Seven Wonders of the World

A group of students was asked to list what they thought were the present Seven Wonders of the World. Though there was some disagreement, the following got the most votes:

1. Egypt's Great Pyramids

2. Taj Mahal

3. Grand Canyon

4. Panama Canal

5. Empire State Building

6. St. Peter's Basilica

7. China's Great Wall

 

While gathering the votes, the teacher noted that one quiet student hadn't turned in her paper yet. So she asked the girl if she was having trouble with her list.

 

The girl replied, "Yes, a little. I couldn't quite make up my mind because there were so many.”

 

The teacher said, "Well, tell us what you have, and maybe we can help.” The girl hesitated, then read, "I think the Seven Wonders of the World are: -

1. To touch.

2. To taste.

3. To see.

4. To hear.

 

She hesitated a little, and then added: -

5. To feel.

6. To laugh.

7. And to love.

 

The room was so full of silence you could have heard a pin drop. Those things we overlook as simple and "ordinary" are truly wondrous.

 

A gentle reminder that the most precious things are before you: your family, your faith, your love, your good health and your friends.

Sand Writing

A story tells that two friends were walking through the desert. In a specific point of the journey, they had an argument, and one friend slapped the other one in the face. The one, who got slapped, was hurt, but without anything to say, he wrote in the sand: "TODAY, MY BEST FRIEND SLAPPED ME IN THE FACE".

They kept on walking, until they found an oasis, where they decidedto take a bath. The one who got slapped and hurt started drowning, and the other friend saved him. When he recovered from the fright, he wrote on a stone: "TODAY MY BEST FRIEND SAVED MY LIFE".

The friend who saved and slapped his best friend, asked him, "Why, after I hurt you, you wrote in the sand, and now you write on a stone?" The other friend, smiling, replied: "When a friend hurts us, we should write it down in the sand, where the winds of forgiveness get in charge of erasing it away, and when something great happens, we should engrave it in the stone of the memory of the heart, where no wind can erase it"

Learn to write in the sand.

Sarathbabu of Foodking Catering Services

When 27 year old Sarathbabu graduated from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, he created quite a stir by refusing a job that offered him a huge salary. He preferred to start his own enterprise -- Foodking Catering Service -- in Ahmedabad. 

 

He was inspired by his mother who once sold idlis on the pavements of Chennai, to educate him and his siblings. It was a dream come true, when Infosys co-founder N R Narayana Murthy lit the traditional lamp and inaugurated Sarathbabu's enterprise.                                            

 

Sarathbabu was in Chennai, his hometown, a few days ago, to explore the possibility of starting a Foodking unit in the city and also to distribute the Ullas Trust Scholarships instituted by the IT firm Polaris to 2,000 poor students in corporation schools.                                      

                       

Childhood in a slum

 I was born and brought up in a slum in Madipakkam in Chennai. I have two elder sisters and two younger brothers and my mother was the sole breadwinner of the family. It was really tough for her to bring up five kids on her meagre salary.                                                      

 

As she had studied till the tenth standard, she got a job under the mid-day meal scheme of the  Tamil Nadu government in a school at a salary of Rs 30 a month. She made just one rupee a day for    six people.                                                                                          

 So, she sold idlis in the mornings. She would then work for the mid-day meal at the school during daytime. In the evenings, she taught at the adult education programme of the Indian government.   

 

She, thus, did three different jobs to bring us up and educate us. Although she didn't say explicitly that we should study well, we knew she was struggling hard to send us to school. I was determined that her hard work should not go in vain.                                                 

 

I was a topper throughout my school days. In the mornings, we went out to sell idlis because people in slums did not come out of their homes to buy idlis. For kids living in a slum, idlis for breakfast is something very special.

My mother was not aware of institutions like the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, or the Indian Institutes of Technology. She only wanted to educate us so that we got a good job. I didn't know what I wanted to do at that time because in my friend-circle, nobody talked about higher education or preparing for the IIT-JEE.                                          

 

When you constantly worry about the next square meal, you do not dream of becoming a doctor or an engineer. The only thing that was on my mind was to get a good job because my mother was struggling a lot.   

                                                                                 

 I got very good marks in the 10th standard exam. It was the most critical moment of my life. Till the 10th, there was no special fee but for the 11th and the 12th, the fees were Rs 2,000-3,000.     

 

I did book-binding work during the summer vacation and accumulated money for my school fees. When I got plenty of work, I employed 20 other children and all of us did the work together. That was my first real job as an entrepreneur. Once I saw the opportunity, I continued with the work.        

 

Life at BITS, Pilani

SelvarajA classmate of mine told me about BITS, Pilani. He was confident that I would get admission, as I was the       topper. He also told me that on completion (of studies at Pilani), I will definitely get a job.    

 

When I got the admission, I had mixed feelings. On one hand I was excited that for the first time I was going out of Chennai, but there was also a sense of uncertainty.                  

