 Then comes friends and then you are close to them. So, we are going to talk about the work life that we are all having. And today's topic that we have is navigating the directions between freelance entrepreneurship or regular jobs. None of which are bad, let me clarify that at the very beginning. And we have a fantastic panel over here, Rahul Singh as you already have met. Bidisha who is into a job segment and Arundha Maiyanda who is a freelance developer. So, let's start with the question that everyone have, right. What is, is it bad to have a job over freelancing or intermediation? That is the first question directed to Bidisha. So, a lot of people think that this is a very complex that works in a lot of people that I will have to have a self-employed, right. I have to do something of my own and a lot of people doubt where the people who are going job actually. Entrepreneurs knows how to direct those people but this ordinary concept, is prevalent among a lot of people. So, Bidisha I will just direct the question to you. How's the job here and why should no one consider it as an inferior segment? Hi, first of all, good afternoon everyone. So, as he has asked a very important question, why should we not consider job as looking at it like it's an inferior compared to freelancing or entrepreneurship. Let's see. So, I have been working for around three years now. This is all my personal experience. What I feel is that when we come to job, first of all it's not inferior because whatever you are going to learn as a freelancer or an entrepreneur. Let's say I am a web developer. So, from the perspective of a web developer let's say whatever I am going to learn as a freelancer, working on various projects so on and so forth. The same amount of knowledge which I can also gain in a job. That is a knowledge part. Now, there is a little bit advantage I would say. If you are a single freelancer, sometimes a lot of things need to be self-learned, right. But when you come to the job, most of the time we have our superiors, right. So, let's say I am writing a code that's good in my eyes. But in order to make it optimized, make it the best. I have someone who can actually guide me, right. So, in that way I can say that yeah, you are learning and coming to knowledge and learning, job is pretty good. Now, one important thing that people do miss out a lot of times is that they might come up and say hey, I mean in my job I need to work out for this hours. And let's say I am a freelancer or an entrepreneur in that scenario and have a lot of free time. Not really, not always I would say. Because let's say you are working, it's the wrong conception that you know if I am a freelancer I can work as per my time. With today's culture, job culture, I mean there is so many remote companies. This is not the scenario, essentially. You can work as per your time, your preferences as long as work gets completed. So, I don't think that someone doing a job should be looked at in a different way. Everything has its pros and cons. This is some of the pros that you can have while being in a job. It was a very nice perspective with Disha. Really, like a lot of people think that having superiors on my head is gonna, they gotta nag once. I can keep on showing, micromanagement that we call it. So, it is not like that. If you have a supportive senior above your head, you are gonna get a right direction, right from the very bottom, right from the start of your schedule. A lot of people here are young minds. They are going to get freshly graduated. They should understand this fact that having a senior on the head is only bad when the senior is bad. If the senior is good, there is common sense that people do not leave jobs. They leave bad managers or bad bosses. So, that's a very good point that Disha have dropped. Now, coming to that same point that having a senior on your head, feel like it's not something like that. But it is something different. You have to be accountable for what you are doing. Right, Anunda? So, continuing that question, I would like to ask Anunda, how do you think this freelancing is different from a job? While considering this senior boss thing, how do you manage your time as a freelancer? I do not think it's very different to jobs. Even if you do freelancing, you will have a team to work with. And in most cases, so there will be very rare cases where you get a single project that you need to handle. So, in most cases, you will have a team to work with. The only advantage you get is that you get flexibility of working hours. Whenever you want, wherever you will, you can work on it. Apart from that, you can choose your project. That's the best advantage of being a freelancer. You can choose what you want to work on. If you are an employee of somebody, the company brings in the project, you have to work on that. But in case of freelancing, you can choose which project or which clients you want to work with. That's the advantage of it. Definitely, that is a very big advantage. And continuing with you, I have a very interesting question that recently actually happened in Whitwood. A lot of people have heard moon lighting. Moon lighting was actually a concept that is you are working for a company and at the same time you are working with some other company who are sharing the interest or is a direct competition of that company. So, do you think if you are associated as a freelancer with a