‘Marwaris are India’s greatest business school’: Entrepreneur shares how sitting beside Marwari classmates inspired him to start his own business

Entrepreneurship is a skill, one that is learnt and acquired. Not everyone can be an entrepreneur, but an entrepreneur can do everything. They scan the gap in the market, create a business to fulfil it, make products, sell them and keep making money from more sources than just one. This journey for some involves rigorous hard work, gaining degrees and adding work experience. However, for some lucky ones, it begins all at home.

Recently, a Dubai-based Indian entrepreneur Debashish Neogi took to X (formerly Twitter) to share how different his life was from his Marwari classmates and how they inspired him to begin his own business.

In the post, Neogi contrasted that at the age of 19, while he was preparing for exams, his Marwari classmates were already running businesses. “I didn't understand it then. I do now,” he wrote. As the son of a Bengali teacher, he shared that no one in his family’s generation knew business.

While studying at St.Xavier’s College, Kolkata he shared that the morning classes would end at 9:50 am. But while he would go back home, his Marwari friends would go straight to their family shops, firms and factories.

At 19, he wrote, they were writing invoices, sitting in supplier meetings, counting inventory and learning money not from the books, but from their fathers. “I was solving question papers. They were solving real problems,” he added.

Neogi shared an instance of a morning when he was sitting in the college canteen and watched a classmate discuss a shipment delay. “He was 19. Handling logistics. I didn't even know what a supply chain was. That day I decided - if they can do this, why can't I?”

He then went on to do CA, learning to read businesses and build them. Now, Neogi has his own chocolate business which runs in 34 countries, all because he “sat next to the right people at 19.”

“The Marwari community is India's oldest and greatest business school. No campus. No degree. No placement cell. Just fathers teaching sons over chai and calculators,” he wrote.

Social media reactions

Many social media users supported and aligned with Neogi’s observations. “I used to go to my father’s workplace from very small age. All these learning goes into subconscious mind. When i was in college, i started my first startup,” one wrote.

“Exposure changes ambition. Sometimes just sitting around the right people completely alters your understanding of what’s possible,” one pointed out.

“Marwari kids learn mathematics the real way not text book. Most Marwari family have their house behind their shops and the kids spend most of the time in the shop,” added another.

Marwaris are a community from the Marwar region of Jodhpur in Rajasthan, India. They are known for their historic and contemporary dominance in trade, business and industry where generations of families have been running major business conglomerates across the country. They are often referred to as the “business community” and hailed for their financial acumen, as mentioned by Neogi.