Shocker – The Next Shop Paanwala Earns More Than an MBA!

The not so noble professionals are making merry in the inflationary times than a classy and flashy MBA’s. The recent encounter with a Paanwala in Chennai made me ponder on starting a Pan delivery startup!

The Ground Realities – My Paan Shop!

• Pan’s favorite variant – “Mitha Paan” sells at INR 10-15 in Delhi, Mumbai and other leading metros
• The vendors choose their shops strategically generally corner shops and mostly mobile shops. The overhead of carrying the mobile shop from a Point A to Point B is next to nil
• A hard pressed Pan vendor sells 100 Pan’s a day and other Tobacco ingredients that promise to offer kick!
• The per day income may range anywhere in between INR 8,000 to INR 25,000 or even more.
• Apart from conversing fluently in multiple languages these chaps eventually generate good contacts too
• Marking out other leakages in the form of bribes to Police and local goons, they still make more in a day than cumulative monthly salary of an MBA.

The Ground Realities for MBA’s – The Boring Job!

• MBA’s favorite variant – Marketing or Finance MBA can be bought from B-schools from 1 lacs to 15 lacs at an average. The cost of doing an MBA from a good league school is anywhere in between 8-11lacs. The MBA folks are being underpaid in India by a fair margin when compared to the annual tution fee and their foreign counterparts. India is growing but are Mother India’s MBA?
• The Job aspirants are beggars in some cases and some beggars are lucky enough to choose on what they beg. Generally, overheads are high in this stream. The stiff competition, management jargons and bureaucratic culture can make them week. Luckily they have Revital! Yuvraj Singh endorses the medicine, looks like cricket and MBA has some similarities.
• The MBA’s in industry are hard pressed and some are not even used. The more they work or don’t work at all they know that every 30^th of the month will bring Joy and the sweet they get on this day would be savored till the next 30^th.
• The per day income for an MBA? well Not applicable. Most of them lack entrepreneurship and crib about their managers and work culture at no other place but the Pan Shop
• Multiple languages well yeah MBA’s are not bad at this at all. The emergence of Facebook and short messaging service has enabled them in speaking English versions such as “Mah job is cool”!
• Fortunately, MBA’s need not give bribe to the Goons or Police to get their salary. On every 30^th they look into the sky with open mouth like a bird who is waiting for a single drop of water in draught affected Orissa.