company and you are working with other company as a freelancer who is a direct competitor, is it considered moonlighting for you or is it considered unacceptable to you as a freelancer? See, if you are talking about a regular job, then you are already signing a contract and you are not going to work with any other company or you are not going to work on a project similar to the business they are doing. So, that's moonlighting if you are doing something. But as a freelancer, you are not signing any contract. So, you are free to choose. You want to work on five projects or ten projects. That's your piece. So, that's another advantage that would not happen for being a freelancer. So, you think like a lot of jobs, right? But this young mind, they might be doing the job. When I signed up for my first job, it was probably in Alcatel, which is a very costly state, right? You don't get rice, dals, like Bengali foods over there. It was very hard. I have to survive on Momo for seven days straight. And that was a very tough nut to crack. I was lost half of my weight. Anyway, I am going to talk to that. So, in that case, I am earning very less and I have to find some other things to do to earn, to sustain. So, do you think as a person who is employed, they should be able to work somewhere as a freelancer? That's a very nice question to say. So, what I feel is that legally, if you look at the contract, a lot of times companies sign you with the contract, with the contract that you cannot be working. The contract says that you cannot be working anywhere that clashes with our interest. Now, this is a very debatable talk. What is our interest here? I mean, let's say today I am working with Hotstar. Tomorrow I, on the back, starts working with Jiyasatma. What happens there? That's essentially more likely. You're not allowed to do that. But, at the same time, what I feel is that, like the scenario you mentioned, so we need to earn money. So, sometimes what we need to do is, out of the work hours, usually the weekends are available, right? Technically, you should not be working with another company because you might get fired if the original company gets to know. But what you can do is, you can take up projects that are, let's say, one-time for a fixed period of time, freelancing sort of job that do not have a very specific contract. In those cases, I think we can still have flexibility. And I would like to bring this point as well over here. Today, a lot of people who have grown in the job industry, who are working with reputed organization, they are teaching students with minimal cost. Now, think about the scenario where I'm getting a course from experienced professional with minimal cost, and likely a lot of students are registering. So, that can be also your source pickup, right? So, YouTube is something like that, but I don't know the details. I've never been a YouTuber. Maybe one of you can teach me one day. But, yeah, we can earn like this as well. But just be careful of the, you know, clauses in the job. Thank you, Vidisha. Now, I will continue this sequence to our round thing as well. He is an entrepreneur, right? So, basically, he has a team. He employs. And if he finds one of my guys working with a computer computer, a digital marketing company, or taking up some projects that is related to his interest. So, Ramu, how do you handle that? So, would you allow that? And what's your perspective of it? Today is going on where data is democratized, where people have seen the box of working for more, or when people are looking for hybrid, or working environment is practically very difficult to stop what you have been saying. So, slightly, in our way, somebody is working with us, and again, this scientific thinking of project is practically very difficult to track. As an organization, the whole idea should be when you are employing somebody, you should tax him with the amount of work which he needs to be delivered. Rather than counting the number of hours he is delivering, you should be judging that person based on work which has been assigned to him. So, like if I speak about buyer organization, what we do? We tax people about the work which has been given to them. So, if a work is completed in one hour, we don't mind if we do some kind of work. As long as I want this getting done, we are really not bothered about what he is doing apart from the job. And it has become practically, even the bigger company like Infosys and PCS has spoken about this, that their employees have started working. So, they also have realized it's practically impossible to stop this thing. And as an entrepreneur, we also feel like that. As long as I want this getting done, we should not be bothered by this being a project simultaneously. So, that's why we do it. Definitely, definitely. So, if you are considering moonlighting, as we call it, you should, if you are employed somewhere, you should be able to learn the contracts that are given to you. You should deliver your deliverables and you should make sure that the guy who is paying your bills on a regular basis, they are not suffering the consequences. If that is aligning to your ethic, if it's aligning to the cultural ethic and the organization ethic, you can go beyond and go for some sort of jobs that can argue extra costs. Sure. The problem is basically, in most cases, you will find that there are contracts that this allows doing it. So, you need to read