Rise of Solopreneur? How people are quitting stable jobs for a side hustle

The pandemic is making several people fearless about quitting their stable jobs

Dev Gadhvi looks at you with practised sincerity and tells you if you are not following your passion in 2021, then you are missing out on the opportunities the pandemic has created. In some videos, one can see his Ferrari parked in the background. In others, he implores you to follow your heart with salubrious hills and swaying leaves framing his image.

Pune-based Ghadvi’s mentorship programme that offers a pathway to people to turn their passion into their profession has seen a surge in interest over the past year. Last year, Ghadvi clocked a revenue of Rs 16 crore, from Rs 2.5 crore the previous year, and he is hoping to close this financial year with a turnover of Rs 30 crore.

Businesses like his have flourished online, thanks to the mindset shift the pandemic has brought among millennials and Gen Z workers, many of whom are leaving full-time jobs for a side hustle. The Great Resignation, or the Great Quit, however, isn’t as pronounced in India as it is in the US or Europe, or even China. Here, it is more visible in the IT and ITeS (information technology-enabled services) sectors.

This is what happened to Mukul Rai Bahadur.

A management graduate from Symbiosis, Pune, Bahadur was working with Star TV in Mumbai, and had just been awarded a fully-paid scholarship to study fintech and blockchain at Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Kolkata when his company switched to work from home in March last year. As he moved to Patiala, his hometown, work from home afforded him the time to use his tech skills to help the state police set up their social media accounts to counter misinformation about the pandemic. Soon, in the middle of a raging pandemic, he was working 14-hours a day with the cops, and within weeks, he knew where his sense of contentment came from. Some months later, he quit his job. 

“Working for people gave me a different kind of satisfaction, and while my corporate job paid more, this was more rewarding,” he says. Any regrets? None, he says.

Many others are joining his ranks to follow risky passion-projects. Ghadvi has built an entire business around it, offering help with identifying one’s passion and setting up social media presence to marketing and sales. Though not everyone who joins his course ends up finding or even following their passion, the idea is worth the risk for many.

Although the trend is still nascent in India, over the past 18 months a lot has changed in terms of opportunities and access to information. Several start-up accelerators, too, appear open to funding and mentoring someone who is armed with nothing but a passion for their idea. As a result, for those with in-demand skills, the pandemic has added a new kind of fearlessness.

Umesh Emmadishetty, who worked as a software engineer with Altruista Health Services in Pune, quit his job last year to set up his own digital marketing agency. With a young family to take care of, he had been putting off the decision for a year but the pandemic gave him the boost he needed. “The loss of life and the disruptions to the economy made me realise nothing is permanent and I did not want to spend the rest of my life doing something I wasn’t passionate about,” he says.

His workdays now often stretch to 16 hours, but he doesn’t mind it since it is far more rewarding, he says. Luckily for him, he makes more than he did as a full-time employee.

Not just IT, YouTube is rife with ads about turning a side hustle into business. A young man tells you how he quit his 9-to-5 job to sell his granny’s pickles on e-commerce site Shopify. And there are plenty others talking about monetising their skills or finding alternative ways to making money — though not necessarily more rewarding monetarily than a steady job.

Vishnu Mohan, an MBA employed with fitness tech start-up Fittr, quit in March to start his own fitness coaching company called Lyvfit. His motivation was the fear of not having your own brand in a roller coaster economy. “The pandemic showed me how dangerous it was to rely on a single source of income and how important it was to build one’s own brand,” he says.

He paints an idyllic picture of his new life: “I work from any part of the world. Recently, I was in Goa for six months, working from there. Now I am in Kerala. Plus, I do not report to anyone and I can implement my own style into my work.”

Solopreneurs like Mohan have also benefited from the shift towards micro-influencers. “As low as 100 follower base creators can get monetised these days, provided their content is unique and strikes a chord with the audience,” says Prerna Goel, co-founder and chief marketing officer, Whizco, an influencer marketing agency.

But not everyone quitting is sure of the future. The stakes are high for Mohan. He has no knowledge of business and there is no businessman in his family. Does he have any regrets about leaving a secure job?

“I have taken a risk. I am earning a little less right now, compared to what I was in February,” he says, “but there has not been a single day when I have regretted my decision. I have time to build my brand and soon enough, I hope to reach or even surpass the pay that I used to earn.”