The Indian economy was once famously called the ?caged tiger?. It was also sneered at as an elephant on an oil skid. This was the India till the 80s, the India of pre-reform days. As PM Manmohan Singh has said on many occasions, the economic reforms have unleashed Indians? latent entrepreneurial spirit. If one looks at the country after 1991, what seems to have disappeared is the fear of starting a business. In the 80s, entrepreneurs, especially the South-based ones, were very reluctant to draw attention to themselves. They were terrified of the rules and regulations and the concept of managing the business environment. They would not disclose turnover figures. Business was seen as a four-letter word. From the mid-90s, all this underwent a sea change. The entrepreneurial spirit, which always existed in the South, started truly taking wings from this period.

The Tamil Nadu chapter of the CII decided to showcase entrepreneurship in the state three years ago. As the then chairman of CII Tamil Nadu council, Gopal Srinivasan (CMD, TVS Capital Funds Ltd), said, it is the small firm that contributes considerably to economic growth and vitality. ?Tamil Nadu has been in the forefront of creating new entrepreneurs, be it the creation of new business or revitalising existing ones. They represent the new face of Tamil Nadu,? he says. R Ramraj, chairman of the CII taskforce on entrepreneurship that brought out the book on 101 first generation entrepreneurs in Tamil Nadu, Star Trek, and also the president of the Chennai chapter of Indus Entrepreneurs, says: ?The story of entrepreneurship in Tamil Nadu is also a story of diversity. There are entrepreneurs from business families who have dared to be different, those from the middle class, brave ones who have ventured forth in mid-career, and those from deprived backgrounds who started from scratch and made it big. Surprisingly, failure has not killed most of these people?s entrepreneurial spirit.?

Take the example of Lion Dates. It is the single largest and trusted supplier of dates in the country. The company was set up in 1978 in Trichy by P Ponnudurai, whose education ended in class 10. He joined a department store as a sales assistant and saved up money to start his own grocery shop. His lack of experience led to his having to shut down his business. But failure did not dampen his spirit. He then started distributing a washing powder brand, which meant visiting a lot of big and small shops. He noticed that dates were popular and fast moving, but were badly packaged and nobody thought about their quality. He started importing dates from the Middle East and slowly built up his reputation and business.

In 1996, he was importing 34 tonnes of dates from Oman (the year he really took off) and today he imports 5,000 tonnes from Oman, Saudi Arabia and Tunisia. From being just a distributor of dates, he has created value addition through setting up plants for date syrup and syrup-based products. He has given employment to about 1,000 women in four nearby villages.

B Soundararajan, of Suguna Poultry Farm based in Coimbatore, tried his hand at various businesses, both in agriculture and trading, before he hit upon the poultry business. He set up the business in 1984 and today Suguna is one of the leading poultry companies that has a highly advanced R&D centre and trial farms. Suguna?s big break came when the company decided to introduce contract farming in a largely unorganised sector, consisting of small players exploited by middlemen. Suguna supplies day-old chicks to farmers who have to build a shed to shelter the birds.

Suguna also provides all the necessities to raise the birds and the farmers are paid a fixed fee. ?Everything comes straight to the farmer?s shed and we collect the birds from there, once they are fully grown.? Around 15,000 farmers benefit directly from Suguna and nearly 1 lakh people get indirect employment.

From the mid-90s and particularly in the last few years, IT and IT-related companies have grown like mushrooms in Tamil Nadu. Ajuba Solutions was set up in 2000 in Chennai by Devendra Saharia, an investment banker who chose the city as his base when he returned from San Francisco. Ajuba provides billing and revenue cycle management solutions to healthcare providers such as hospitals, physician groups, durable medical equipment companies and academic medical centres in the US. Ajuba has survived the 9/11 disaster which dampened business sentiments and has managed to register more than 40% growth each year. There are many like Ajuba who have survived the dotcom burst, 9/11 setbacks and the economic downturn. Take Solutions, a company started in 2001 by a Chennai-based technocrat, HR Srinivasan, with his colleagues from an earlier job, is one of the fastest growing companies in the country. It is the industry leader in providing technology- enabled business solutions to companies involved with life sciences, supply chain management and also business project management.

These are just a few examples of people venturing into unknown territory and succeeding. There was a time when it was much more difficult to become an entrepreneur in India. Says Mahesh Murthy, serial entrepreneur and angel investor, ?A couple of years ago, there was no demand for columns on how to start a business. Now there are magazines devoted to it. I write columns and have had to say no to some folks.? Availability of funds has become easier for entrepreneurs in the last few years. Venture capital, private equity and angel investors are all looking to park their funds in potentially lucrative businesses. Some of them are willing to mentor green horns. They help companies discover their proper valuations. This was nearly impossible even ten years ago.

Today, you find entrepreneur cells in colleges, incubators and many networks, all of which help to keep the entrepreneurial spirit alive.

It is quite possible that the next ten years will usher in the age of the entrepreneur in India.

sushila.ravindranath@expressindia.com