your contracts properly. And if you are found that you are disobeying the contract, you may get fired. So, keep in mind that case. It's also freelancing as well. Freelancing will also have an idea. Definitely, definitely. Then you have an idea. Yes, freelancing. If you are getting good projects, you might have an idea, but you might not be able to do that. So, that's why I just like what the test has been saying. So, what should be a balance of those things? As long as your first work should be, whatever work has been assigned as part of your job, you should delicately complete that work and if you compare the long-term, you are free to move like this or you can pick up other systems and industry. But you should, as an employee, should be first dedicated to your organization. If at all you get work, it's for your, say, agreement with the government that you can perform the move like this. So, that's it. So, coming to the next points, for example, these young girls or maybe some are in the job, some are already in freelancing. So, this question is particularly for Rahul that these guys, this mixed crowd, for any of the segment, I'm talking about freelancing or a job or a fresh graduate, how should they pursue a look at entrepreneurship? Should they first go for a job or they should go for freelancing for experience, then go for a job and then go for entrepreneurship or how do you think a fresh graduate's life cycle should be regarding entrepreneurship? So, if I can talk about the life cycle, I think the cycle starts with job. So, whatever skills you have, whatever degree you should have, the first thing that you should do is to either you do an internship or you do become a full-time job. Learn the tricks of the trade, whatever you go there. Learn the tricks of the trade, learn from your seniors, learn from your mentors. When you have acquired a particular skill, when you think you have put in three, four, two years in a particular job, you have learned something, then you gradually move on to freelancing. You can start picking up projects. Why am I saying that after a job you should move into freelancing? Because when you are doing a job, you are only doing one part of the business. You are only getting your skill employed. But when you move to freelancing, then perhaps you also have to start talking with the clients. So, first you look at doing jobs, then you move to freelancing, and then when you have some set of clients with you, then you have already started making same amount of money, which you have been making when you are doing a full-time job, then you start considering moving to entrepreneurship. Because if I have to tell you, this is the most difficult job. From outside it is very flexible. Trust me, entrepreneurship is a 24 to 7 job. Like if you are working somewhere, you have 1 day to 5 days, 10 to 6, and if you are doing freelancing, then your work is over. But when you are into entrepreneurship, you have to think about the people who are walking around with you. You not only have to foot your own pills, you also have to foot your food So, first pick up a job, learn the tricks of the trade, then move on to your freelancing kind of assignment when you start taking your freelancing project and when you have ample amount of projects in your head, then perhaps you can start building up teams and you can move to entrepreneurship. So, I will tell people to follow that kind of energy. Job, freelancing and then entrepreneurship. Right, great. So, one more question. This is my personal question to you. There is a certain thin line between business and entrepreneurship. Guys, a lot of people are called businessmen. Some people are called entrepreneurs. What is the exact difference between entrepreneurship and being a businessman? See, for me, both entrepreneurship and business is more or less same in recent years. You know how to get clients. Because you create a network when you start freelancing. You start getting connected to one client and you get reference to some other client and that makes a whole network for you. So, definitely you can easily transition to entrepreneurship if you are planning to do so. So, you can get clients, you can talk to them and they can work for you to create the projects. So, that's one advantage of being a freelancer and freelancing to entrepreneurship. If you have any specific problem that you want to point to, how it gets easier for freelancing, that's it. I have actually, at one given point of time, I have been a freelancer that was in the early quality. I have transitioned. I have had a lot of freelancing friends who are still doing freelancing. The one significant difference, like what makes you go from a freelancer to an entrepreneur is how you hire people. Most of these folks, I still remember, there was a conversation with one of them. He is very good in freelancing. He's doing very good. He charges $80 an hour or something like that. So, he said a very simple thing. Why don't you hire freshers for getting started and you pay them 4,000 or 5,000 rupees and you get started? That was the most terrible idea because the first thing, people that you hire should be experienced folks not freshers. So that is where most of the freelancers struggle in order how to manage people and how to hire the right folks. So that is where things get stopped. In most cases, that's why people don't transition. It's just to add to what I would