Panel Discussion on Gaining Altitude, Losing Attitude - Succeeding as an Entrepreneur featuring: Bigbasket Co-founder Abhinay Choudhari, Rivigo Co-founder Deepak Garg and CMS Vice-chairman Rajiv Kaul.
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00:00 Well, the switch from a high-flying professional career with all its strapping, of course,
00:05 to building your own business, you'll agree with me, is never quite easy.
00:10 However, the passion, the purpose, or simply the thought of being one's own boss is really
00:16 what drives people to take the plunge and to win against all odds.
00:20 In our next conversation, ladies and gentlemen, the stage will witness three such entrepreneurs
00:27 who did just that.
00:29 To share their exhilarating stories with us, I would now like to invite on stage Mr. Abhinay
00:35 Choudhury, co-founder of Big Barstick, Mr. Rajiv Kaur, CEO, CMS, Mr. Deepak Garg, founder
00:48 of Rivego, and moderating this session brought to you by Airbus India, We Make It Fly, will
00:57 be Outlook Business Executive Editor, Kripa Mahalingam.
01:00 Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.
01:04 The renowned author, Nassim Nicholas Talib says, "The three most harmful addictions are
01:09 heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary."
01:14 I can't speak for the first one, but I can definitely vouch for the second one, and more
01:19 importantly, most of us are slaves to the third one.
01:24 Doesn't matter how much we crib about our job or bosses, there's a certain comfort when
01:29 you see that paycheck hit your account month after month.
01:33 For some of us, the joy is short-lived, probably runs out in the first week when the money
01:37 runs out.
01:38 But for some reason, we hold on to it for our dear lives, and sometimes it overrides
01:46 our true passion.
01:47 But not with these three gentlemen with me on stage today.
01:51 They gave up their cushy careers to build a business and a company that is a leader
01:58 in the businesses that they operate.
02:01 So here we are today to share their inspiring stories and tell us what it takes to be a
02:07 successful entrepreneur.
02:08 Rajiv, I'm going to start with you.
02:11 You were the youngest managing director at Microsoft at the age of 33 in 2001, and then
02:18 you had a successful stint in Actis, and then you partnered with Blackstone to buy out CMS.
02:26 So why didn't you start your own company, and what was the reason that you wanted to
02:30 turn around an existing business?
02:33 Thanks for explaining my age to everybody right now.
02:36 My pleasure.
02:37 Well, I have a deal with Outlook that I need to come and moderate a session.
02:42 So just a fire for next time, right?
02:45 Sure.
02:46 You know, for me, I think it was just the time.
02:49 You know, I was 39, and I didn't want to work for anyone else.
02:54 I'd worked with Microsoft for 10 years.
02:55 I couldn't find a better company.
02:56 I had had the luxury of choosing my bosses at a very young age.
03:01 And 2007 was just recent to the dot-com and the exhilaration and what came after that.
03:09 Therefore, doing a startup was the last thing which people did at that time.
03:12 The second was I had worked in private equity.
03:15 Private equity was hot.
03:16 I wouldn't call it sexy at that time, 2005, 2006, 2007, globally.
03:21 And therefore, I was a victim of the time and what I had done, and I had a bias from
03:25 there, to which I said, you know, instead of going and doing a crazy startup and taking
03:28 those crazy risks, which I wasn't ready for, I said, let me do something a little bit more
03:33 safer and doing a buyout.
03:36 And actually, I wanted to do a turnaround more than anything else.
03:38 I didn't want to do a sort of growth thing.
03:40 I was more keen to do a turnaround experience.
03:42 And I think that's where I ended up and how I ended up doing CMS.
03:46 Okay.
03:47 Deepak, you were with McKinsey.
03:51 And when you quit your job in 2000, after nine years with McKinsey, you didn't actually
03:55 have a plan of what you're going to do next.
03:58 So what made you take the plunge?
04:00 And how did you end up discovering logistics as a space you want to be in?
04:06 So I do connect with the opening line you said around, you know, being slaves of, you
04:10 know, salary.
04:12 And I've started feeling like that while working at McKinsey.
04:16 So the, you know, being an entrepreneur is a desire since kind of, you know, 20 years,
04:24 right?
04:25 I was very clear in articulating this desire to my parents, grandparents very early on,
04:30 right?
04:31 My grandfather always wanted me to be a bureaucrat, right?
04:36 And at that time, I told him, you know, I was a student, I said, no, I want to be an
04:38 entrepreneur.
04:39 And I remember this is the earliest memory I have of articulating what I wanted to do.
04:43 When I went to IIT, I was the founder of the business club, you know, started this, you
04:49 know, you know, tech startup, you know, this thing.
04:52 I went to IIT in 1999 to 2003, when this dot com first dot com boom and bust happened,
04:59 right?
05:00 Google, Amazon, Yahoo, all of those came into scene.
05:04 And I was very keen on, you know, starting that same thing here in India.
05:09 And you know, I had two great ideas, which I also pursued for a while then and then then
05:13 bust happened.
05:14 I went to IIM, joined McKinsey, again, with a very clear idea that I'm going to quit in
05:20 like two years.
05:21 Unfortunately, or fortunately, I don't know what those two years became eight and a half
05:27 years.
05:28 But every year of that, you know, my professional career at McKinsey, I wanted to quit.
