My entrepreneurship journey to rethink life | Pramodh Chandrashekar | TEDxVelTech

Before I go after my speech, I would like to introduce myself. I am Pramod, a 19-year-old student entrepreneur pursuing law. Now, most of them would be wondering why a law student is starting a company at 19, right? Well, you go mad after choosing law. So, that's not the actual reason. Entrepreneurship was my passion. I always wanted to start a company of my own. But I was not knowing what problem am I solving, or how to go about it, or the way which can take me further. So, what is social entrepreneurship? In the simplest words, it means solving a problem which the society faces and getting paid for solving that problem. Right? Simple. So, what problem am I solving? How am I going about it? So, on 10th March, 2018, I took a stand, a decision, of becoming an entrepreneur by next year, 10th March. That is 12 months from that day. Which is ironically tomorrow. So, the saying, right? Dreams remain dreams without deadline. So, that deadline, that is 10th March, 2018, was remarkable in my life. I believe in law of attraction. When you think about something continuously, the society makes it happen. The universe makes it happen. Right? So, exactly one month after my decision on 10th March, 2018, something happened in my life. My grandma passed away. I was shattered. I was broken. But, little did I know that, that very incident paved me entrepreneurship journey. Yes, it did. I started thinking, why is our society so negative about death? We think death is a taboo. We should stay away from it, right? So, I, being a 19-year-old, was crazy, and took this social problem about death and make it a positive beginning. But, how am I going to do that? So, I linked a bigger problem, very huge problem, bigger than the negative taboo about death, that is our nature. So, my solution was to rethink life and connect our emotions to nature. So, I took a stand, a bold initiative, which almost everyone were against it, to make an initiative to rethink life and care for our nature through our personal emotions. So, with no further ado, I would like to ask two questions and then on go about my initiative. So, we all love trees, right? So, how many of you guys love roads covered with trees, including me? A lot of them, right? We all love shady roads to go on a bike ride with our girlfriends, right? So, okay, my second question is, have you ever watered a tree? Raise your right hand this time. Wow. One, two, three. Few. There comes a lack of social responsibility to private ownership. We all love nature. We all love trees. We all love sceneries. But are we taking an effort to care for it? No. Why? Because we lack ownership. We lack a sense of responsibility and belongingness to our nature. Because love is love. What can love alone do? So, how I connected our emotions to our nature? So, I created a system that will convert your cremated remains of your loved one into a tree after they pass on. I repeat, I converted a system which can make your beloved's memories into a beautiful green tree after they pass on. So that you can care for it, you can love it, and the memories always stay nurtured forever. So eventually, you still feel that your loved one is breathing in a form of a green tree and you tend to connect to it. So eventually, you not only care for that one tree which is planted on your loved one's memories, but also care for the fellow trees around it. By this initiative, by this social effort, we create an impact of creating a bridge between social tragedy of commons, where commons don't care for our society, towards which we all tilt towards caring for our society. Because I don't want my tree which is from my grandma's ashes to be cut down. Right? So that's all about it. So, how did we go about it? We know that we live in India. India. So, it's such a religious city, such a religious continent, so people don't opt for our model. So what did we, and how did we do it? In the initial stage, we went on to pet burials and pet cremations. Unlike humans, pets are families, but the only thing which is separating us from them is they don't have religion like us. So, we went to pet burials, pet cremations, and made those memories of our loved pets into trees, and the memories always stay nurtured, and it stays lingering in our minds forever. So that's how we came to this initiative, and our goal is to just move on, and move on, and make this a social drift. So, how are we making it? So, we are creating a new life after death that will bridge the gap between everything as I told you. So I would like to share one of our testimonials which a pet owner gave. So the right side is an hibiscus plant planted on his pet's memory called Leo tree. Yes, his pet was called Leo. So I asked, Sir, why do you want a hibiscus tree for your pet's memories? He said, every flower this plant blooms will come from a pet's heart. That is the emotion which people attach to this initiative. We can make a monumental impact by creating an honest and viable model wherein we, the common public, care for our own society. If we just stay idle thinking the government will do