say. It's always not necessary for a potential transition from a freelancer to a entrepreneur. He's charging as $80 an hour. So, he would not try to move to an entrepreneurship role because he was the kind of money which I am making. I don't want to have an asset of hiring people, of training people. So, it all is very subjective. People do people. It's not necessary if somebody is doing freelancing that you want to move into entrepreneurship. Correct? First thing I would like to say is hiring people is kind of what do you need? It depends on how. So if you are a client who wants to start with a project and you know that you have the time to train a freelancer, definitely you can go for it and you hire freelancers. But if it's a matured project... There is a huge amount of attrition that people don't consider, right? When freelancers are getting into, they don't consider what is the gap, what is the customer acquisition possible themselves. Then they don't want to consider what is the amount of money that will take to hire an individual and dream an individual. If you are training somebody for three months and they are moving after six, seven months, that's a waste of money and a waste of time. That's all the good stuff. You need to negotiate with your client. You need to negotiate with the client that you are going to hire a freelancer. You need to pay for training. Then you should be starting on something. See, you cannot fail from your pocket. So, every burden that costs you as we put on the client because it's ultimately his project. I'm not a fresher in this case. So, let's say you are building something very significant. As a fresher, how much knowledge does that have? So, I have seen freelancers or actually experienced freelancers. So, if you are trying to, let's say, entrepreneur should always work with an idea where you want to expand scalability. I don't always think that a fresher with starting a job or just starting to fail ads, that person will have all the scenarios in mind which could stretch your scalability. So, he might write something or he might just do something. That breaks a particular scale. So, that should not be done as well. There are two things. One is relying on them and another is training them. So, if you are relying that you are giving them a job that breaks your schedule project then you are doing a wrong thing then. Because he's a fresher. He has just come out of his college and he's just trying to acquire the knowledge. So, you should be treating him as a fresher. That is actually the loophole that you get into. The point is ultimately it's not reducing your work hours. That's the objective of it. It will not. It's going to increase your work hours for the time being. Like, for three months or four months you will train them. How many students do you have? Students. Okay. So, when these students will get out of their college they will be looking for a job. And being professional, having an experience in the industry it's our responsibility to train them. Right. So, that's our responsibility. So, expecting revenue from them would be badly for at least six months. So, for at least six months they need to be trained. They need to understand what the industry expects from them. And after six months they are going to turn into a revenue for you. Definitely. Thank you. One good thing to add fresher. So, you know what? I have a very good experience with fresher. They are the most excited people in the companies. They want to do the job. So, that's the best thing of hiring fresher. Right. Yes, definitely. When you hire fresher there are pros and cons and we are going to take the question in few minutes, sir. Okay. So, before concluding this session I have one last question to everyone sitting in here if someone comes to you, a person comes to you as a willingness to become a freelancer or a willingness to get into a job or a willingness to be an entrepreneur. What are the questions? Individually, you would ask the person. First, if someone wants to be a freelancer what suggestion would you give him if someone wants to come to you and ask for suggestions? Actually, so you want me to tell somebody how to become a freelancer? Yes, what are the suggestions? You want to tell me why I would hire him? No. So how to become a freelancer? Right. So, see, it's like you said, a leap of faith. So, it's kind of that if you are working for some company and you want to become a freelancer it meets a bit of financial stability then only you can go for it and if you are going right from your when you started with your policy then I think it's easy but if you already are in job and if it is for creating your dependence then it's tricky to get into freelancing. So, I myself tried three times and only I became a freelancer. So, what you should do when you are working or you already are stable or you are in college so start building your profiling where on like G-Tub, on LinkedIn or the places where people will like to see developers if you are trying to become a developer. So, G-Tub is a place where you can create hobby projects you can publish it there and whenever you are going for a freelancing project so people would like to you can just reference them that is what I created already so you get the chances of getting hired by the clients easily because when you get a project on any freelancing website so you will see that there are a number of bits coming