05:33 I said I'll quit next year and every study and the reason and I was really bored of making
05:38 those present advisory presentations to clients, I really wanted to be, you know, doing stuff
05:43 on my own.
05:44 And the reason and the way I sort of motivated myself a job at McKinsey was, whatever sector
05:49 I would work in, I would pick up a problem of the sector or try to find an idea in that
05:55 sector, you know, which would be a great idea, right?
05:58 For example, McKinsey was doing a lot of work in power sector in 2007, eight, and I was
06:02 doing the work as well as a part of it.
06:05 And I discovered this huge paucity of current transformers, you know, a component which
06:10 goes into switchgears in India, right?
06:12 And there were only two manufacturers, I went to the extent of finding a land where I would
06:16 set up a plant and how I would do it and how I would, you know, so it was not a like a
06:20 fancy thing, but I so and it also made me smarter while I was talking to this, you know,
06:26 CEOs, and very young, I was an associate, but I started connecting with CEOs and, and
06:31 in turn, it gave me a good standing in McKinsey.
06:33 So again, more trappings of, you know, business class lights and five star stays and all of
06:39 those things.
06:40 And I was, I was a distinctive guy at McKinsey, they said, you know, you have a choice to
06:43 go to any office in the world.
06:45 I chose Sydney, good weather, good this thing.
06:47 So I, I went to Sydney for a while, I went to Joboc for a while.
06:51 And then when I came back in 2013, is what I realized, you know, I said, if I don't do
06:56 anything now, I was 32, 31, I would never be able to do it.
07:00 And that was a real thought.
07:02 And I drew I remember I drew $200,000 a salary that year.
07:07 And I had EMIs at that point in time, I, I, I felt that trapping, I said, and I had a
07:13 EA, I had never booked a car myself, I never booked a flight myself.
07:18 I said, How am I going to start up if with all this baggage behind me, so I had to let
07:23 go of that baggage first.
07:25 So there was a three month adjustment period, before which I discovered what I wanted to
07:29 do to be without a salary coming in my account every month.
07:34 So to sell off all the kind of flats I had, I had to give up one property where I paid
07:39 some 30% of EMI, right, I said, I will, I will have to make those adjustments to my
07:45 lifestyle to be able to start out.
07:47 And I went to this thing with an open mind, I said, I'll discover what I want to do.
07:51 Right?
07:52 During the three month discovery, I again evaluated corrugated boxes, because e commerce
07:56 was happening, cold trading index or whatever, and then landed at finally logistics as a,
08:02 as a thing to do.
08:03 And it was so apparent when I stumbled upon logistics, because I was seeing trucks on
08:07 the highways all the time.
08:09 And I said, technology has sort of happened to everything, you know, around me other than
08:13 trucks.
08:14 And that was the real just thought.
08:17 And then I discovered it's 14% of India's GDP, logistic sector, right.
08:21 And I thought to myself that, you know, if India were to become a super economic power,
08:25 then logistics sector would have to become right, more technology based, efficient and
08:30 all of that.
08:31 And I also thought, you know, when us was becoming UPS and FedEx came into being in
08:36 two phases, when Japan happened, six logistics company happened, Europe, you know, DSL, DND,
08:42 China, big logistics brands came into being when economy was getting constructed.
08:47 So I felt that this is the right space to do, I understood the business side of the
08:51 equation being a consultant.
08:53 And I thought maybe this is where I want to focus on.
08:55 And that was the whole idea by which I started studying the sector more deeply.
08:59 And Abhinav, you have spoken about how family responsibility, you know, made you kind of
09:06 crack IMA and get into IMCAT and get into IMA.
09:10 And, you know, you had a first job at Mitsubishi, but you gave it all up to start an e-commerce
09:15 venture in 1999.
09:18 So usually family responsibility is something that ties all of us to our jobs and one of
09:23 the reasons that we probably won't give up our jobs very easily.
09:26 So what made you take the plunge at that time?
09:29 I think the first time I did, we talked about the dotcom boom and the burst of 99, 2000,
09:35 right?
09:36 So that was the first time I kind of, you know, tried to start something.
09:42 And yeah, I mean, I didn't have a golden handcuffs of McKinsey, right?
09:47 Those were also quite decent golden handcuffs of Mitsubishi Corporation.
09:50 They were fortune number one that time and all that five star lifestyle, everything was
09:55 pretty much there.
09:57 And that was my first job.
09:58 So the coziest job you can ever get in your life, right?
10:01 So, but then what was really kind of bothering me was three years of my stay over there,
10:06 I was not really learning much, right?
10:09 Being Japanese from very hierarchical decision making is centralized.
10:13 So that was really making me very, very itchy, right?
10:15 And then on the other side, this whole dotcom boom was happening, right?
10:18 And I had a room partner who was with Satyam InfoWay and he was like, you know, flying
10:22 across the world doing multiple stuff.
10:24 So I was just comparing my, you know, day to day routine versus his and I was feeling
10:28 very jealous that he's really a high flyer and I'm what I'm just doing a nine to five
10:32 job Saturday and Sundays, I can't even go to the office because it's locked, right?
10:37 So that was the kind of a really disconnect, right?
10:40 So hence, I looked at this opportunity and as I, you know, during my childhood, I had
10:48 my sister run a small garment shop in BHL, my dad was BHL Gopal.