 

The fees alone were around Rs 28,000, and I had to get around Rs 42,000. It was huge, huge money for us. And there was no one to help us. Just my mother and sisters. One of my sisters -- they      were all married by then -- pawned her jewellery and that's how I paid for the first semester.      

 

My mother then found out about an Indian government scholarship scheme. She sent me the application forms, I applied for the scholarship, and I was successful. So, after the first semester, it was the scholarship that helped me through.                                             

 

It also helped me to pay my debt (to the sister who had pawned her jewellery). I then borrowed money from my other sister and repaid her when the next scholarship came.                           

 

The scholarship, however, covered only the tuition fees. What about the hostel fees and food? Even small things like a washing soap or a toothbrush or a tube of toothpaste was a burden. So, I   borrowed more at high rates of interest. The debt grew to a substantial amount by the time I reached the fourth year.                                                       

 

First year at BITS, Pilani

To put it mildly, I was absolutely shocked. Till then, I had moved only with students from poor families. At Pilani, all the students were from the upper class or upper middle class families. Their lifestyle was totally different from mine. The topics they discussed were alien to me. They would talk about the good times they had in school.                                                 

 

On the other hand, my school years were a big struggle. There was this communication problem also as I was not conversant in English then. 

 

I just kept quiet and observed them. I concentrated only on my studies because back home so many people had sacrificed for me. And, it took a really long time -- till the end of the first year -- to make friends.                                                                                  

 

The second year I became a little more confident and started opening up. I had worked really hard for the engineering exhibition during the first year. I did a lot of labour-intensive work like welding and cutting, though my subject was chemical engineering. My seniors appreciated me.                 

                                                                                                          

In my second year also, I worked really hard for the engineering exhibition. This time, my juniors appreciated me, and they became my close friends, so close that they would be at my beck and call.    

                                                                                       

In the third year, when there was an election for the post of the co-ordinator for the exhibition, my juniors wanted me to contest. Thanks to their efforts I was unanimously elected.     

 

That was my first experience of being in the limelight. It was also quite an experience to handle around 100 students. Seeing my work, slowly my batch mates also came to the fold. All of them said I lead the team very well. They also told me that I could be a good manager and asked me to do MBA. That was the first time I heard about something called MBA. I asked them about the best institution in India. They said, the Indian Institutes of Management. Then, I decided if I was going to study MBA, it should be at one of the IIMs, and nowhere else.                                                       

Inspiration to be an entrepreneur

It was while preparing for the Common Admission Test that I read in the papers that 30 per cent of India's population does not get two meals a day. I know how it feels to be hungry. What should be done to help them, I wondered.          

 

I also read about Infosys and Narayana Murthy, Reliance and Ambani. Reliance employed 20,000-25,000 people at that time, and Infosys, around 15,000. When a single entrepreneur like Ambani employed 25,000 people, he was supporting the family, of four or five, of each employee.     

 

So he was taking care of 100,000 people indirectly. I felt I, too, should become an entrepreneur.   

 

But, my mother was waiting for her engineer son to get a job, pay all the debts, build a pucca house and take care of her. And here I was dreaming about starting my own enterprise. I decided to go for a campus interview, and got a job with Polaris. I also sat for CAT but I failed to clear it in my first attempt.                                                                       

I worked for 30 months at Polaris. By then, I could pay off all the debts but I hadn't built a proper house for my mother. But I decided to pursue my dream. When I took CAT for the third time, I cleared it and got calls from all the six IIMs. I got admission at IIM, Ahmedabad.                

                                                                                                                                       

Life at IIM, Ahmedabad

My college helped me get a scholarship for the two years that I was at IIM. Unlike in BITS, I was more confident and life at IIM was fantastic. I took up a lot of responsibilities in the college. I was in the mess committee in the first year and in the second year; I was elected the mess secretary.                                                                                

 

Becoming an entrepreneur 

By the end of the second year, there were many lucrative job offers coming our way, but in my mind I was determined to start something on my own. But back home, I didn't have a house. It was a difficult decision to say 'no' to offers that gave you Rs 800,000 a year. But I was clear in my mind even while I knew the hard realities back home.                                                

 

Yes, my mother had been an entrepreneur, and subconsciously, she must have inspired me. My inspirations were also (Dhirubhai) Ambani and Narayana Murthy. I knew I was not aiming at something unachievable. I got the courage from them to start my own enterprise.                      

 

Nobody at my institute discouraged me. In fact, at least 30-40 students at the IIM wanted to be entrepreneurs. And we used to discuss about ideas all the time. My last option was to take up a job.                                                                                                 

 

Foodking Catering Services Pvt Ltd

My mother is my first inspiration to start a food business. Remember I started my life selling idlis in my slum. Then of course, my experience as the mess secretary at IIM-A was the second inspiration. I must have handled at least a thousand complaints and a thousand suggestions at that time. Every time I solved a problem, they thanked me.                                          

 

I also felt there is a good opportunity in the food business. If you notice, a lot of people who work in the food business come from the weaker sections of the society.                             