on it and there will be exteriors people as well as the freelancers so the problem is that when you are freelancing you don't have the portfolio to showcase so you can build the portfolio starting from your college itself or when you are working as a professional through hobby projects not economical like not monetary profiting projects but the hobby projects and then you can create a portfolio and create network with your everyone like when you are contributing to an open source project you can create network with the people there they will bring in projects for you so these are few things that you can consider and try to become a freelancer Thank you Arupa Over to you Shalini comes and asks how do I get into a good organization how do I get into a job the first thing is start code of course obviously but more important thing over here is it's wrong to say that hey just because I am starting I don't have a code for you build interesting projects showcase it to the world what you can do what potential you have that will make you stand out and I think a lot of people here who have cracked a lot of kind of man jobs they do know the importance of TS I know when it comes to engineering so please lead code lead code as much as you want to have some time do lead code as he said build up a profile go to GitHub and start contributing I mean there are a lot of ways if you really want to and most importantly if you know like for me I knew that I didn't want to get into front-end development and my focus was only that but I also didn't understand so that if a question was asked from then I was able to answer so be confident have enough knowledge in whatever you are doing learn your basics properly and yeah you will be able to crack that down okay thank you I have a word to Rabu see if you want to move into confidentiality role the first collective that everyone should have is resilience like you should be able to do the same job same work day in the year 24 into 7 to 365 days you will fail again you have to get up you will fail again you have to get up agar aapko business karna hai you have to have a thick skin you will see failures but again you have to stand from them that is number one quality that you should have you should be able to do the same kind of job for next 3-4 years you should not think I will start my business I will become an entrepreneur in 6 months 1 years back I will see one that is very rare so if you want to be a successful entrepreneurship role you have to be very patient you have to have perseverance which will last for at least 2-3 years the second quality that you should build up is you should build your personal brand so when you move to an entrepreneurship role why should people give you this say in my last organization where I work for some 500 companies when I move to an entrepreneurship role I will not be making any projects then I realize people know me and I used to work with so and so company people don't know me so if you want to move up to an entrepreneurship role you start building your personal brand how you should build your personal brand is to network with like many people attend workshops like this events like this interact with the people who are into the community the startup community, the business community the more you network the more personal brand you will start being visible attend events, attend seminars so these are the 2 qualities which I will suggest you should be having a great amount of perseverance and you should be having a personal brand if you have these 2 qualities then you should consider moving and again I always follow that chronology job freelancing and entrepreneurship this has a higher probability of success again you can start off even without having a job or a freelancing but the probability of getting success is higher if you move from job to freelancing to an entrepreneurship role thank you Rahul that was really insightful to know the pathway the qualities that everyone should have whether they want to consider freelancing whether they want to go for a job like a lot of people are students over here people are freelancers they might want to move on to the next phase of their life they should have the qualities that he mentioned make sure you make yourself visible make sure you have clear mindset about each and every segment you are going to go to each and every one has its pros and cons and definitely not everything that glitter is cold so it has their ups and downs you must know that before moving into anything and definitely I would recommend if you want to go through any of these segments please do concern or grab those people over to lunch that there will be the best networking you can ever get before concluding this session I would like to we have many of you one question you can have one question from the audience first of all I am thanking you after the discussion I gained a lot of knowledge from you I mean if you speak English well you can speak English well I think freelancer never be free or expression or experience I am 46 years old I wanted a freelancer and before 6 months I have been through Facebook I started freelancing in Korkastik I used to be able to understand and learn from the time I was in college when I started working as a freelancer and I started working as a freelancer I started getting more and more pressure when I became a freelancer I got a lot of knowledge from them my