It’s the graduation season again, a period when more youngsters are entering the job market. There have been countless calls for today’s youth to dip their toes in entrepreneurship. There is nothing inherently wrong with that; it generates jobs, after all. However, it does demand considerable ingenuity and a whole lot of luck.
I recently came across a list of cafés and online coffee vendors in the country. The sheer number is astounding. In a country with such a small population, how do they expect to sustain their operations? If entrepreneurship is the answer to unemployment rate, what is the answer to business failure?
Even as a consumer with a fondness for certain brands, there are times when I have to make do with alternatives because my favourite products are temporarily out of stock. I can only imagine the horror if I were a café operator, whose business depended on the continuous availability of specific products.
And it was precisely what happened to a friend, who runs a small restaurant in a quiet neighbourhood. She recently had a run-in with the law for using an “undeclared” brand of ingredients, despite having sourced them from a local supermarket. Given the ongoing supply chain issues, could they not have given her a free pass, especially since those products had already received stamps of approval from the authorities?
While I commend the authorities for aiding youth through a multitude of entrepreneurship workshops, skills training and business matchmaking programmes, the environment in which to operate these businesses needs to be favourable, too. If seasoned business owners find it difficult to navigate the landscape, what more a fresh graduate with limited experience in the realm?
Concerned Youth
