY: I burnt a lot of money setting up stores and increasing the headcount without a realistic view of the progress we were making. Eventually, this affected the business adversely. In December 2015 I had four to five units, but by February 2016 I had to shut them down and reserve whatever cash was left. l also right-sized the company. It took me 4-5 months to stabilize post this and get the fundamentals together. Now I am back on track. I opened a new store last month.