10:53 And whatever I had learned as part of visiting that store and then buying for that store,
10:59 I got some familiarity towards the apparel as a, you know, as a category.
11:03 And in 99, 2000, most of the dotcoms which are happening in India were primarily in the
11:08 horizontal or books or, you know, electronics, that kind of space.
11:12 Nobody was really doing apparel, right?
11:14 So I just studied, there were several such apparel brands who had gone online in US.
11:19 And I thought maybe this is the thing which I can, you know, try because of my familiarity
11:25 with the space.
11:26 So that's what I did.
11:27 I quit Mitsubishi, came to Bangalore.
11:29 This friend of mine who was staying with me in Chennai, he had already moved to Bangalore
11:33 because he had raised capital for his firm, which was in telecom services.
11:38 And I partnered him as my IT partner and launched something called a stylecountry.com, which
11:43 was a destination for personal branded lifestyle products.
11:46 So I tied up with 35 top brands in the country.
11:50 So the six months of me deciding to start and launching this, I launched in May 2000
11:57 and actually shut it down in August.
11:58 So that was that short, right?
12:02 But in those six, eight months, the amount of learning I had, right, which was, I would
12:07 say maybe several times more than what I learned even in those three years, right?
12:12 So with that as, you know, something in my bag, I always then, though I went back to
12:18 corporate and worked for another almost 10 years before I again, you know, came back.
12:25 And that 10 years, I was always looking out for an opportunity where I can start something,
12:29 right?
12:30 And it so turned out that as a consumer, I have been shopping for my family for groceries
12:37 and then went through that pain as a kid, shopping for fruits and vegetables in the
12:42 markets, shopping for grocery in the supermarkets in Bangalore, in London, in Toronto, in Vegas,
12:49 right?
12:50 And I realized that there's a huge opportunity because Indian grocery organized retail is
12:55 really kind of broken.
12:57 And there's a huge opportunity to really make the life simpler over there.
13:01 And that's when I ended up doing the second time in 2009.
13:05 So second time around, you had plowed in all your savings and funding was not as easy as
13:10 it is today.
13:12 And so you had to sell your house as well.
13:13 So what kept you going during those challenging times?
13:17 And how did you, you know, did you ever want to give up at any point or what kept you going?
13:24 So I think, I mean, I was really solving a very day to day kind of a problem which, you
13:30 know, every consumer faces, right?
13:32 And then that initial, because you have such great insight as a consumer, right?
13:37 And you are really trying to solve a problem with the consumers, you know, in your mind.
13:41 And you already know what that pain is, right?
13:44 So that really kind of helped me have the right proposition.
13:48 And once you have the proposition, and you kind of really talk to people, and they all
13:52 give you really positive feedback, yeah, this is something which will work, gives you that
13:56 initial level of confidence, this is going to work, right?
13:59 So I had set a very, you know, very conservative targets in my mind in terms of what my ideal,
14:06 you know, monthly spend of a customer should be when I start off, and how many customers
14:10 I'm really looking for.
14:11 And I was thinking that 5000 rupees a month is what if the customer buys, that's the right
14:16 number I should have.
14:17 So after I launched, in the second month of my launch, I actually got one customer who
14:21 bought for 5000, right?
14:22 So that itself was a proof that, yeah, I mean, this is something which is really needed by
14:26 a lot of people, right?
14:27 And whatever I was targeting, I have some customers now who have kind of really already
14:31 crossed that threshold.
14:32 So gave me enough confidence from that perspective.
14:34 I mean, it was pretty new as a category that one of time, everybody was living with this
14:39 baggage of webvan who failed miserably, blew $1 billion in US.
14:43 So every investor had this question of Indian housewives, fruits and vegetables, touch and
14:47 feel, this is not going to work, right?
14:49 So that was a backdrop in which, but I, as I said, as a consumer, realizing that, you
14:53 know, what pain everybody's going through, and initial whatever feelers I was getting
14:58 from my regular customers and strong word of mouth, kind of really kept me going on
15:03 that, right?
15:04 To the extent that I said, yeah, I mean, I put in my savings, and now I have a house,
15:08 which I should, because nobody was willing to fund that amount of time.
15:11 So I sold that off to get a long runway so that I can last for a longer time.
15:16 Ajit, you engineered the transformation of CMS into India's largest cash and payment
15:22 solutions provider.
15:24 So what were some of the tough decisions that you had to take and walk us through the transformation?
15:31 Well, I think any turnaround has massive number of challenges.
15:40 I was, I think, talking earlier to Deepak, I was talking to Gopal, I said, you know,
15:44 you, I don't know how to say it politely, but you learn to deal with a lot of shit continuously.
15:52 But you learn jobs also.
15:56 But I think the one which I think most people will resonate with, I think, are the people
16:00 decisions always, right?
16:02 And I don't mean just about hiring the best and hiring the topmost and all that.
16:05 I think it's at every level.
16:06 I think I walked into CMS, and we walked into the 2009 financial crisis, and we had to think
16:11 about letting go of 3000 people.
16:13 And I just couldn't do it.
16:14 I said, this is a failure of leadership to come to that stage and the company isn't robust
16:19 enough to handle it.
16:20 Then it was about unionism and strikes and then middle level and senior level.
