How My Timely Financial Plans Empowered The Growth Of My Business

My father told me stories of my late great-grandfather Govardhan Das Dalmia and how he literally started from zero and built everything on his own. It inspired me to do the same, and be my own person.  Here is how my financial plans empowered my business

It was during the Covid times, we didn’t have a lot of expenses with Climapreneur, a venture we began to contribute to India’s Climate Action Journey. We practically had just started out and were still in the figuring-out phase. We did have some savings, a few thousand rupees, and I am mentioning it because no amount of money is less. We need to start with what we have, to create what we want. 

Hence, I took a conscious call to invest my savings. Climapreneur wasn’t demanding any money but only hard work and literally testing my resilience and trust in the vision every single day. Because I began with a vision but no business plan, no business model, clueless about how it would generate revenue? But somewhere inside me, I knew there would come a point when I will need capital to deploy. When I will have the right product-market fit? And hence, took a really conscious decision of investing back in 2020. 

How My Financial Plans Empowered My Business

 I began Climapreneur with a vision to empower people to be a part of the transformational climate economy. We believe it will not only have a positive climate impact but also empowers their pockets to improve their living conditions and all this is driven by education, knowledge and our very own human libraries. 

For me, it's been a do-or-die situation. This is what I am living for every single day, literally every single second. This is the only thing I have on my mind: because practically there is nothing and nowhere I can imagine myself. And hence, to take Climapreneur to where I want it to be, I am going to do everything. Every possible thing. 

I knew someday this ">investment was going to compound up and build Climapreneur. I spent days learning about the stock market and did a lot of research. I started small, hoping not to be wrong. I spent nights, and days reading everything in the news about the companies I wanted to invest in, their future projects and their growth. I researched on the companies who were involved in green tech, and their innovations because somehow it was going to help me as well. 

I did my mathematics and invested in only those stocks that I was sure were going to give me good returns. And my investments did give me huge returns. 

My rule is to invest and forget. Let me explain what I mean by that, after investing in 2020, I didn't draw a single penny out of it until September 2022. I told myself, I am only going to draw money when I am making another investment. I am going to put it into something that will grow and help us reach the vision. And because we always have worked on limited resources, I have tried to stretch every rupee to get maximum benefit and it helped me to think out of the box. 

It was one of the best decisions I made for the company. The hardest times shouldn’t stop you from building what you want to. 

Someone, once asked: How long are you going to pursue this with zero revenue? What is your runway? My answer then and today still remains the same: Finances don’t define the runway for my business: Resilience does. Today, I can run Climapreneur at no cost too and amidst all storms without losing focus because we have seen that hardest phase. And because I didn’t lose my focus I could seize the opportunity that came in the stock market. 

So start with what you have to create what you want.

Views expressed are the author's own. 

Shweta Dalmia is the founder of Climapreneur

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