The Senate GOP health care bill explained Mitch McConnell certainly doesn't want to save Obamacare. But the Senate majority leader acknowledged Thursday that if Republicans can't pass a health care bill, they would have to do something to shore up the Obamacare markets for next year. "If my side is unable to agree on an adequate replacement, then some kind of action with regard to the private health insurance market must occur," McConnell said at a Rotary Club lunch in his home state of Kentucky, according to several media reports. "No action is not an alternative. We've got the insurance markets imploding all over the country, including in this state." Related: Ted Cruz's Obamacare repeal plan would cripple the market say experts The uncertainty over Obamacare's fate in Washington D.C. has left insurers jittery about participating in the individual market next year and beyond. Republicans in Congress continue to struggle to craft a bill that would repeal and replace the … [Read more...]

Entrepreneur: I was sexually assaulted by my investor In just two weeks, two powerful Silicon Valley investors have resigned from the firms they cofounded after women accused them of sexual harassment. The men, 500 Startups cofounder Dave McClure and Binary Capital cofounder Justin Caldbeck, didn't just cross the line once, according to the allegations. Multiple women -- both employees at their firms and female founders -- have come forward about their mistreatment of women. Silicon Valley's power dynamics don't favor women and minorities. Investors tend to be white men: 89% of those making investment decisions at the top 72 firms are male, according to one industry survey. Many women have said they fear retaliation if they speak out about inappropriate behavior. "Tech companies too often make witches out of vocal women," wrote designer Julie Ann Horvath in a 2015 Medium post about discrimination and harassment in the tech industry. Horvath had previously spoken out about … [Read more...]

You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media. Reader Resource Apply now to be an Entrepreneur 360™ company. Let us tell the world your success story. Get Started » Starting up, more often than not, has been a way for people passionate about ideas to break away from the mundane system that restricts them. But while that’s the common story, there are few who break away from the system, start up and make a comeback, only to disrupt the routine structure of what previously held them back. And Govind Singh, MD and CEO, Utkarsh Small Finance Bank did exactly that.DIVERSIFICATION IS THE ONLY CONSTANTWith a background of banking, Singh decided to start a venture of his own, which led to the formation of the Utkarsh Micro Finance Institution. Thanks to his knowledge of the industry, it wasn’t too long before he met with success. With a customer base … [Read more...]

Reader Resource Apply now to be an Entrepreneur 360™ company. Let us tell the world your success story. Get Started » The last 10 minutes of your day can also be the most crucial. It’s a time where you can prep for the next day, organize your workspace, sign out of email and reflect on what you achieved in the past eight hours. In the end, you should feel confident and proud when you walk out of the office.Related: 5 Daily Habits That Will Increase Your Productivity LevelsThere are a number of different ways you can wisely spend those last few minutes of your work day. For starters, don’t try to cram in a new project or take on a big task. Instead, begin winding down and setting yourself up for success the following day. To prep, craft tomorrow’s to-do list, checking off everything that you completed today so you have a clear idea of what’s ahead.Related: 5 Habits of Successful People Before 8 … [Read more...]

You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media. Reader Resource Apply now to be an Entrepreneur 360™ company. Let us tell the world your success story. Get Started » The investment landscape has changed drastically in the last few years. Often in business forums and direct interactions, a lot of people ask me how they should become a retail investor.I feel that in a world where business valuations are becoming a mainstay and the stock market is making a comeback – the “buy low, sell high” aspect, which has been the most reasonable approach to investing till date, is becoming redundant.It seems that the disruptive environment is also changing the investment rules. In fact, the new rule of investment is to buy high and sell even higher.From the stock market point of view, buying stocks which are at yearly lows may actually add risk to … [Read more...]

You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media. Reader Resource Apply now to be an Entrepreneur 360™ company. Let us tell the world your success story. Get Started » Digital marketing is already making inroads in India with most enterprises dedicating a large chunk of their advertising budget to it. However, most of it is still limited to the desktop format with few willing to take risk and spend on mobile and app-targeted advertising.“India is the fourth largest app economy but our spend on mobile advertising is just $400m compared to countries like US where it is over a billion dollars. There is a gap somewhere that needs to be addressed and developers as well as companies need to think how to implement this,” says Suhas Gopinath, CEO at Globals Inc and advisor to GMASA that recently held their mobile app summit in Bengaluru to bring … [Read more...]

You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media. The world is getting compact and the cities are becoming denser, ironically to an extent that we don’t know much about our neighbors too. We live in silos today. But that’s a pain too. In organized housing societies, apart from knowing neighbors to engage yourself in a community, the problems for such societies are unstructured services and compliance management.And technology alone has failed to address it. Mumbai-based Zipgrid - a community platform for offering technology-led services to housing societies aims at reinforcing the welfare of the residents’ in resident welfare associations (RWAs).Zipgrid was launched by Kunal Gupta - former investment manager at Mapletree Investments (real estate focused private equity fund as part of Temasek Holdings) in Singapore along with Jaydip Popat in mid 2013. When Gupta came back to India, renting … [Read more...]

