An entrepreneur is someone who starts a new business. Finding hitherto hidden dimension of a product or a service and presenting it to the customers is the hallmark of an entrepreneur. It’s a well-substantiated fact that the culture of entrepreneurship creates wealth, generates employment and solves a great many problems besetting a country. It also paves the way for self-employment. Entrepreneurship is the bedrock of all-round development. Entrepreneurs are stimulated by vision and propelled by passion. Yes, they stumble and fall now and then, but they take obstacles as lessons to learn and grow. In a country where such culture has taken firm hold, jobs are sufficient, people are happier and are generally free from many problems.

Entrepreneurs strive for novelty. A successful enterprise has a cascading effect: the novel product or service rolled out by such businesses stimulates the related businesses or those catering to them to newer heights, thus fostering economic development. Human beings, by nature, are predisposed to seek out novel things. And that thirst is quenched by the entrepreneurs. One of the defining characteristics of such enterprise is it, more often than not, has a humble beginning. Many of today’s technological giants, including Apple and Microsoft, were started in basements or garages. When we look into the history of now advanced and wealthy countries, we find undying entrepreneur spirit as one of the central pillars of their economies. We also find even stronger determination to continue that spirit in the face of adversities.

The other day, this daily ran a story about a successful entrepreneur: a computer engineer-turned tea seller. As reported in the story, soon after Dipesh Baral opened his tea stall, coronavirus pandemic and the subsequent lockdowns forced him to go out of business. But that didn’t deter him from continuing what his heart and mind were into. After the restrictions were lifted and he reopened his shop, the customers started swarming it in even greater number.

Matka Chiya, the tea shop opened by 27-year-old Baral, has emerged as a go-to place for tea connoisseurs from all over Myagdi district. The fact that Baral has been able to carve out a niche for himself in a small town in a remote district shows that one need not migrate to a city in order to achieve success – let alone a foreign land. We hope this inspiring story will serve as a lesson to our youths willing to toil in alien lands for trifles. The selling point of the tea stall is that the tea is served in an earthen cup and in a variety of flavours. Not only has the stall given employment opportunities to a handful of people, but also to those in the making, processing and transporting of the earthen wares. In a sense, a whole ecosystem is supported by one successful enterprise.

Much greater value is attached to being a job creator rather than a job seeker. If only a small fraction of the population strives to become a job creator like Baral, the pace of development in the country can be made much faster. Let his story inspire many other would-be entrepreneurs. Almost everything has a selling point. We only need to discover it.