If you like the title, thanks and read on… if you don’t like it – this was suggested by Devi but still read on. 
Today, I attended the key note address of Eximus. Yes! for a change i did attend a talk held on campus. The funny thing was, I was drawn to it because the Chairman of FabIndia was one of the two keynote speakers. FabIndia has always fascinated me. They have been able to carve a niche for themselves in the textile space and have been a successful INDIAN TEXTILE BRAND.I was all excited about the talk. Once I reached the auditorium I also came to know that there was this person called Manish Sabharwal, who was the co-founder of India’s largest private employer.
The talk by the fabindia was personally a let down as I didn’t find it too inspiring. Also, he dint delve much into how Fabindia became a success-story world wide. Nevertheless, he gave us insights on how they work with the artisans and make sure that they are also benefited by being a part of this organization. Overall it was ok! Then came the real surprise and the reason for this post – Manish Sabharwal.
Disclaimer: This post is more of a experience sharing and would love to read it 5 years down the line kinda post. Immaterial of how eloquent I am or the reverse, it would be difficult to capture the package 
For starters, Manish is a Wharton graduate and right from his early days he wanted to be an entrepreneur. He used his summer to understand the Indian labour market and post his degree he started Lifeline which he later sold it to Hewitt Associates. Right now he is the chairman of TeamLease Services – India’s leading staffing company providing a range of Temporary and Permanent manpower solutions to over 1000 clients. TeamLease started operations in 2002 and now has 80,000 employees in over 600 locations. He started off with something like this – ‘Postmortems are more certain than prescriptions! I would not talk much about my firm but rather share my thoughts on Entrepreneurship’. Thus began of 20minutes of high-octane stuff!! He was brilliant right from he word go. Be it the way he took a shot at this co-founder (Mr.Asok) to the ease with which he quoted Woody Allen, he just had every single person in the adui in awe!
He believes that there is no right timing or idea to become an entreprenuer. You don’t need new lands but new eyes to spot an idea. he believes that the current Indian canvas is abound with opportunites and that its upto us to get started. he shared an insight on how his friends in Wharton beleived that they would get into Entreprenuership the moment they settle the $100,000 debt. He said that the same figure would become a rounding off error the moment you are on your own!! He stressed on the importance of thinking big and going for it. if you are taking a risk, then pretty well take a big one! An interesting analogy that he drew was between a baby and a Dwarf. The difference between a baby and a dwarf was not in the food (money) but it was in the DNA. We should aim to create a baby and not a dwarf.
He then moved on to talk about 5 of the many characteristics required to be a successful entrepreneur.
- Opportunity
- Team
- Organizational Design
- Strategy
- Risk
He spoke at length on the importance of having the right team. The most common mistakes that all entrepreneurs commit is that they take on board like minded people. The moment this happens, the vision of the organization becomes uni-directional and it becomes all the more difficult to spot new opportunities. He quoted Steven Spielberg – “Good directing is 90% casting”. He described how he had to kiss so many frogs to find the right people for his team. Incidentally he also touched upon how the skills needed in school are so far away from those required in life. In school, individual brilliance is what counts but in real life you need people with whom you can have healthy disagreements, people who are better than you, people who are worse than you, all sorts of people!!
Coming to strategy, he said – “It’s your gun in the knife fight. Irrespective of what you do, you need an advantage without which you are at the same level as the others.” Then he said something that I feel is so significant in this educational setup, ” You need to realize that even if you win a rat race, you are still a rat”. Its about finding that individual talent!
Finally he spoke of risk – ” You cant wait for all lights to go Green before you leave home! You need be convinced that things will get better as you go and more importantly just hope that you keep going till you get lucky!”
It was an amazing talk.. a truly inspirational one. It forced us to think about our notions of success in life. The final message was just about the icing on the cake. “You can never regret for things that you do, because you can always change them. You always end up regretting for things that you didn’t do”.
If only…….
