Success gets talked about and a successful entrepreneur is held up as a role model. But there are lessons in failures too. This column will highlight the mistakes made by the entrepreneurs and the lessons they learnt from their failures.

This is an interview with Mr Murugavel Janakiraman, who heads the Consim Group as Chief Executive Officer, with the portfolio comprising BharatMatrimony, PrivilegeMatrimony, CommunityMatrimony.com, EliteMatrimony.com, IndiaProperty.com, ClickJobs.com, IndiaAutomobile.com, and IndiaList.com. What started off with a member base of 4,000 is today making waves as the No. 1 Matrimonial Brand with over 20 million members worldwide. The company has been recognised by Limca Book of Records for record number of documented marriages online. He holds a Master's Degree in Computer Science from the University of Madras.

What are the mistakes you have committed in your entrepreneurial journey?

This can be a big list like any other entrepreneur but let me articulate the ones that stand out.

I was focused only on innovation and top-line growth. I completely ignored the rest of the lines in the P&L of the company.

Not managing the funds properly. I did not prioritise on the application of the funds raised from investors. Within no time in less than a year used up all the funds meant to be utilised for more than two years.

I gave a long rope to non-performers in the company and was hesitating to let go of people. Entrepreneurs need to step back and ask the question whether they are doing justice to the CEO role.

While hiring senior employees, it is important to discuss the culture of the company and ensure that they will fit into it.

Coming from a tech background, I completely underestimated the HR's role in an organisation. HR is the backbone of an organisation. The company is growing now and HR is playing a catch up game.

What are two lessons you learnt from your failures as an entrepreneur?

The first lesson I learnt is when you want to expand the services that you are offering to customers it is important to stick to the core category. Though we are doing reasonably well in the other portals looking back I think focusing on matrimony as a core area would have helped us scale faster. That is what we are doing now. We are aggressively expanding in this core area and already seeing the success in doing so.

The second lesson I learnt is cash flow management is critical to the success of the business and as tech-entrepreneurs we ignore the importance of this. Suddenly, we realise that we absolutely don't have any control on the business. Delegation is good and definitely needed to scale but that does not mean you don't keep an eye on where the bottlenecks are with respect to cash-flow. It will hit you when you get a call from a vendor about a payment as small as Rs 50,000 when you assume you have enough and more in the company's account. That's when I learnt how important it is to know how to manage the cash flow effectively.

(The author is the CEO of Energeate, an advisory firm for early stage ventures and cross-border companies with offices in Chennai, Bangalore and New Jersey. He is a Charter Member of TiE Chennai)

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