ARUSHA TECHNICAL COLLEGE

NAME: LUIZA FRANCIS SEMKIWA

ADMISSION NUMBER: 20020413065

DEPARTMENT: CIVIL DEPARTMENT

PROGRAME: CIVIL AND IRRIGATION ENGINEERING

MODULE CODE: GSU 08101

MODULE NAME: ENTREPRENEURSHIP FOR ENGINEERS

MODULE TUITOR: MADAM MWASE D.

1. What where the major drivers for Mohammed Dewji in his entrepreneurship
pathway?
From the case study, it is observed that the major things drove Mohammed Dewji
in his entrepreneurship pathway are:
 The desire to become a wealthy person,
 The desire to make an impact in the society, and
 The job to create that will touch the lives of others.

2. With supporting evidences from the case study, discuss five (5) characteristics
displayed by Mohammed Dewji.

a) Creativity:
Creativity is the ability to think and discover new ideas and new ways of
doing something. It is the way of getting rid of the old ways and methods that
could bring negative impact or very little impact and therefore coming with new
strategies that will bring development and advancement, as well as shifting the
company from one level of increase to the other.
From the case study, we see Mohammed Dewji showing up some
creative skills with the desire to improve the company to the next level, as it is
seen in the sixth paragraph that, “Dewji introduced some efficient economic
models that transformed the financial state of the business and grew the
company’s revenues from $30 million to $1.5 billion within 19 years.” Also,
apart from this, in the fifth paragraph we see that the company was initially
dealing with just trading stuffs, but Dewji decided to look for another idea to
develop the company by “taking advantage of the privatization of certain
distressed companies by the Tanzania Government, acquiring them cheaply
and later transforming them into profitable ventures”.

b) Risk taking and decision-making ability:

Risk taking is the process in entrepreneurship that involves trying certain
potential opportunities that could probably help your business to grow and be built
but at the same time they could lead one in experiencing certain losses. An
entrepreneur needs to be a risk taker, who takes moderate or calculated risks that
 are not too high or too low in his business. He should not be someone who is
afraid of this factor because else it could make him doing nothing at all.
Mohammed Dewji as an entrepreneur had this mindset of risk taking and
also making decisions in the aspect of taking certain actions as mitigation
measures that would help dealing with the risks and that is working harder
towards achieving your goal. This can also be tracked from the third paragraph, “I
think we also need to take risks in business every day, but make sure you
mitigate the risks. Most important is being resilient. Having a culture of
working hard towards your goal even if you come across things that might
push you back a little bit or slow you down.”

c) Leadership and Team building:

Leadership is the ability to influence others, and influencing them to do
something the way you want them to do. It also comes up with attitudes such as
bringing new ideas, team building, risk taking, and being passionate. It is the
ability to handle certain given roles and responsibilities, as well as producing
results.
Mohammed Dewji had leadership traits as we see him handling the
Management Team and later on becoming the Chief Financial Officer after
leaving the university, as well as producing results as he was placed in these
sectors. Which means he was able to influence and coordinate his subordinates to
work as ought and in a team, to make sure the company rising up. He also sought
for political recognition (leadership position in politics) in the year 2000 where
he failed to attain it, and in 2005 he tried it again and this time he was able to be
selected as the Member of Parliament representing Singida Urban
Constituency.

d) Opportunity seeking and initiative:

Entrepreneurs are self-starters. They see opportunities and then decide to
take initiatives to start, grow and expand their businesses immediately without
wastage of time. There might be something happening somewhere and no one
recognises but these people are quick to take advantage of every opportunity at
any time.
 From the fifth paragraph of the case study, we see Mohammed Dewji
seeking and taking certain opportunities for the development of the company.
Where, “he went on to take advantage of the privatization of certain
distressed companies by the Tanzania Government, acquiring them cheaply
and later transforming them into profitable ventures”. Probably no one saw
this, but he as an entrepreneur observed the presence of these companies and
decided to take some initiatives.

e) Persistence:
This is the ability of maintaining certain positive mindsets towards
achieving certain goals. An entrepreneurial person does not become easily
discouraged by circumstances and challenges that comes in his way. No matter
what, such people keep pursuing what they target to achieve.
Because of this, it even made Mohammed Dewji (in the sixth paragraph)
to show up some persistent attitudes when he was looking for the leadership
position (in politics). Thus, despite him losing the first chance in 2000 which was
because of his young age, he was not discouraged and still contested again in
2005 where by this time around he succeeded to be selected as the Member of
Parliament representing Singida Urban Constituency. And for this case, he
maintained the positive attitude of, ‘I can try it again and still come up with good
results.’

3. Briefly, explain any three (03) managerial factors that result in entrepreneurial
venture success for Dewji.

a) Opportunity Recognition:
It is important for the entrepreneur to recognise various advantageous
opportunities that will in turn come to develop and establish the business entity or
the company for expansion reasons. Research should be made and enough
information should be gathered so that whatsoever expansion that the entrepreneur
has to make will not bring any negative impact and bringing the business to the
lower level, but rather lifting it up.
Mohammed Dewji as one of the successful entrepreneurs was an
opportunity recogniser that he searched for an alternative way to expand the
 business they had, where by we are told that he took advantage of the
privatization of certain distressed companies by the Tanzania Government,
acquiring them cheaply and later transforming them into profitable ventures.
This led to the development and advancement of the company. So, apart from
what they were doing as a company, he sought for other opportunities to expand
the economy of the company.

b) Decision Making:
The decision that an entrepreneur will take or make, will determine the
results that this person will get, and will also determine the level that the business
will prospect. Many enterprise companies fall down or rise up due to this factor,
and therefore the head of the company and sometimes the manager has to be very
careful in decision making as this will lead to the negative or positive impact.
Either of the one.
From the case study, Mohammed Dewji played a very key role in decision
making as a leader in the organization which led to the great profit, where he
decided to take advantage of the privatization of certain distressed companies by
the Tanzania Government and transformed them to profitable ventures. He also
decided to introduce some efficient economic models that transformed the
financial state of the business and grew the company’s revenue from $30 million
to $1.5 billion within 19 years.

c) Time Management:
This is one of the most important factors that helps an entrepreneur in
decisions making, in evaluation and prioritizing of what to do based on the
importance of the activity. When time is wasted, resources can also be wasted.
When time is well managed, it helps the entrepreneur to achieve a lot of and
enough goals and tasks in the particular stated time.
From the case study, we learn from Mohammed Dewji that he started to
take some initiative from young age, thus he didn’t wait for him to pass to much
age before he began to learn on entrepreneurship. And that was at the age of 12
years, then continued with his goals, working in his father’s company and
bringing many achievements as days went on. We also see him introducing
various ideas for the progress of the company in a short time. For instance, the
transformation of the distressed companies into profitable ventures, and the
introduction of efficient economic models that helped to grew the company’s
revenues within just 19 years.