Being an entrepreneur myself this topic was close to my heart. I have spent a number of hours reading, discussing and thinking about this subject and how I can better myself. Even when I was an employee, I always had a habit of thinking continuously about how I would do things differently if I was the owner of the business. In all my employments I always took the job as if I was a co-owner of the business. This habit also was the genesis for me to try and venture out on my own where I have had my share of Failures and successes. Therefore this particular MTHR meet was very important for me as it gave a very good understanding of how the other entrepreneurs thought about their businesses. 

What I am sharing with you today are my thoughts of that meeting and the learnings I had. I am sure you will find this very interesting. I have shared this with the group earlier but, no harm in sharing it again.

Dear All,

I am trying to pen down a few of my thoughts of the MTHR Global meet on Entrepreneurship which was held this Saturday.

Though, I am one of the founder members of MTHR, I am saying this more as an Entrepreneur - I believe that every MTHR member and HR professional who hides a dream to become an entrepreneur should have been there. If you were not, you really missed a very informative and thought provoking meet. It was an  extremely interesting day.

When Suhas Gopinath came up to speak, I had heard a lot about this young genius. I had heard that he runs a multi-million business which he started at the young age of 14 years and that he was the world's youngest CEO. I thought that this was mostly a media created man and that he would be all marketing and no substance. But, when he started to speak, it was immediately apparent that the media was right for once and I was completely wrong in my understanding of this young prodigy. He said everything from the heart. He shared his story with aplomb and great élan. Right from the times when he struggled to start an organization in India (which he could not and therefore started it first in the USA). His struggles with the government authorities, his mistakes and brilliance in marketing. At the age of 15 to think about marketing  strategies itself is huge. At the age of 16 to think about HR policies for the organization marks a coming of age for an organization. Ask me,  I am running a small setup and have seen several entrepreneur friends  have their own setup, this sort of formalised effort is a tough thought  to have and to then follow it through is sheer genius. It was great to  hear about his dreams and his meeting with our prez and with Bill Gates

..... It was great to hear about his thoughts of being an entrepreneur  and his suggestions to the junta.

R. Sridhar of Ideas R S was the next speaker and was a complete contrast to what Suhas Gopinath was as an Entrepreneur. Whereas Suhas was a young
lad of 14 years when he started off, Sridhar was a seasoned Manager of  50 years when he started his setup. Sridhar had an experience of more  than 25 years and was at almost the top position at Ogilvy (O&M) when he  decided that he did not want to retire from working life. This prompted  him to give up a lush job giving him a great salary with one of the  Topmost agency in India and venture out on his own. Completely opposite  to what Suhas was. He kept comparing his experience and thoughts with  those of Suhas and it was a study in contrasts. Sridhar had a completely  different set of challenges when he started off and his thoughts were  very valuable to me. Suhas on the one hand wanted to create employment opportunities for the Educated-unemployed junta, Sridhar on the other  hand did not want to get into the rut of hiring and then "retaining"  people. He wanted it to be a one man show as against Suhas who wanted to employ 1000's of people. Yet, both of them had a common thread - making a difference to the environment. Suhas wanted to make a difference by offering employment opportunities and Sridhar wanted to make a difference by giving quality service to a few organizations and people.

Sridhar's one big thought that he impressed upon me and perhaps some more people was that for an entrepreneur - the struggle is of the mind. If you are able to manage your mind, you will be able to win as an entrepreneur. He did say that one needs to keep the expectations low so when there are disappointments, they do not take you down. At the same time he emphasized that this did not mean that you kept your dream low.

I missed a couple of sessions after that due to business pressures and also the fact that I was busy networking.

The next session that I caught was that of the Jumbo King Vada-pav session by it's CEO Dheeraj Gupta. This was again a different type of session and a different learning all together. Dheeraj shared his experiences of starting his venture - and was candid about his first venture which was a failure. He then spoke about the difficulties in strategizing selling Vada pav which was already a common man's food. He spoke about adding hygiene to the vada-pav making and selling process and about creating a story akin to the McDonald Burger story. Dheeraj (an MBA passout from SIBM) had a different spin on the way he looked at the business. I felt he spoke like a typical CEO who was at home with all numbers and charts. His Venture experience was very different from the others and the learnings were quite different.

In the last session we had Vineet Rai - a venture capitalist who funds businesses in the Semi-urban and rural areas. Here was an IIM grad who setup a fund of 50 Lakhs as a venture capitalist for the poor entrepreneurs. Again a completely different story. He shared a Video about his organization and the work that they were doing and that of one of the entrepreneurs whom they helped fund and support. This entrepreneur was a 60 old gentleman with a great product (a burner which saved 30% kerosene consumption in stoves). His experience was completely atypical and his learnings very different. He was bold enough to say that a Mission and vision statement were all bunkum and you do not need those at the initial stages of the venture. You have to be near to your distributors and very near to your customers. If you are not, you do not  have any idea why your product is selling or not selling and sometimes you get to hear about unique benefits of your product to the customers which you may not even have thought of.

Throughout the day I kept hearing questions like:
- Why do you want to be an entrepreneur
- How should one start
- What should be the vision of the entrepreneur
- When should one start ? What is the right time
- What does it require to start
- How does one raise funding for the venture ......
Etc

And the fun was that each speaker had a different take on each of the questions above.

All in all a completely enjoyable and a highly learning day. Ofcourse, the fact that you got to meet several of your old friends on the same day was a great thing too. The sharing of ideas was great and the takeaway good. A special thanks to Mr. N S Rajan - dean of Atharva and an HR Professional with immense experience who was really keen that this meet should happen.

If you liked (or hated) the event, please share with us, we would like to hear from you and better our efforts.

Cheers,

Vipul Agarwal