16:24 So I think at least horses for courses, how do you sort of, you know, most entrepreneurs
16:31 at any level and stage will never be able to pay enough to get the people they need
16:35 and they want.
16:36 And then what are the gap and how you're going to fill that gap is I think the toughest decision
16:41 for you and how do you balance it with your current team and your loyalty and meritocracy
16:45 and the values you want.
16:46 I think the mindless struggle because you don't have unlimited resources and means.
16:51 There is a fallback option and there is no second guessing it.
16:54 There's no one really out there to coach and mentor you and tell you what to do.
16:57 And you're supposed to know all the answers.
16:59 And for most parts, it's a fairly thankless job.
17:01 People will never be able to appreciate what you are to go through and what the doubts
17:06 you have and the confusion you have and the decisions you make.
17:10 You're mostly in a dark tunnel.
17:11 Once in a while, you get some light.
17:13 But light, you don't know when it's going to come.
17:14 Suddenly, it starts appearing, right?
17:15 And you're like, oh, my God, this is right.
17:17 The sunshine, let me run to it and grab it.
17:19 So I think people-related decisions have been the most and the toughest ones.
17:24 And one hopes to get better at them over time.
17:26 Deepak, you were advising companies what to do in McKinsey.
17:32 And how has it changed from advising companies what to do to kind of getting your hands dirty?
17:38 And tell us how Libigo is transforming the lives of truck drivers today in India.
17:44 Sure.
17:45 So, you know, when I was leaving McKinsey to start Revigo, a lot of people, of course,
17:53 advised me against it.
17:54 I remember this road trip I had made in around May 2014, where I really discovered what the
18:02 problem of the sector, right?
18:03 I just want to articulate, you know, for the benefit of the audience, right, what we are
18:07 trying to solve for, right?
18:09 If you look at trucking, transportation as a sector, you know, the biggest issue is the
18:16 underlying life of the truck driver.
18:18 Truck drivers have a very poor life.
18:20 They spend months away from home, poor condition, do not get to their families.
18:25 And it leads to a very vicious cycle of this social life.
18:31 No one wants to marry them because, you know, the wives don't see them.
18:35 They get into sleeping with commercial sex workers.
18:38 They get into substance abuse, drinking alcohol.
18:41 And marriage is a sign of social respect in the village.
18:44 So they are not…
18:45 They fall down this ladder of social respect to the extent that they are called 37th caste
18:50 in the Indian village.
18:51 Believe you me, I did not even know coming from McKinsey that India has 36 castes.
18:56 And truck driver is basically not a profession anymore.
18:58 He is called the 37th caste.
19:01 Now the problem with this whole thing is no one wants to be a truck driver.
19:04 No, youth does not want to be a truck driver because he says it's not about money, it's
19:08 about social respect.
19:09 I will not have social respect if I become a truck driver.
19:12 Like who would want to grow up becoming a gangster or a don, howsoever much it pays.
19:16 So it's just like that, right?
19:19 That I'll not be…
19:20 I'll not have a social life around me.
19:22 And that is leading to a big paucity of truck drivers in the economy.
19:27 As an economy, we need to create a million truck driving jobs, which is ten percent of
19:31 the agenda of this country.
19:33 We need to create ten million jobs out of which a million is truck drivers.
19:37 Everything pretty much you get in this… you're seeing in this room is brought to you
19:40 by trucks, right?
19:41 It's seventy percent of the transportation in the economy.
19:45 And if you don't create truck drivers, if you don't have youth excited about this job,
19:50 one will not hit our job milestone but also the fact that the economy will face a huge
19:56 growth risk.
19:57 The government data says we'll have 482.
19:59 If this trend continues, we will have 482 truck drivers to every thousand trucks by
20:05 2022, which means a fifty-two percent shortage of truck drivers by 2022.
20:09 So you can have any growth projections of economy.
20:12 The biggest threat I saw then was, you know, the… having a model which can actually create
20:19 more and more truck drivers.
20:20 And having figured out this insight that, you know, it's a lifestyle problem.
20:25 Having a consultant helped there by the way, I was always flying.
20:28 The last year of McKenzie, I was actually two-fifty nights away from home.
20:33 And so I could relate with… partly with the fact that you're not at home, so your,
20:39 you know, social and personal life takes a hit.
20:41 But not as bad as what the truck drivers are of course facing and…
20:44 Sadhguru: But flying in the sky as a consultant is very different than truck driver on the
20:47 road (Laughter).
20:48 Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan: Of course, of course.
20:49 I don't want to…
20:50 I absolutely, you know, the kind of love I have for them, I don't want to trivialize,
20:52 you know, what they… what they… what life they go through.
20:55 And the fact of the matter is… and we came up with this idea, we said, you know, if we
21:01 can get them back home every day, this will solve all the problems.
21:05 And that's the origin of, you know, what we started doing as relay trucking.
21:10 Now relay trucking is a very kind of known thing, but RIVIGO was the originator of relay
21:17 trucking actually globally.
21:19 Now DHL is copying what we are trying to do.
21:21 But relay… the way relay trucking works is a truck goes from Delhi to Bombay, the
21:26 drivers change over at different pit stops along the highway.
21:28 So a driver will take a truck from Delhi to Jaipur, will hand over a truck to a guy in
21:33 Jaipur, who will take the truck from Jaipur to let's say Bilwara.
