Enterprise, with values

This is a book that has to be read and savoured on many counts. For encouraging dreams, because they can come true. For proving that sound values, which parents instil in their children in early years, germinate and bear fruit sooner than later. For proving, yet again, that struggle and failure are necessary to make something of your life.

In Captainship (Bloomsbury) nine of India’s innovative and respected entrepreneurs bare their souls on not only how they formed their companies but also the childhood they had. As the editor, Anya Gupta, says in the introduction, these first-generation entrepreneurs from middle-class families share their journey as ordinary youth “with all the normal joys and insecurities of childhood and adolescence.”

Vijay Shekhar Sharma , founder of the Internet mobile telephone company One97 Communications, went to a school in a village near Aligarh in Uttar Pradesh. His father, a school teacher, had always wanted to be a scientist. The stifling of this dream pushed him into depression, resulting in Vijay, his brother, and mother often being physically punished under “Hitler raj” at home. Often there wasn’t enough money for food, but his father would never charge children who came home for extra help saying that was “evil”.

Getting out of poverty was Sharma’s mantra from his student days, and repaying the Rs 2 lakh bank loan his father had taken for his sister’s wedding his obsession. To do both he needed to build his own company. Right after college, he landed a job but threw it out and offered to build a Web site for India Today magazine; when they offered him a job, he turned it down. And he was only 20!

Sharma went on to build One97. A few years ago, when he turned 30, the company was valued at $300 million. He realised he had created for himself “tremendous value”, but asked how important money was to him. His answer: Not much, beyond buying food and a roof over his head. So now, “One97 invests in people, not companies”.

Anya’s entrepreneurs don’t shy away from describing the darker patches of their early life. Subroto Bagchi, Chairman and co-founder of Mindtree, is candid in describing his father, a magistrate. Diagnosed as bipolar, he was periodically given electroconvulsive therapy — electric shocks — at a Ranchi mental hospital. “They tied his hands and legs, gagged him and ran electricity through him.” He was referred to as schizophrenic. But today, when Bagchi talks to his psychiatric friends and describes the symptoms, they are not very sure about the condition or the treatment. Marvelling over the inheritance of genes, he says that his father came from a family of seven brothers and two sisters “and he was the only one hurting”.

As in other narratives where mothers have played a huge, positive role in shaping their children’s lives, Bagchi’s mother also comes through as a remarkable woman. She would sign off her letter to her husband with “ Iti tomar dasi Labonya”, a phrase her son finds “hilarious, because the lady had a mind of her own”. In arguments with her husband, she would bring the roof down, but as far as outward appearances went, such as touching his feet during an important festival, “she kept the myth going”.

In the early days she had to bear the brunt of some physical violence because of her husband’s mental condition — but she not only bore it well, she didn’t allow it to “become a cause for us to lose our love and esteem for our father. He was not an alcoholic. He was not into drugs.” The pathos of a man who had to undergo repeated electric shocks is brought out in the passage where Bagchi describes his father saying, after being tied up and gagged, ‘Why are you doing this to me?’ “My father was one the most optimistic people… he was optimistic about everybody… the whole world.”

Sanjeev Bikhchandani , founder of naukri.com and jeevansathi.com, talks about the set of values entrenched firmly during his time at St. Columba’s School — no cheating, studying hard and being responsible for your homework. Not only his school, but also the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad — where he went after a stint at Lintas in 1980 — took in students from diverse backgrounds. But today, that has changed at the IIMA, he regrets; “93 per cent students in the current first year batch are engineers — a retrograde move. If you reduce diversity, you produce clones. And a class of clones is likely to produce fewer entrepreneurs,” he fumes.

Ashish Dhawan , founder of Central Square Foundation, a philanthropic venture fund that invests in education-focused NGOs, first chased his dream on Wall Street but, within a year, got disillusioned as he found that many people he worked with were “complete jerks. They mistreated their colleagues and were arrogant”. His bosses spent little time at home and were not on talking terms with their teenaged children; “They were unfaithful to their wives. Their family values were a mess.” Not able to digest either this or having to put on an American accent to be understood, he returned home.

Satya Narayanan , founder of Career Launcher, talks about his misery in an upmarket school in Delhi — with uninspiring teachers, where rich kids bought Thums Up every day whereas he couldn’t even afford the school bus, and grades were given “by packaging”. Excelling in cricket, he got accepted at St. Stephens, but couldn’t make it to the Indian team.

Girish Batra , founder of NetAmbit, recalls how at Godrej when nobody wanted to touch the “dirty business” of (Real Good) chicken he did. It had huge challenges but gave him the opportunity to feel “like the CEO of a small business at the age of 25”.

Ashish Gupta , co-founder of Helion Venture Partners, says he loves being around entrepreneurs who keep asking questions, and are “the dark horses that India needs so badly”.

Zia Mody , founder and partner of law firm ANZ &Partners — the only woman in this volume and the daughter of eminent jurist Soli Sorabjee — describes how she had to “patiently prove myself to everyone in the industry”, and take her work as “an exciting obstacle course.”

Sanjeev Aggarwal , co-founder and Senior Managing Director of Helion Venture Partners, is grateful for the “peacefulness of being allowed to be as I willed” as a child. With some natural talent inherited from his mother and a flair for management, he made the transition from being an engineer to a “business guy”, or else he would have been a “very poor professional”.

Along with the moving and candid stories of the nine entrepreneurs, related in a simple, racy and readable style, this book has exceptionally beautiful illustrations by Anita Balachandran. This is a must-read for every young Indian — men and women — who is at the crossroads of his/ her career and fed up of his/ her job! These inspirational stories will help you take the plunge.

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