Bhubaneswar, Aug. 28: A number of youngsters are leaving lucrative jobs and starting their own ventures.
Akshaya Rautray has always been a book lover. After doing a number of jobs, including being a manager at a bookstore, he finally quit his job a couple of years ago and started Walking Bookfairs with friend Satabdi Mishra.
The two sell a wide range of books at their open-air shop with a tea café at Chandrasekharpur. They also travel in their van selling books in not only the interiors of the state but also outside it.
Leaving a salaried job never seemed risky to Akshaya.
"I wanted to talk to people and connect with them. I also did not want to sell commodities but promote books. I was never worried about not getting a fixed salary at the end of the month after quitting the job because I was good at my work as an employee and I knew my potential. Once you know that, you will not be worried about failing in your endeavour. After all, one may lose a job for not performing too. So if I don't perform in my venture, I deserve losses," he said.
Walking Bookfairs helps many underprivileged children and adult readers in interior Odisha to get to read books of various themes.
An experienced translator of literature, Supriya Prasanta is another example of youths taking social initiatives through their innovative enterprise. Prasanta is editor of the online literary journal Indian Literature Today that hosts translations of works in various Indian languages into English. "The idea of creating such a forum was in my mind for some time, particularly after I left my day job at Cambridge University Press, India, to start a family," she said. With help of literary and translation enthusiasts, the website has a large number of followers now.
Rakesh Rosan Parida, who has an engineering degree and is an MBA, quit his job in 2011 to pursue his aspirations of doing something different. "I wished to make an identity for myself and work towards promoting my state. Odisha has master craftsmen and a rich legacy of centuries-old crafts. All it needs is promotion," said the 30-year old. He started an online store, Thoomri.com, that offers a wide range of exclusive crafts procured directly from the weavers and craftsmen in the interiors of the state.
Anant Basudev and Partha Sarathi Samal quit their jobs in the banking sector and started a dairy farm in Koraput with 100 cows following the Amul model of Gujarat. They also run a number of other farms in the area.
"We provide fresh farm milk to people here at affordable prices. Also, we produce fish, coffee, black pepper and many other farm products," said Basudev.
Samal said they were now producing close to 1,000 litres of milk every day. "We want to be able to produce 10,000 litres every day," he said. Most start-ups face similar hurdles. First, it's not always easy to convince the family. "But most importantly, it was arranging finance that was a challenge. It is good to know that the Youth Innovation scheme of the government will encourage many start-ups from now on," said Samal.