21:36 The guy who gets off in Jaipur will get rostered on a truck coming back in the opposite direction.
21:43 So he's driving… every driver is driving ten hours a day, eight to ten hours a day,
21:48 but landing back home in his home location.
21:51 But the magic starts to happen in the transit time and the asset efficiencies.
21:56 Because the truck is running all the time, it is not stopping because truck driver has
22:00 to sleep or bathe or eat or drink chai and all of that.
22:04 But also the transit time would then shorten.
22:06 So Delhi-Bombay, when we started running this operation, people would do Delhi to Bombay
22:10 transit in five days or six days.
22:13 We started doing it in twenty-four hours.
22:15 People did not believe that this could happen.
22:17 You know, we could start making air transit time.
22:20 And that was a big… and that… you know, this idea itself sounded so exciting in my
22:26 head that I came back home and I said, "I'm going to do this."
22:29 So my father basically said, "So you're going to leave McKinsey and will devote your life
22:33 to solving lives of truck drivers?
22:35 Is that what you're going to do?"
22:36 And I said, "Yes."
22:37 And he did not speak to me three months after that.
22:39 My mother was the sort of… I would talk through my mother, but I'm sure all entrepreneurs
22:44 go through this.
22:45 So the families are less supportive, you know.
22:47 For them, coming from a small town of Patiala, McKinsey was a big deal and I was doing already
22:52 quite well and they had to… so now they're happy of course after four years of…
22:56 Barkha Dutt They don't have any complaints now.
22:57 They're not going to have any complaints now.
22:59 Sadhguru Yeah, they are reasonably good (Laughter).
23:02 Barkha Dutt I mean, what's the… what's best piece
23:07 of advice you ever got?
23:08 Sadhguru To budding entrepreneurs?
23:11 Barkha Dutt Yeah, no, the advice you got.
23:13 Sadhguru The advice I got, okay.
23:15 So I mean, the one advice I got, which I also talked about in my story with Outlook was,
23:21 I was running this thing all alone when I started off in 2009.
23:26 And so my ex-boss from I-Gate Consulting in US, he said, "Look, it's too risky to run
23:32 any enterprise on your own because what if you meet with an accident and the whole thing
23:35 is, you know, at standstill?"
23:37 So that was one, you know, major piece of advice that you please go find co-founders
23:42 for yourself, right?
23:44 And that really helped and then I later on obviously, you know, teamed with other four
23:49 co-founders of FabMart and now we have five co-founders in BigBasket.
23:53 So that was one major piece of advice.
23:55 Barkha Dutt Rajiv, what was the best piece of advice
23:58 you got?
23:59 Rajiv Kumar You know, I had the luxury of spending almost
24:04 a year, year and a half trying to do the CMS deal and with a couple of large private equity
24:07 firms.
24:08 So I had…
24:10 I went out and based my earlier corporate network, I went to a couple of the largest
24:16 industrialists in India and I told them, I said, "I'm going to do my own thing and what
24:22 is the advice?"
24:24 And one of the biggest and most successful entrepreneurs of the country told me a couple
24:29 of interesting things.
24:30 And this is, I mean, in Hindi and I don't want to repeat it here in case somebody doesn't
24:34 understand it.
24:35 But first he said is, "Don't be yourself."
24:37 So I was like, "Okay, sort of."
24:40 He said, "What got you here, I don't want to get you through this.
24:44 You are too action-oriented, you take decisions very fast and…
24:47 Abhi chhe mene ka kuchh karne ka nahi."
24:49 I said, "Chhe mene kuchh nahi, kuchh nahi hai.
24:51 Whatever you see, listen, write it down, listen, write it down, you will keep changing your
24:54 mind, you will keep changing your mind, so just wait."
24:58 Okay?
24:59 The second was he said, "You got to check your passbook every day."
25:01 I said, "Passbook?"
25:02 He said, "Bank account."
25:03 I said, "Kiska bank?
25:04 He said, "Company bank account.
25:05 He said, "Cash flow is king.
25:07 You come from Microsoft, you don't care about cash flow, you don't know what cash flows
25:10 are all about, you know profits.
25:12 Check your cash in the account every day."
25:16 I didn't listen to that advice for a couple…
25:18 Really I used to look at it every month and we got into a massive cash flow crisis which
25:21 almost crippled and shut the company down within six months.
25:25 The third was from one of the large private equity firms which was horses for courses.
25:31 They said, "You know, you will not be able to attract people.
25:33 As much as people have worked with you, they will not come and take the risk with you.
25:36 Don't think you will be able to get people to come and take this risk you are taking
25:40 and therefore just don't think the people who will join you at the beginning are the
25:42 people who will see you through.
25:43 So you got to be staggering this into… in your head in stages.
25:47 Forget about being able to afford them.
25:49 They will just not take the risk."
25:50 And I was very surprised.
25:51 I mean I went to the people who had worked with me, you would say, "Boss, you are leaving
25:53 us, we will come with you."
25:55 And suddenly you go back and say, "Come on, come."
25:56 And they are like, "You do it for a while.
25:57 You know, we will join you a little bit later once we know what you are doing is sensible
26:01 or what not."
26:02 So it takes…
26:03 You know, suddenly you are waiting and chasing people for a year or two.
