The corona pandemic and subsequent lockdown have caused a terrible snafu in every sphere of life.
Startups of young entrepreneurs are not beyond the bounds of the virus. Young entrepreneurs are on pins and needles about the prospects of their ventures. They have spoken to Free Press about the problems they are facing.
Saumya Jain of Soumya Art Gallery says she used to make Krushia earrings. When she showed them to her teachers they appreciated it. They advised her to begin a start-up.
One of her teachers helped get the GST number for it. No sooner had she completed all online formalities than the lockdown began, she says.
She has invested Rs 5, 000 from her pocket money for this. Besides earrings, she wants to showcase some handmade decorative items in her gallery, but she could not buy them because markets were closed due to the lockdown.
She has only 100 pieces of earnings which are not enough to begin a startup. So, she is waiting for the market to reopen completely, says Jain, a student of B. Com Honours.
Similarly, Verina Christeen Anthony from Friends & Friends Food says her family runs a tiffin centre, and she wants to launch it on a large scale. She has had an idea from Zomotao Company to create a platform where people can place orders for food from any tiffin centres in Bhopal.
She has completed the process and even contacted 15 tiffin centres but Covid-19 has stopped the work, she says.
All the students have gone home due to the lockdown. She intends to start the work when the educational institutions reopen and students return, Anthony says.
A 20-year-old Ashi Malviya is fond of making cakes, pastries, cup cakes, and chocolates. She prepared some of those items and sold them at an exhibition-cum-sale at Anant Mandi. Her craft earned accolades from different corners.
She wants to open an online bakery named ‘BAE-kery’ with one of her friends, but the coronavirus has halted the work. Everything was ready.
She wanted to launch it in March only, but could not do so, because the registration work is pending due to the lockdown. At present, she is selling bakery items through social media, she says.