question was whether freelancer can be free or not see you can speak in Bengali without no that is for the issue I will say it's for the short term okay so you can say it so I agree to you that financing is not an easy job, so you need to take care of your clients and there will be time that you have a lot of work and there would be time for you to have any work to do. So, this is a tough profile that you choose, but definitely I like to tell you the benefits. See it is not like that the client wants to like you said that they want to extract all the time from you. It is like you need to build a good relationship with your client. See I have a client who is working for me at least for 6 years and from the beginning when I started working as a freelancer. So, this depends on how good relationship you build with your client and for the time that you are considering that I do not get enough time. So, I think the best option if you want to visit around the world and do your work as well is freelancing. A businessman cannot do it, a job, a person in job cannot do it. The only thing is that you need to dedicate your hours that is for the client. So, if you have dedicated 8 hours work for your client you need to dedicate that. They are not concerned with whether you are dedicating it from Kolkata or you are in New York. So, the experience could be different for say like job is not satisfactory for everyone. So, so could be the freelancing. So, I agree with you. Actually that is the issue. I like it very much because I know that I am good at video editing. I know that I am good at graphic design. But I have experienced mathematics teacher for the competitive examination. But when I was in college, I did not have any training. Most of my classes were open. Video editing or image editing? One question. So, what is your professionalism? Like you are a teacher or you are a video editor? I am a teacher. I am a text teacher. I like video editing. And you like to do video editing. So, you are doing freelancing in video editing. Yeah, yeah. Video editing and image editing. So, I will say that. I do not know what to say. See, this kind of job obviously needs to be, to you to be present at the location where you are doing it. So, this can never be... This requires you at the place where you want to go. We are really short of time. So, you can connect with... We can connect with Karol, over lunch. We have one more question category. So, one, only one. Okay. That question over lunch. Somebody can pass on the mic. Give it to him. Give it to him. Give it to him. Give it to him. Give it to him. Give it to him. Give it to him. Give it to him. Give it to him. Give it to him. So, this type of job is to be ready. The problem is that you need to find a wide co-founder. And how is... that means you will be a best co-founder. What is the criteria you are looking for that part? So, one thing that I like to suggest. If you want to have a co-founder, stay alive for your family. Don't make any of it from your family as your co-founder. Because, then your business will go down, and your family will go down. The most fit, no, no. This is my personal, my main thing personal is that I have seen success. See, if you want to look out for co-founders, that's a very important investment. Because when you are starting up, you cannot do everything on yourself. You see most of the startups or the new businesses, they have co-founders. There is logic to it. So, if there is an investment, if I want to invest in a company, I will rather try to diversify my links if I see there are three co-founders. Because when you have a single co-founder company, everything you have to do with yourself. When you have multiple co-founders, you can distribute your job. So, how to come up finding for the right co-founder is to go to various networking events, attend seminars where like-minded people you think would be visiting, interact with people, find out their interests. You don't only look at domain expertise because the first characteristic that you want in your co-founder is whether you are compatible with that particular person or not. So, your personal compatibility with that co-founder is number one tick mark that you should look at. Rather than looking at the domain expertise, you consider whether you are compatible with that co-founder. If you find your nature, your characteristics matches with that co-founder, then you start digging the other boxes, whether you have the right domain expertise. Say if you are from the development side, so you want somebody who is from object-less development so that he can bring that expertise to you. Or if you are looking for a finance co-founder, whether he has an expertise or not. So, these are some ways where you can go and look for co-founders. And as I said, family, no. Again, I also say, don't work with your friends. Because not all friends are left and not the business is left. So, look out for people who are different. So, there you can have much more higher compatibility. I hope that answers. Definitely do that. Yes, look out for people here. So, if you are here for network, you go for people here. So, I want to say something. Who became a man? Sugar. Sugar. There are always exceptions. So, there are husband and wife who don't fight. But maximum husband and wife. That was a really good question. We are short of time. So, during the lunch, we will be available so we can interact.