The 60+ Entrepreneur
Most often, we think of entrepreneurs as young and still in their 20s, 30s or sometimes in their 40s. The name ‘businessman’ however can create the image of a person above 50s. One of the main reasons is that entrepreneurship is risky, physically and mentally tough sometimes and is bearable only to the young, bar a few exceptions. Conducting an established business on the other hand is most often just managing the variables and not creation of those variables.
Yesterday, I happened to meet the CEO of CICB-Chemicon, Dr.K.D.Kini. Now in his 60s, you could mistake him for a normal businessman. Under him, the company now has a 38 year history, an impressive list of clients and numerous branches. Most people would retire at this age; either from work altogether or sometimes retire to status quo. A stable business would be more than enough for most.
Imagine someone of this age who would find out about an entirely new technology, unrelated in most forms to his existing business, then work hands on to improve the technology and finally sell it successfully. This was the kind of person I met.
I’ll not go into the technology details here, except that it is related to biomass gasifiers. Imagine for example, you had always seen and believed that only bullock-carts exist in this world. Suddenly one day, you see a car! And that car being developed by a 60+ person. That is the kind of technology leap that I saw yesterday. This was a true engineer and an entrepreneur that I met. And from the short conversation I had with him, he has no plans of stopping. He has a new project in hand now.
Probably true entrepreneurs never age.