The ‘Paan’ Learning!

The ‘Paan’ Learning!

This week has been an interesting week for me. After being out of the corporate world for long I have taken up an employment in a corporate giant called HP! Joining a large corporation wasn’t the most interesting part of the week but joining a large corporate celebrating a week of micropreneurship certainly was!  This week has been called the ‘Joy of Giving week’ and it involves an attempt in to philanthropy where the employees also get to show their generosity with in the corporate framework. Amongst all the college like hush and gush for this Joy of giving, what the organizers have unknowingly done is far more than what they expected – they have made every ‘involved’ soul, empathize.

Every day of this special week has been distributed amongst different teams in the organization and thus the common spaces like canteen, sport arenas can be used by these teams for organizing their events to raise money for giving away for philanthropy. Thus most teams decided on game and food melas but what I experienced in the process was something unique. It was unique not because it was novel but because an old idea which is often spoken just sunk in… at least for me!

 How does it feel to be street vendor selling a short shelf life offering? We just understood how it feels! My team had decided on a food stall selling Paans, salads, colas & dhoklas along with some fun games which could be played by paying a small sum. It was a basic street side microneurship but in a sophisticated corporate surrounding! Being a new entrant I was on the sidelines assisting and observing. My team had collected a decent capital for investing in to this ‘micro venture for a day’. As the ball started to roll there was a new understanding of what ‘Short shelf life’ really meant!

 The sale of the paans was a story worth quoting. None of the ‘competing’ teams (you see we were competing for the same palate!)  on the canteen had this unique proposition of a delicious paan but the no. of Paan seeking consumers was limited and that too with only one flavor on the cards our target audience was even less. As the lunch time approached we realized that even if we force our acquaintances to buy, it had to be after they had their sumptuous meal and a paan didn’t suit all kinds of meals! So with a postponed timetable we waited for our limited customers but as it turned out the time for a Paan purchase was a volatile one! As the clock turned past 3, the crowd in the canteen had dimmed out and the new set of people entering the canteen were seeking a good tea or coffee and paan is not something that goes with it. Thus the short shelf life had been really chastened and shortened. Forget the profit, with every passing minute we were counting the paans that was needed to break even!

Of course we did make a some profit at the end of the day, thanks to our other ‘cash cow’ offerings but if this is the state of sophisticated micropreneurs like us who were provided capital, place, an AC facility and most importantly the marketing support of the event organizers, imagine the state of that street vendor who is literally having nothing but the ground for a support and sky for a cover above him! Along with the clicking clock the whole world will seem against him. The local money lender with his strong men, who distribute microcredit for the day with a sky high interest rate, will be high on his mind because he would have lost a tooth or two for skipping repayments before. His real estate space (a sophisticated term for his shack) would be under the grace of these strong men and he has everything to lose by upsetting them. If the local police turns rogue his overhead cost goes up and the eyes of his starving children along with the yelling of his eternally upset wife becomes more and more real for him. Probably, it’s even criminal for me to compare our sophisticated attempt to a real life micropreneur but I certainly realized that I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes!

It will be utter falsehood if I claim to have this enlightenment selling paans to my fellow mates in office but it did make me think and thus came the realization. The next time I stand up against the vegetable vendor to beat him in bargaining or arguing about a pittance with a micropreneur, I will think twice, I shall probably think about the ‘right to life’ that a street vendor has rather the nuisance he/she creates by occupying the pavement. All, thanks to the organizers and my team mates in the ‘Joy of giving’ event who let me stay on the side lines and learn. The small profit which we recovered because of the events could have been easily raised if we had forced more contribution from each member and this would have been easy but my team chose the harder way, thus the 'Joy of giving’ isn’t event occasioned but an eternal feeling…..