26:07 I've actually chased people for three years before either we could afford them or before
26:13 they could take the risk or got frustrated with the corporate environment to come and
26:16 join us.
26:17 So you got to have a massive patience which usually used to be a one-month, two-month,
26:21 three-month cycle.
26:22 Barkha Dutt And Deepak, your… what was the best advice
26:25 you ever got?
26:26 Deepak Chopra So, you know, as an entrepreneur, you get
26:28 advice all the time by the way, right?
26:30 I mean, things are always problematic.
26:33 So my…
26:34 By the way, sources of advice or inputs are, you know, everyone and, you know, everyone
26:40 around me who I meet, I try to gather whatever I can get.
26:43 And I think the first few years of building this, I used to get a lot of advice and I'm
26:48 thankful so much for that advice.
26:50 I can enumerate a lot but I'm a topics would be first one was around, you know, culture
26:55 is everything when you're building, right?
26:58 And you know, no matter what you do, a culture is getting built in your company.
27:03 So it's better to proactively shape it, I think.
27:07 And that made a switch.
27:08 I really started to articulate culture.
27:11 In fact, at Rivigo in the first year itself, we started the culture you want to sort of
27:15 build and embedded that in the way we hired people, the way we reviewed people, the way
27:20 we celebrated people, the way we had our meetings, everything else, right?
27:23 And that really has been the core of, you know, what we've… this thing.
27:27 I think the one big insight I got, I was in Leh, I remember I was reading this book on
27:34 Amazon.
27:35 The big insight I got was, you know, some capabilities necessarily need not be targeted
27:43 at immediate outcomes, right?
27:45 And these are important for a long-term perspective.
27:49 And I saw how Amazon in very early days tried to compete with Google on search engine.
27:55 While it was unsuccessful, but the capability of search which Amazon built is so powerful
28:01 in the whole technology engine Amazon was able to build, but also the product search
28:04 engine.
28:05 And then I came back from that trip, I remember, you know, that it just… as in…
28:10 I started over-investing in technology as a capability and data science as a capability,
28:14 right?
28:15 And I'm seeing some of the fruits of that coming through.
28:19 And the third, you know, which is very relevant for me, then as McKinsey consultant, you're
28:25 not supposed to take decisions.
28:26 So you're… for everything, you write a pro and a con.
28:29 And you take it to your consultant and he takes… sorry, to your client and he takes
28:34 a call.
28:35 Here you are taking a call all the time and you're taking maybe hundred decisions sometimes
28:39 or thirty decisions sometimes or three decisions sometimes.
28:42 Those have to be high-quality decisions and some… and many a times, you will not have
28:46 all the data and not many a times.
28:48 Initially, you will not have a data, but ninety percent of the times you're taking a decision.
28:52 So there's this whole, you know, this strong intuitive and gut, you know, this thing which
28:57 got built or discovered during this whole thing, which was an advice which came through
29:00 that you got to decide and take an action.
29:03 You can't dilly-dally too much and that's something which stayed on.
29:10 And how has the corporate experience… all of you have had, you know, had corporate
29:13 careers before you turned entrepreneurs.
29:15 So how has corporate experience helped you scale your business?
29:18 Has it… in what way has it helped you scale your business?
29:21 Sadhguru: Yes, so I mean, you know, working in corporate is really kind of help you, you
29:26 know, go through, live through that experience.
29:28 So I mean, there's always a question in people's mind, when to start, when is the right time
29:31 to start.
29:32 Like, when you are starting fresh out of college, you have less responsibilities and maybe that's
29:36 the right time to start.
29:37 But then the con to that is you have not really seen the real world, right?
29:42 So from that perspective, I think some of the practices, what works, what doesn't work,
29:47 people management, you know, all of that really come through the culture aspect of it and
29:51 all, right?
29:52 You run through… learn all of that through your… through your corporate strength.
29:57 So I mean, all of these factors then kind of help you when you are starting on your
30:02 own because you have seen large structures, you know, at large scale operating efficiently
30:07 and then that's what you want to then start putting in place so that you know later on
30:11 you are in the right position to…
30:13 So example for us, what was really critical, I mean, all through my, again, consulting
30:17 career across IT services and also Infosys and I get in all we are…
30:21 I was really kind of defining processes, right?
30:23 So building a very strong process-oriented organization because when you have to really
30:27 make sure that the outcome is guaranteed, right?
30:30 It's all predictable.
30:31 You have to really have processes, right?
30:33 So all of that really helped, you know, while we are kind of setting up our own…
30:38 Yeah.
30:39 Rajiv?
30:40 Rajiv Gupta: Reflecting on that when you asked the question, I think it was a little difficult
30:46 for me because I was in a fairly high-profile role, having a lot of empowerment, we did
30:51 a lot of interesting things at that time.
30:54 It does teach you a lot of things not to do, right?
30:56 Like I just disbanded HR reviews, like I don't believe in this, I don't want to have any
31:00 review process and then suck up energy and time and how we rate and regard people and
31:05 all of that, which thankfully Microsoft did five years later globally saying, you know,
31:08 knock off the system of one, two, three, four, five and do whatever it is.
31:12 You do…
31:13 You know, in my case, I was lucky to learn a lot about, you know, just brand and reputation
31:17 and how do you build influence and how do you build relevance and how do you think of
31:21 a broader cause of changing the world and through technology at that time.
