Many a time, entrepreneurs are mistaken as great innovators, researchers and the alike that invent entirely new products and services. This may not be the case always.

Actually entrepreneurship has more to do with doing things differently with existing products and services to make the consumers feel the difference and realize value.

The following real life story will reinforce this idea.

Kaushalendra hailing from Ekangarsari town of Nalanda district of Bihar, with his coveted MBA degree from IIM, Ahmedabad could have easily chosen a white-collar corporate job either in India or abroad with a hefty pay packet to lead a life full of comforts.

But he chose to sell vegetables in the streets of Patna and still dreaming to make it big. Are you surprised? Yes. He has decided to make it big by selling vegetables in the streets of Patna.

Kaushal dreams to build Bihar into the vegetable hub of India and has plans to sell Bihar grown vegetables all over India to begin with. Are you surprised? Well. Our Kaushal is eligible to claim to be the most highly educated green grocer of India!

How he is planning to go ahead and realize his dreams?

He has a founded a farmers’ cooperative, Samriddhi, a private public partnership with assistance from Agriculture Technology Management Agency – ATMA (a government undertaking), to sell vegetables in ice-cooled pushcarts and about 300 farmers have since joined Samriddhi.

Kaushal aims to propagate organic farming and use marketing expertise to reach markets in India and abroad and in the process enable Bihar farmers to fetch good returns for their produce. May be in five years, one may buy Bihar grown even in US, Europe and Japan too!

Already the ice-cooled vegetable pushcarts of Samriddhi are a hit with the residents of Patna who are able to buy garden fresh, reasonably priced vegetables. These consumers are additionally happy, as they are also able to get these vegetables weighed accurately with electronic weighing machines.

Moreover, the pushcart vendors give the buyers a cash memo, which mentions the name of the farmer and his village, as a proof of further authentication of quality and quantity. ‘Bihar” vegetable brand building has already started!

Bihar is considered to be one of the “Bimaru” states in modern India, the others being Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. All these states are considered to be backward with no appreciable development since Independence.

In addition, Bihar is note worthy for its notoriety. Though Biharis are intelligent, hard working and achieve success outside Bihar, inside Bihar they could not succeed and are considered to be failures.

One may agree with this observation from the example set by Lalu Pershad Yadav former Chief Minister of Bihar for many years and now, the Union Minister of Railways. We need not revisit his performance as a Chief Minister of Bihar but as a Union Minister of Railways, his performance is well known. He has brought a new brand image for Indian Railways!

But our Kaushal has chosen a different path - to remain in Bihar to build a brand for Bihar. Let us wish him all the best in his endeavours!