Finalist for Youth Business International’s Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2013 Award
In just three years, Sharad Tandale has created a successful infrastructure engineering company employing 175 people and providing a range of services to meet the huge demand in the neglected and underserved small towns and rural areas of India.
Sharad’s business, Innovation Engineers and Contractors, is a one-stop shop that provides ready-to-use (turnkey) products, normally the domain of large companies. His clients include government departments e.g. Pune Municipal Corporation.
Sharad’s success is rare: he comes from a 100-million strong marginal farming tribal community where less than 1% start businesses. Sharad’s family opposed his entrepreneurial ideas but, with the help of a government scholarship, he got an engineering degree from a rural institute.
Unable to sustain himself in his first job, he looked to tackle small engineering jobs on his own but lacked the capital to execute them. No financial institution was willing to fund him. YBI member Bharatiya Yuva Shakti Trust (BYST) was impressed by how Sharad (32) had broken through the tribal community barriers and built up work contacts. A loan amount was approved for raw materials and equipment.
Sharad’s growth is impressive. The company has managed to turn a $20,000 order book into $500,000 turnover last year, with confirmed orders of $1million for the current financial year and potential for even more growth.
He has concentrated on being more competitive than his rivals through better labour management, technical training to sub-contractors and providing services in compliance with domestic and international quality standards. In addition Sharad provides a 24-hour maintenance service, which is rare among SMEs in the sector.
The “Contract Industry” in India largely operating in the informal economy, is known for its exploitative employee culture. Sharad has broken rank and adopted governance principles usually followed only by larger companies.
He has placed a great deal of emphasis on recruiting rural youth. He generally prefers to bring employees from rural areas where there is limited potential for gaining skilled work. He takes them on as novices and provides them with on-the-job training. He provides support for his night shift employees working unsociable hours, educational support for employees’ children and takes his supervisors on an annual rejuvenation trip. Sharad insists on all standard safety precautions like compulsory use of helmets, gives his employees’ accident insurance cover.
Sharad plans to expand into a number of new areas, including making and laying compressed natural gas pipelines and bidding for subcontracts of the Pune Metro Railway project.
One of only a handful to have journeyed from abject poverty to a thriving entrepreneur in his community, it is no surprise that Sharad has also become an advocate for entrepreneurship – recently helping four of his friends to start up their own businesses.
Today with his business going from strength to strength and the Indian government seeking to showcase tribal people as self-reliant entrepreneurs; his success is positioning him as a community icon at the national level.
Sharad Tandale is a Finalist for Youth Business International’s overall title of “Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2013”. He will be arriving in London next week and will participate in the YBI Global Summit (9th – 12th September) which culminates in the Young Entrepreneur Awards. Read more the Yo