31:25 And therefore, you start looking for a broader goal and meaning.
31:29 But there are some very notable differences which in a corporate setup, the most important
31:34 question which people would always ask you as a country, it would be like, "What if you
31:37 get hit by a truck?"
31:38 And after a time, I got tired.
31:39 I said, "Yeah, if I get hit by a truck, I'm dead.
31:40 I don't care anymore after that, right?
31:41 It's your problem in life.
31:42 It's not my problem in life."
31:43 I would say that on Microsoft, you know, annual review, "Rajiv, what if you get hit by a truck?"
31:44 I said, "You know, I don't care.
31:45 I'm dead.
31:46 So, it's your problem.
31:47 Go fix it."
31:48 But in an entrepreneurial journey or whatever you do, I think you do matter a lot, a lot,
31:59 lot more.
32:01 And the emotional intensity which you need to bring to the role is far different.
32:07 It's not the intellectual integrity.
32:08 I think it's the emotional intensity which is really critical.
32:11 What is also very important, I've realized that you just have to show up.
32:14 You have to have the energy to show up on the shit days and the bad days.
32:17 And because on those days, that 3%, 4% incremental benefit by just your presence is serious impact
32:25 on whatever you're trying to achieve and do.
32:28 So, yeah, so you learn both good and bad.
32:31 You know what really doesn't...
32:32 I mean, you also do realize that there are no entitlements in this job.
32:37 You have to accept that you come last.
32:39 When we had the cash flow crisis for almost a year, year and a half, I...
32:44 Despite whatever I had sort of signed up for, I had told my CFO saying, "I want to be the
32:50 last person to get my paycheck."
32:52 Because that's the only way for me to know when the banks and the SMS that which day
32:56 did the second last person in the company got a salary.
33:00 And it used to be a month and a half, then a month, then 15 days, then 10 days, then
33:03 7 days.
33:04 But that is the only way to keep tracking because otherwise they'll say, "Yeah, we gave
33:07 everyone."
33:08 And you know, you won't know when people got the salaries in time.
33:10 So yeah, I think it sort of gives you...
33:13 It's very humbling and it brings out a different level of emotional involvement which you never
33:18 realized you were capable of.
33:20 Vipak, how did the McKinsey's stint help you?
33:25 I think I really enjoyed the McKinsey's stint.
33:29 It was very enriching.
33:30 Over those eight years, I worked across many different geographies for over a hundred different
33:36 projects from executing turnarounds to executing deep operational work.
33:42 I had done it all.
33:44 And McKinsey, you know, India environment or Asia environment is very different from
33:49 McKinsey kind of US environment.
33:51 Here you get paid for delivery.
33:53 You don't get paid for advice.
33:55 And this is, you know, Indian promoters don't respect you if you don't deliver.
33:59 And so there's a lot of like hard knuckle delivery experience I had had, you know, in
34:06 those eight and a half years.
34:08 It also...
34:09 So it actually taught me...
34:11 See, McKinsey is a hundred-year-old institution.
34:14 And institution just built and has weathered everything.
34:17 But built truly on basic principles of hiring the best people and building a great culture.
34:24 First thing I took away with me when I started building Revigo, that was a big one which
34:29 I took away, right?
34:31 Second thing I took away was around, you know, being fearless.
34:37 Because at McKinsey, I was put in different kind of situations, right?
34:40 I was addressing boards and meeting CEOs and, you know, executing this.
34:45 I was in a situation where I was turning around a company in Africa.
34:49 I met the president of Zambia, right?
34:51 And negotiated a deal there, you know, with a client of mine.
34:55 So I'd been through kind of all kinds of situations, right?
34:59 Met thousands of people.
35:00 And so I did not fear anything when I came out.
35:03 And I was meeting like bankers or investors or people or advisors or this thing.
35:07 It was natural.
35:08 I was like...
35:09 I think those two were big things which helped me, you know, when I started Revigo.
35:15 So finally, I'm going to ask all three of you.
35:17 What are the key traits for a successful entrepreneur?
35:20 Sorry, can you repeat that?
35:22 Key traits for a successful entrepreneur.
35:25 So I think one of the most important is, I guess, the perseverance part of it, right?
35:31 And because a lot of many times what happens is you go through, you know, highs and lows
35:36 every day, right?
35:37 Because that is the nature of the thing, right?
35:39 You are really kind of taking calls, figuring out.
35:42 And sometimes you are really too lonely to really, you know, kind of figure out that
35:46 what's happening.
35:47 So if you would, you know, stay through the course, then that's very important.
35:54 Because sometimes just giving it halfway, you know, then you realize that, oh, you know,
35:58 I was just there kind of a thing.
36:00 So be at it and then, you know, keep trying.
36:02 Because you have to keep on learning with what you are doing and then keep on looking
36:06 at, you know, what are the gaps, what can be improved, right?
36:08 And that's really, you know, helps you go.
36:11 So perseverance is definitely one and you have to be also have a self-belief, you know,
36:16 sometimes, yeah, you need to listen to definitely 10, 15, 20 people.
36:20 But at the same time, have your own personal opinion about, you know, what's right, what's
36:24 wrong.
36:25 So because, little example, so initial days, lot of, you know, VCs, you know, put me on
36:29 to some of the very senior retail people and said, "This guy is trying to do this."
