Coming to your management education, why did you make the jump from IIT to IIM? And is the IIM tag required on your way to become a manager in the IT, or in any industry for that matter?
It was logical, I thought, to do a Masters degree. I was quite clear that I didn’t want to do a Masters in the same line that I did my Bachelors in. So my thinking at that point of time was to do medicine after IIT, or an MBA, or something in biomedical, but something that was completely unrelated to my IIT education. Basically, to me, if I am doing something, I don’t want an incremental value, but a disruptive value. So instead of spending few more years of my time on that, I wanted a shift. To that extent, among those choices, I finally ended up taking an MBA because it was one of the shorter stints, just a two year course, unlike the other options which might have gone on for 5-7 years.
I don’t think an MBA degree is required to be a great manager. But I do believe that it helps you – from two perspectives. First is the amount of techniques and skills that you learn. Secondly, the industry looks at you quite differently. Perhaps after 10-15 years, it would not make any difference whether you are from an IIT or you had an engineering/management background, but during the initial one or two years, the way you set up your foundation and the kind of roles you would be doing would probably be different.
In terms of management experience, what has contributed the most from your college life?
At IIM, I found that I had a much greater love for the field. I settled down very easily studying management as a science and understanding the possibilities offered. I actually believe that a lot of my management learning has been more applicable to me for my job for a long time now. What I learnt in finance, marketing and economics is what I use even today, especially because of the way IIM Ahmedabad teaches it. I remember most of the stuff very vividly, almost as if it happened yesterday. Recently, I was teaching a session in Harvard on International Finance and they were arguing a case study. I told them that a particular aspect was not the central point of that case; they asked me why and I said that I learnt it 30 years ago! (Laughs) I still remembered it. There is this huge thing in the mind called positivity and confidence. For two people having the same skill set, the one with a positive and confident attitude will perform significantly better than the one who doesn’t. That, I think, is what IIM has helped build in me. It gives the confidence that you can achieve anything you want and can take risks. After IIM, when I joined a start-up that had zero revenues, it indeed was a risk! But I had the confidence that I could change the fortunes of the company. If something didn’t work for me, I would work something else out!
India and the US
Coming to the differences between India and the US – is it good to move there and stay on, or should one come back, as is the trend now? What are your views?
If you work in the technology industry, then I believe that for some period of time, it makes sense to have exposure to markets that are technologically better matured, just for you to get some perspective. For example, if you are in the consumer products industry, it makes sense to have perspectives of some of the markets which have different product life cycles or are in a different maturity stage in the product life cycles. That is the key here.
What about differences in work ethic and culture between India and the US?
That is difficult to say. For instance, we are a US headquartered firm with bulk of our workforce in India. All our US folks think that we are very employee welfare oriented while the Indian guys know we are high performance driven like any US company. So we have tried to blend cultures together. Cultural differences do exist; the nurturing and development orientation of Indian companies generally tend to be higher while the performance orientation and drive of the US companies seem to be a little higher. It is a question of blending the two to match what works best for you.
To Conclude…
You have probably gone through all the experiences one could think of in any industry – working for a large organisation, starting up, building up an organisation and finally, acquiring a large organisation yourself. Which phase for you was the most exciting or the most rewarding?
Wow, Okay! When I started in Sonata, we couldn’t meet our payrolls; I went out for 15 days, did sales and collected enough money to meet it. I actually think that in everything I have done, the amount of learning is fascinating. For instance, when I set up my own company, I learnt what it takes to raise $30 million of venture capital, how to negotiate a payment, etc. When I joined Infosys the deal was that they had money to pay me only for a year or so and were debating whether to shut down or not because they had gone from zero to one and a half million dollars in 10 years. The point is, I am extremely passionate about what I do and that is why everybody says that I will never retire! As long as I am enjoying what I am doing, I will not get frustrated with my work. I feel the learning and what I did in different phases has been very different but everything has been extremely exciting. The scale was different each time, but so was the payroll! (Laughs)
And finally to conclude, what message would you like to give to today’s IITians? If there’s anything they should watch out for, anything they should hold on to?
I have two things to say here. As a general principle, I have found that people, who work harder, do come out better in life. You can’t control your genes and the kind of environment you are born in. But invariably I have found that every successful person I have met works incredibly hard, regardless of how bright he or she is. If you are successful then it means you have worked incredibly hard to get there. Secondly, I would go back to what I said earlier and that is about building soft skills.