You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media. Reader Resource Apply now to be an Entrepreneur 360™ company. Let us tell the world your success story. Get Started » App idea, planning for its execution is one thing, but the reality check is when it comes to monetizing it. When funding sources conjoin with the app idea, the development process is taken on a wheel.Monetizing isn’t a piece of cake and that’s the reason why the plethora of ideas is just ideas and not the app. Well, no one’s ready to risk their saving to fund an app idea as the market is no short of the same. It’s a tough fight to put up to present the app idea in a attractive way and convince the investor that you will yield a profitable output of their investment.In-app purchase is something that is attracting consumers and also generating revenue. This is basically … [Read more...]

I was watching a private-equity exec speak, but it wasn’t easy—imagine following a ping-pong ball with your eyes as it bounced back and forth for three minutes straight. When he finally stopped, I asked him, “Why do you pace?” “Pacing helps me control my anxiety,” he said. “And it really works! As long as I keep moving, I feel good.” While feeling good is important, if you’re a constant (or even occasional) pacer, you might be undercutting the impact of your talk. It’s true that moving around can add some energy to your presentation and make things feel looser and more dynamic. But moving and gesturing strategically isn’t the same as just pacing back and forth. Here are four downsides to that habit that you’ll want to avoid. When you pace too much, you’ll lose out on the opportunity to use your movement to punctuate what you’re saying. In writing, you use … [Read more...]

After Travis Kalanick’s departure from Uber last month, the ride-hailing company has been moving fast to overhaul its culture. It won’t be easy, and among all those efforts, perhaps the most challenging will be replacing its CEO. Uber’s HR chief Liane Hornsey told Fast Company last week that while there’s already a shortlist, “we’d rather get the very, very best person who can move Uber to its next phase rather than be fast.” The company seems to understand that it needs a leader with a dramatically different style and skill set than Kalanick’s, but so far hasn’t dropped many clues as to what that might include. In the meantime, decades of personality science might be able to point Uber’s search team in the right direction. Related: Meet The Woman Tasked With Saving Uber From Itself As years of research and hundreds of studies show, who you are determines … [Read more...]

You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media. Venue hunting can be a task, and managing clients who're looking for the perfect venue for their events and functions requires an even more ardent effort. The experiential events space in India is quite demanding, but understanding a few basics can make things much easier for an entrepreneur operating in this space.Importance of Finding the Perfect VenueThe decision regarding the venue is the foremost step a client takes when organizing an event and there's so much that goes into deciding the right venue. A lot of things need to be considered and it is essential to ensure that the client gets all or most of their requirements taken care of. A venue doesn't just mean a pretty place for a wedding function. Neither does it mean just a lavish property for a corporate event. There are many other things like location, facilities, budget etc. that play a major … [Read more...]

For most small business owners, there is an unspoken rule to always separate church from state when it comes to using personal credit for business.Related: The 4 Lines of Credit Now Available to Small BusinessesThe obvious reason is that personal credit should be used only for non-business expenses while business credit should be used solely for the benefit of the business and “never the twain shall meet.” However, in the current lending environment for small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMBs), this goal of a clean credit demarcation is less clear than most people realize.    Credit confusion Every day, tens of thousands of SMB owners apply for and, liberally use, their business credit for a wide variety of needs. Yet, as outlined in a 2017 survey conducted by the National Small Business Association, “46 percent of all small businesses use personal credit cards. Many small businesses fail to separate business and personal … [Read more...]

Reader Resource Apply now to be an Entrepreneur 360™ company. Let us tell the world your success story. Get Started » Creating strong relationships in business is vital to keeping projects alive, and it can sometimes be tough. But growing a network can also be as easy as a gesture of goodwill.Find that hard to believe? WeWork recently launched its Creator Awards, a program committed to giving $20 million in grants and cash prizes to startups at various levels. Entrepreneurs and small business owners across the globe are filling out applications, and just for entering, they'll receive a free year of WeWork’s We Membership.Of course, these awards and memberships are a way for WeWork to draw new customers to the company, but there’s something to be said for marketing via goodwill.Related: 10 Ways to Say 'Thank You'Entrepreneurs of every kind can use gestures of goodwill to build or strengthen their … [Read more...]

