It was always entrepreneurship for me

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I was always a misfit. Atleast in India. My parents had a strict focus on education. My siblings and cousins were obedient. I was sort of the black sheep of the family, the kid who wouldn't shut up in school. I never struggled with studies, no. Just the fact that I'm not seen actively studying used to bother people. Grasping concepts in classs usually worked, and while I wasn't the best in the class in terms of grades, I was usually in the highest quartile. Thus "the allowed life" was pretty boring for me.

My parents were good providers. So I don't think my need for money came from scarcity itself. It came from a desire for freedom. Freedom to explore. So I started exploring how to make money. Which I don't think was an active thought, it just happened whenever I saw an opportunity. And I guess, I saw plenty, considering I always had money in my pocket.

Money this Kid Aspired To Have (8 years old)

Pocket Money: At this point I had ₹1/day as pocket my money.

Cost of Snacks:

A lays packet (or cheetos, my favorite was ₹10).
A small coke or pepsi bottle was ₹7.
A snack item was ₹7-10, while a fancier dish in the school canteen would be ₹20-25

Side Hustles

8 years old, My first earning: ₹120

Two friends and I, the three musketeers, setup a games stall at a local community event, that got me my first ₹150. We were not very well prepared, and were shy at asking people for money. That ₹150 was spent within a week, treating my family proudly with my very first earnings. We realised that was not the right market for the product :D

10 years old, Wiser and with a Partner: ₹1,050

2 years later, along with a friend, we setup the game stall in the Diwali Local Community Fair. Now, we had the right market. We were better prepared and had a bunch of different games planned. We setup multiple games like Hit The Glass, Lucky 7, Drop the coin in the bucket and charged ₹10 per attempt, returning double if they were successful. Towards the end, we each walked away with ₹1,050+ each in net profit. I felt rich. More cash than I need for 6 months easily.

11 years old, Went Solo: ₹2200

I took the bold move doing the games stall solo next year, having learnt from previous experience. It was tougher to manage on my own, so I got part-time support from my sister, who I paid ₹500 from the earnings. I still netted roughly double of my last years earnings. My savings were increasing.

12 years old, Side-Opportunity: ₹400 at 1600% profit

Moved to Bangalore. New city, school locality. We had just started using Gel Pens instead of Pencils. Kids in 7th grade discovered a way to shoot refills from the pen using a rubber band. Everyone had Gel Pens, few rubber bands were available in a class room. Et Voila. I bought a huge packet of rubber band from the stationary shop outside school for ₹25. I bought a pack of small celophene packets for ₹5. And I packed 10 rubbers band in each pack and started selling the small packs in the classroom for ₹5/each. Not my proudest hustle, but hay, it was some sweet, easy profit. And I was giving my classmates the fun they wanted.

13 years old, Optimized Operations: ₹5,300

New locallity in Bangalore, a place where they do celebrate Diwali with a Market fair. I ran a very optimized one-man shop with showmanship. Kept only two games which made the most money, helped streamline customer interaction efforts. My now I knew how to keep a customer hooked after a turn to make keep making them play. I had an unbelievable profit of ₹5k+. I probably was the richest 8th grader in school at that time, with full discresioary spending power.

15 years old, Earning Online: Earned & Sold 5 Bitcoins for $5

I started teaching myself C/C++, HTML & Javascript in 10th grade. In eleventh, I started finding forums online to freelance. I also tried multiple pay-to-click sites, which I'm pretty sure were scammy. Tried making youtube videos, creating content gate-locked behind bit.fly ad links to generate cash and signed up on elance (before upwork had merged with it). One gig, eventually paid me 5 bitcoins, which I immediately sold for $5 dollars. That was good enough for a 15 year knowing not better.

19 years old, Freelancing Online: $60 in 4 hours

Bored in college, I again started looking for tech work online to leverage my programming abilities. I landed one web scraping job on upwork which I did in 4 hours and the generous soul paid a $10 extra being happy with my work. But the whole repeatedly chasing new clients for short-term work seemed like a lot of overhead.

20 years old, Tech Interning: $150/month for learning

I started looking for part-time internships, as my college didn't officially support one and I wanted industry experience. I ended up impressing this 2-man startup in TechPharma space. The CEO was non-tech and CTO was part-time, so I got a lot of work which I enjoyed as I was researching solving new problems. And I was getting paid. Now, a steady ₹11,000/month for part-time work. The 5-6 other people in my entire college who had mangaged to even get an internship, didn't breach ₹3,000/month. So I was well flushed in my college days.