36:33 And they were like veterans in the space and all the few guys said, "Oh, he is very bold
36:39 to do this."
36:40 And this is never going to work.
36:41 So I'm just saying that, you know, you will hear all kinds of things in the beginning
36:45 and you have to stay course, you have to really believe in what you are doing and, you know,
36:50 that all comes through your own personal learning and, you know, so perseverance, I would say,
36:55 is the highest.
36:56 Viji, what makes a successful entrepreneur?
37:03 Many things, I think, I'll tell you what sort of seems to work for me and the good days
37:07 and there are more bad days than good days.
37:10 Mindset, I think the mindset you bring to work and how you are able to switch gears,
37:15 right?
37:16 A lot of us are driven by growth and profits, but you have to switch gears into maintenance
37:22 and defend and you decide when to attack and, you know, so I think the mindset matters very,
37:26 very importantly.
37:27 The other two for me which have worked have been energy and synergy, right?
37:32 I think I'm always been thankfully regarded for somebody with abundant levels of energy
37:36 and I hope that continues.
37:37 I used to be 32 and 33 and land up in Seattle from a 30-hour flight and drive to work at
37:42 six o'clock in the evening and my team would say, "What's this crazy bloody Indian has
37:45 turned up for work?"
37:46 And they said, "Why are you in office?"
37:47 I said, "You go, who's…"
37:49 But I would land up at work.
37:52 Two months ago, I landed up from a 32-hour flight, landed in India in the morning and
37:55 went to work and worked for 10 hours straight and my assistant said, "Are you mad?"
37:59 But I don't think anybody asked you to do it, it's sort of what you feel you need to
38:02 do and as I said, you got to show up.
38:04 The second is…
38:05 Sorry, the last one is about synergy.
38:06 I think I always tried but I think maybe it's my generation and the mindset and the culture
38:13 and the values of doing more with less and the synergy is always saying, "How do you
38:18 always get the whole which is more than the sum of the parts?"
38:22 And trying to extract that extra synergy of everything you do, I think I've found to
38:28 be very important to be… to have the right returns and to have the right performance
38:33 and to have the right value systems.
38:35 Deepak, what do you think makes a successful entrepreneur?
38:39 So I think first of all, what's the reason, you know, one is in for, right?
38:44 Is it, you know, is it a pull?
38:47 Is it like a calling or is it kind of, you know, another thing one is doing?
38:52 I think it's an important differentiator between I would think who are successful entrepreneurs
38:57 and not because if there is a purpose and a pull, then a lot of things get sorted.
39:03 You will have good days, bad days, right?
39:06 The pull does not matter as much in the good days but it matters a lot in the… in the
39:11 bad days.
39:12 I resonate with the…
39:13 I think both what Abhinav and Rajiv said, I think boundless energy is something which
39:19 is… which is very critical.
39:21 Do you have a model where you can invoke your own boundless energy, a practice or series
39:26 of practices by which you can, you know, pull that up?
39:30 I think that's one.
39:31 The other, you know, the statement by Swami Vivekananda influences me a lot and it's
39:37 written in a lot of places in Revugu which is infinite patience, infinite purity and
39:41 infinite perseverance, you know, leads to success in a good cause.
39:45 I think that patience, purity and perseverance.
39:47 Purity is a word we speak often at Revugu.
39:50 I think it's important.
39:51 It's a… it's a marathon.
39:52 It's… it's… it's going to be long, right?
39:55 If you have patience, purity and perseverance, I think things will come out.
39:59 You know, India is a good market and entrepreneurs will… will succeed.
40:02 Moderator (Anjali Soni): Would all of you recommend it as a career choice, being an
40:06 entrepreneur when it's… when it gets really maddening and it gets really tough, would
40:12 you still say it was all worth it?
40:15 Dr. Jayaprakash Narayanan: Yes, hundred percent.
40:18 Moderator (Anjali Soni): Rajiv?
40:19 Dr. Rajiv Kumar: I mean, I think in my first year of trying to do this, I think I thought
40:23 of more days than I wanted to quit and get back to a corporate life than I would like
40:27 to… than I have publicly acknowledged it now.
40:31 But I think that's the time which taught you what the broader cause and who are you
40:35 really working for.
40:36 I thought I was working for myself.
40:37 I realized…
40:38 I ended up realizing that I wasn't.
40:39 I was trying to work for the set of employees and people and team we had.
40:42 I think that was a big switch for me.
40:44 And I think after that, the journey is very fulfilling, even on the bad days.
40:48 Moderator (Anjali Soni): And Deepak, did it play out exactly how you had in mind being
40:51 an entrepreneur?
40:52 Dr. Deepak Chopra: Sorry, how?
40:53 Moderator (Anjali Soni): How it played out being an entrepreneur?
40:55 Dr. Deepak Chopra: No, no, I… it's exhilarating.
40:58 There's nothing I would want to trade for this as, you know, I love every bit of this
41:04 entire journey.
41:05 I think there have been, of course, rough days but there's such an immense amount of learning
41:09 which it brings that it's been exhilarating.
41:11 Moderator (Anjali Soni): With that note, thank you ladies and gentlemen.
41:15 I hope you enjoyed the session.
41:16 And thank you, gentlemen, for sharing your stories with us.