America's top retailers in trouble Sears is closing another 43 struggling stores. Sears Holdings (SHLD)-- the parent company of Sears and Kmart -- announced on Friday that it will shutter eight of its namesake Sears department stores and 35 Kmart locations, adding to the list of 236 stores Sears has announced plans to shut down in 2017. With the newest round of closings, Sears Holdings is poised to close down about 20% of its locations. The company said in a blog post that the store closures are part of an ongoing effort to "focus on our best stores and return to profitability." "This is part of a strategy both to address losses from unprofitable stores and to reduce the square footage of other stores because many of them are simply too big for our current needs," Chief Executive Officer Eddie Lampert said in the post. Retail bloodbath: Bankruptcy filings pile up Sears said it is focusing on bolstering digital sales and is also testing out small, specialized … [Read more...]

It seems like these days everyone is running  Google AdWords and Facebook Ads campaigns. Those networks are great at producing results, but they aren’t the only good digital ad networks available.Related: 5 Winning Digital Ad Strategies Every Small Business Can AffordBelow are three other types of ads also highly effective for many companies. If you aren’t already using these platforms to increase brand awareness and sales, you might want to change that right away.1. Reddit adsReddit is a conversation platform that allows people with similar interests to find one other.The site has forums for people who love everything from sports to pets and even adult products. Users share stories, swap tips and link to news. Currently, Reddit contains over 50,000 different communities, meaning that most brands can find their own target audience on the site.Reddit ads, moreover, are inexpensive. You can start a campaign for just $5 per day and cancel at any time.Setting up … [Read more...]

Reader Resource Apply now to be an Entrepreneur 360™ company. Let us tell the world your success story. Get Started » From startups to Fortune 500 companies, I’ve seen it happen time and time again: new business owners struggling to establish their brand. Whether these owners have been with the business from the get-go or are stepping in to the company with fresh eyes, they often overlook the opportunity new ownership gives to refresh and revitalize the business’s brand.Related: The 8 Must-Follow Rules for Rebranding Your Company (Infographic)When I made the exciting jump from employee to owner of GroupBaronet in 2006, I experienced this transition firsthand. I wanted to make GroupBaronet my own, so it was important to do more than just uphold the values that had motivated me to purchase the advertising firm in the first place.I had to put my personal stamp on the company’s brand. By merging my name (Mason) … [Read more...]

The recent upheaval at Uber offers a cautionary tale about what happens when founders don't prioritize empathy. The $69 billion company has clearly had success in its market, but its hesitation to address harassment accusations and reports of driver disputes suggested a lack of empathy toward its employees.That's a shame because empathy lies at the heart of successful companies. Founders, in particular, must cultivate a strong sense of empathy because they’re beholden to so many people.Employees, shareholders, customers -- everyone depends on them. And because empathy is a muscle one strengthens only over time, parents who want to raise entrepreneurial kids should begin developing that attribute now.Fortunately, empathy is not a trait some are born with, and some not; everyone can practice -- and become good at -- understanding other people. Stepping into others' shoes begins with simple awareness, and parents are in the perfect … [Read more...]

QIs there an age limit for opening an ABLE account for a person with a disability? What documentation do you need to provide to show that the person is eligible?APeople of any age who developed a qualifying disability before age 26 can open an ABLE account and contribute up to $14,000 per year. The money can be used tax-free for any expenses that benefit the person with the disability, and up to $100,000 in the account doesn’t count toward the $2,000 asset limit for Supplemental Security Income benefits. SEE ALSO: Financial Planning for Special-Needs Children To qualify for an ABLE account, you must meet Social Security’s definition of having “severe functional limitations” with an onset before age 26. IRS regulations don’t require account owners to submit documentation to the plan showing that they are eligible based on the severity and onset of their disability, although some plans have stricter requirements. Even if your plan … [Read more...]

You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media. With a global revenue of over $1 billion expected by 2019, it comes as little surprise that even the National Basketball Association (NBA) is looking to cash in on the hype surrounding eSports, with the league recently announcing that they will work alongside Take-Two Interactive in order to launch a new eSports league. The newly formed NBA 2K eLeague will launch in 2018, with a full 82-game schedule, postseason and even a player draft expected to be involved.The new set-up has been established in a big to completely mirror the realism of the NBA, with five player eTeams being run by current franchises, with ten having already agreed to their involvement. The hope is that all thirty franchises will eventually be represented in the digital environment, and if the growth of other eSports games is to go by, it may well not be too long until others are … [Read more...]

The steady path to a dream retirement The International Monetary Fund has a message for Germans: Retire later. The European and global economies need you to work longer. As the baby boom retirement bubble has grown, many countries have been pushing back the age at which workers can start collecting public pensions. Germany went the other way. Chancellor Angela Merkel, in a move that was popular with voters but criticized by some economists, lowered the age at which many Germans can retire to 63 in 2014, according to the European Observatory of Working Life. The German Council of Economic Experts forecast at the time that the change would cost Germany an extra €10 billion ($11.4 billion) per year. On Friday, the IMF, which aims to ensure global monetary stability, called on Germany to raise its retirement age. The agency did not propose an age. The IMF argument goes like this: An aging German population that works longer would be saving less and spending more. … [Read more...]