Members of Bootstrap Bhubaneswar in the city. Telegraph picture

Bhubaneswar, Aug. 27: Young entrepreneurs of the city are coming to each other’s rescue without relying much on expert opinion.

A club called Bootstrap Bhubaneswar aims to bring together all young city-based entrepreneurs. The members meet every third Sunday of the month to have informal discussions, share experience and suggest solutions to each other’s problems.

Sakyasingha Mahapatra, one of the founding members Bootstrap Bhubaneswar, says the key objective of the group is to create a space for entrepreneurs, where they can speak about their issues to a colleague without any inhibition.

“It is a group that also provides moral support because only an entrepreneur can understand the view point of another entrepreneur,” said Mahapatra, who runs Sakrobotix Lab, a private firm that imparts training in robotics.

Though the group has over 700 members on Facebook, only 70-odd are active members of Bootstrap Bhubaneswar. The time and place of their monthly meet is notified on the social networking site well in advance and the interested members turn up. The meetings are usually held in mornings and are affectionately called Bootstrap at Breakfast. Discussions are done there in a very informal manner. The meetings begin with introduction of the members and of all the topics that come as suggestions, the discussions take place on selective ones.

Along with Mahapatra, Sanjay Mohanty, who is the founder of Mayihelpyou.info, took the idea from Bootstrap Bangalore to replicate a model in Bhubaneswar that started in December last year. The group has already conducted nine meetings and is gradually gaining momentum.

The name bootstrap signifies that an entrepreneur has no backups and he has to build everything himself. Members feel that entrepreneurial journey is considered very arduous and the social and family support is mostly lacking.

“For any entrepreneur to pursue his dream of creating new products and services, he must get some support or at least discuss his plans in front of like-minded people who can boost his confidence and give him guidance. I had many issues and once I started bootstrapping, many entrepreneurs in the group came forward with their similar tales of trials and tribulations,” Mahapatra adds.

With every session, more and more enterprising members from various fields are joining the bandwagon.

“People from other cities are also coming to know about the potential of the young entrepreneurial community of the Bhubaneswar. We are like saplings now and are thus often ignored, but together we can become fully-grown trees that are hard to give a miss,” says Mohanty.