Franchising benefits for boot-strapping entrepreneurs

Franchising has emerged as one of the greatest business opportunities across the world and an increasing number of people especially the youth are embracing it with fervour over the past 5 years. Currently, with the uncertainties in the job market due to the economic slowdown more and more youth is seen opting for franchising to set up and run their business. Why is this so? Franchising solves two key problems typically faced by the youth – inexperience and lack of financial resources. Most of the youth is inexperienced and lack the know-how to set up and maintain a start up. Lack of financial resources is also a major hindrance at this stage when one is just setting up one’s career.

Running a business independently indeed can be challenging, especially for the beginners. This is where being associated with a franchisor greatly helps. A franchisor has already established a renowned brand and has developed all the tools and systems required to run the business successfully. There is transfer of knowledge and resources – the franchisor extends the solutions and garnered information to the franchisee – greatly enhancing the learning curve. The mistakes have already been made and the lessons already learnt!  Franchisors already have developed their own marketing solutions, training support, and have already established a brand for the market, drastically reducing risk – perhaps this remains the biggest advantages of franchising. The potential for high returns hence increases drastically.

In India, education franchising has evolved in a big way and has come to form a major share in the sector. This is further accentuated with the number of opportunities that have opened in the sector over the past 5 years with the rise in vocational courses like hospitality, aviation, retail etc. Education is of prime importance to the people in the country and the sector is relatively unaffected by recession. According to a sector report by a leading financial institution, even the poorer sections of the society spend about 20 per cent of their disposable incomes in the education of their wards in private institutes. There is a lot of potential due to the large population of youth in the country (the largest in the world) and yet a significant number of them are yet to receive quality education. Also, the education sector in India is largely unorganised and since education franchising has already been accepted well in the country there’s never been a better time to invest in education.  

Irrespective of the industry chosen, the key factors that every entrepreneur should aim for are the commitment to deliver the best and a sincerity to work out the nitty-gritty’s of business. Knowledge in the industry that one opts for also makes a huge difference. The most important factor is attitude - there needs to be a passion to strive and perform to the best of one’s ability – this will surely guarantee success.