Naturals Mr Kumaravel Speech on Setting Up Business and being an Entrepreneur.

A lot of times when we start a business we all talk about the vision of the company then the mission of the company then the leadership then the team the cash flow the sales and marketing communication the systems and process the legal and the accounting process are all very important, the product these are all very important they say but there is an often not spoken about but very significant portion of a business success is timing when all the other parameters are right if you got the timing wrong the business will go wrong so to get the timing is 50 percent of getting the business right the other 50 is all the other parameters what i have told you in naturals we got the timing right in 2000 when we started this business the India as a country is ready because the IT revolutions created by Narayana Murtis and Azeem Premjies and the likes have created lot of youngsters with lot of disposable income and aspirations the first salary of the daughter is more than the last salary of the father suddenly the disposable income available with the youngsters have become so high and they were wanting to splurge on buying a car buying what you call the flats then grooming themselves going to a restaurant all these lifestyle industries have come to an age and that's the time when naturals have started.

And especially with the unisex model and we are one of the first salons to start a unisex model way back in 2000 in Chennai that time unisex alone was considered to be a huge attraction there used to be a men's salon separately there used to be a women's salon separately and there used to be one scene people used to think that women go into the beauty parlour as some 70 year old and come as 30 year old those kind of silly jokes were there around not when people used to wonder what's happening in a woman's beauty parlour blah blah blah but when the unisex salon came into the picture everything and people can go together and that is where the things have started changing and the idea called unisex alone itself created a lot of buzz in the market.

Unisex salon was the first thing we got the second thing what we did something very interesting in the naturals is what we are today talking about the Ola’s and the Uber we are talking about the trial marketing Uber and Ola gave us a 150 rupees free ride or when you are talking about downloading an app you get a first 50 off or you get some free trial etcetera  this we have tried way back in the 2000, 2002-2003 whenever we start a salon we used to print a gift voucher of 200 rupees and distribute to all the surrogate shops.

Surrogate shops mean shops like landmark, shops like lifestyle shops like sony, gyms all those places we used to distribute the voucher for free and ask those customers to come and try our people a lot of my competitors told what naturals is distributing or just like everywhere they will go bankrupt this will not work all those things they spoke finally today the industry all over the country cannot launch us alone without this simple trial marketing idea so a lot of things we used was very unorthodox and not part of the industry.

At that point of time people say that whenever you are starting an any business you should know the business in and out okay you should have a technical expertise you should know the business in and out. I completely differ from them I think if you are when you know the business in and out you can only make an incremental increase only when you don't know the business you can disrupt the industry for example the Nokia phone which is the original owner of the mobile connecting the people and the industry was not able to disrupt the mobile industry it is only apple which is from the computer industry was able to disrupt because they don't know the rules of the mobile industry same is the case with Tesla, Elon musk is able to disrupt the car not the Ggeneral Motors not the Toyota because he is not following that original model of there has to be an engine in the front and then the car has to be built like that he was thinking like you like a computer and that is where Tesla has become so popular now and the world is talking about that same is the case with naturals we don't know the business if you don't know the business the life becomes incredibly easier whatever rules you are putting it is become the rules of that and that is where we disrupted the business model and we said that we will go we will create a completely new way of doing salon business and that's what made naturals as a game changer in this industry. 

Second thing personally when i was wanting to start the naturals business at that point of time I had an offer from my brother to join his business and I said no I want to start my own and that's when I got into natural business. 

In life you have a two choice every time you will be faced with two choice one is to lead an exciting life another is to lead a comfortable life lot of people choose comfortable life an entrepreneur chooses exciting life exciting. Life is not necessarily easy life exciting, life is where all excitement is there is an opt .is there is a down is there is a lot of challenges is there overcoming the challenges there that's what makes entrepreneur life very special entrepreneurship is going from one failure to another without losing enthusiasm i'm not going to paint a rosy picture or tell you step by step process of how to become a successful entrepreneur both are unrealistic and both are false.

Entrepreneurship means your big dream you are winning and then falling and then getting up and then winning again and again and that's called entrepreneurial spirit and it is people who don't want to fail people who want to feel want to feel very safe and that is the kind of the society bulk of the society is in that mode and they want they are looking at the glass is half empty or half full depends on how you are looking at there is a safety is if you want to look at life one you want to be under safe business then there is a safety business then you want to be an exciting life you can lead on other side of the road you can't take this road and expect this rules are very different and that's exactly what we have done at that point of time got into the business don't know the rules of the business so disrupt the business merely change into the rules of the business and that's what has made naturals very different.

One more significant portion of the naturals i will say is our is our ability to adopt at a different point of time today the dinosaur which is the most powerful or the biggest animal on this earth have lost out because of its inability to adopt to different situations from time immemorial whereas the cockroach is even now it was there then it was there in cold climate it was there in hot climate it was there in what you call 150th floor it will be there it corona will come corona will go anything can happen cockroach will be there because the cockroach's ability to adopt and entrepreneurs the most important quality in an entrepreneur should have is the ability to adopt a different situation and contextually think and take advantage of that position and change continuously it is that character which is very important for a successful entrepreneur if i have to single out and tell what makes naturals or are me very special it's their ability to adapt to different situations differently.