something, NGO will come up and do something, or a CSF policy of a company will impact the society, nothing is going to change because change should come from within. If you want to see a change, then be the change yourself. So that's all how I did it. And then I really dream big because only dreamers achieve things, right? So I have a dream called Dream 2030. That is 10 years from now. So my dream is to plant 10 lakh memory trees in our country. So how are we going to do that? We got permission to establish a memory forest in my city, Bangalore, and likewise in every metro city in our country. Now what's a memory forest? Today, I plant my memory tree here, you plant your memory tree here, and she plants a memory tree here. Eventually, every tree it adds up, it will turn into a beautiful lush green forest filled with memories. So 10 years down the lane, we will be walking into a beautiful forest, a green land filled with memory trees, rather a graveyard filled with tombstones and negative emotions. So that is my dream. But how did this happen? How did I make up to a TEDx talk? What made me come in front of you people and talk in this most prestigious forum? When I told my dream, my social initiative to my friends and my crowd and circle, they mocked at me, they laughed at me. They were like, see this guy who is going crazy creating something about death. They made fun of me. Every day after college, I used to go cry in my living room. But that made me strong, so strong that I didn't give a shit to people's comments on my initiative because I dream big, so I can achieve that dream. And people who mock at me will just be mocking at me. There's a saying, right? People first mock at you, then they talk about you, and finally one day, they walk behind you, which has happened in my life right now. So I want all of you to dream big and go after your dreams, no matter how big it is. Six months before, if I would have told my friends that I am a TEDx speaker, nobody's gonna even listen to my words, right? Today, I did something so that I am speaking in front of you. So that means if I can do something, being a 19-year-old student, how much more can you do? How much more can you achieve in life? How much more can you impact in your society? Every bad experience is a business opportunity. This was not said by me. It was said by Richard Branson. So we have so many problems in our society. So many. Water problem in Chennai, climate change in Bangalore, pollution in Delhi, and the list never ends. It goes on and on. But we, the educated class of a country, should step up and solve that problems. If we don't solve those problems, then who is gonna solve those problems? I mean, you tell me. How can the government solve so many problems? How can an NGO come up and solve so many problems? So there comes a need for entrepreneurship, a need for social entrepreneurship to solve all the social problems in our society with a viable business model. So, every step counts. Today, I, being 19, took a bold step, an initiative to do something in my city. How much more can you do in your own city? In 2000s, I come from a city called Garden City, Bangalore, which was filled with 3 lakh trees in 2000s. But right now, we hardly have 1 lakh trees. If it goes on this pace, my city will be a Cape Town, a waterless city in 2025, according to Hindu reports. If I don't care for my city, then who will come up and care for it? I will make my city into a Garden City again, which has been re-termed as Silicon Valley by Bangaloreans. The so-called Bangaloreans who are living in Bangalore and blaming the government, the system, the dilemma situations, are just blaming it. They are not impacting anything. So, I make an impact. Tomorrow, we make an impact. And later on, the world will make an impact. Our country will stand out with having so much student count. We have so many problems, so many solutions for it. But if we, the educated class, don't step up and solve those problems, it will never be solved. It will never be solved. So, today, if I solve a problem, tomorrow, I want you to solve a problem. Lastly, I would like to talk about the myth about social entrepreneurship. So, what is social entrepreneurship? As I told you, it's solving a problem and getting paid for it. Now, people assume that social entrepreneurship is an NGO or a charity or an organization which goes on losses. No, that's not right. Yes, as an enterprise, we make enough money to run our business, but serve for a bigger social cost like how we do. Tomorrow, I would love to see many social enterprises in various cities of our country and make an impact. A small impact would do. If we, the student crowd of our country, rise and do something small, eventually, that small change will be a monumental impact on our society. Every drop counts. Every student's effort counts. If we think something, we can achieve something. So, I conclude my speech by saying that if I can do something, how much more can you do? Today, my speech is an inspiration to some of them. Tomorrow, let your speech, let your story, let your life be a role model or inspiration to someone else. Thank you.