 

My friends helped me with registering the company with a capital of Rs 100,000. Because of the IIM brand and also because of the media attention, I could take a loan from the bank without any problem.    

                                                                                        

I set up an office and employed three persons. The first order was from a software company in Ahmedabad. They wanted us to supply tea, coffee and snacks. We transported the items in an auto.    

 

When I got the order from IIM, Ahmedabad, I took a loan of Rs 11 lakhs (Rs 1.1 million) and started a kitchen. So, my initial capital was Rs 11.75 lakhs (Rs 1.17 million).                     

 

Three months have passed, and now we have forty employees and four clients -- IIM Ahmedabad, Darpana Academy, Gujarat Energy Research Management Institute and System Plus.                      

 

In the first month of our operation, we earned around Rs 35,000. Now, the turnover is around Rs 250,000. The Chennai operations will start in another three months' time.                           

 

Ambition

I want to employ as many people as I can, and improve their quality of life. In the first year, I want to employ around 200-500 people. In the next five years, I hope to increase it by 15,000. I am sure it is possible.                                                                              

 

I want to cover all the major cities in India, and later, I want to go around the world too.        

 

I have seen people from all walks of life -- from the slums to the elite in the country. That is why luxuries like a car or a bungalow do not matter to me. Even money doesn't matter to me. I feel bad if I have to have food in a five star hotel. I feel guilty.                                 

 

Personally, I have no ambition but I want to give a house and a car to my mother.                    

 

Appreciation                                                                                        

I did not expect this kind of exposure by the media for my venture or appreciation from people like my director at the IIM or Narayana Murthy. I was just doing what I wanted to do. But the exposure really helped me get orders, finance, everything.                   

 

The best compliments I received were from Narayana Murthy and my director at IIM, Ahmedabad. When I told him (IIM-A director) about my decision to start a company, he hugged me and wished me luck. They have seen life, they have seen thousands and thousands of students and if they say it is a good decision, I am sure it is a good decision.                                                

 

Reservation

Reservation should be a mix of all criteria. If you take a caste that comes under reservation, 80 per cent of the people will be poor and 20 per cent rich, the creamy layer. For the general category, it will be the other way around.                                             

 

I feel equal weightage should be given for the economic background. A study has to be done on what is the purpose of reservation and what it has done to the needy. It should be more effective and efficient. In my case, I would not have demanded for reservation. I accepted it because the society felt I belonged to the deprived class and needed a helping hand.                             

 

Today, the opportunities are grabbed by a few. They should be ashamed of their ability if they avail reservation even after becoming an IAS officer or something like that. They are putting a burden on the society and denying a chance to the really needy.                                     

 

I feel reservation is enough for one generation. For example, if the child's father is educated, he will be able to guide the child properly.                                                         

Take my case, I didn't have any system that would make me aware of the IITs and the IIMs. But I will be able to guide my children properly because I am well educated. I got the benefits of reservation but I will never avail of it for my children. I cannot even think of demanding reservation for the next generation.

Soap Case Study

One of the most memorable case studies on Japanese management was the case of the empty soap box, which happened in one of Japan's biggest cosmetics companies. The company received a complaint that a consumer had bought a soap box that was empty.

Immediately the authorities isolated the problem to the assembly line, which transported all the packaged boxes of soap to the delivery department. For some reason, one soap box went through the assembly line empty.

Management asked its engineers to solve the problem. Post-haste, the engineers worked hard to devise an X-ray machine with high resolution monitors manned by two people to watch all the soap boxes that passed through the line to make sure they were not empty. No doubt, they worked hard and they worked fast but they spent whoopee amount to do so.

But when a workman was posed with the same problem, did not get into complications of X-rays, etc but instead came out with another solution. He bought a strong industrial electric fan and pointed it at the assembly line. He switched the fan on, and as each soap box passed the fan, it simply blew the empty boxes out of the line.

Always look for simple solutions. Devise the simplest possible solution that solves the problem. So, learn to focus on solutions not on problems. "If you look at what you do not have in life, you don't have anything; if you look at what you have in life, you have everything”

This is Life

One:

Let me share someone's life history with you:

This was a man who failed in business at the age of 21;

Was defeated in a legislative race at age 22;

Failed again in business at age 24;

Overcame the death of his sweetheart at age 26;

Had a nervous breakdown at age 27;

Lost a congressional race at age 34;

Lost a senatorial race at age 45;

Failed in an effort to become vice-president at age 47;

Lost a senatorial race at age 49;

And he was elected president of the United States at age 52.

This man was ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

Every success story is also a story of great failure.

 

Another:

Arthur Ashe, the legendary Wimbledon player was dying of AIDS.

From world over, he received letters from his fans, one of which conveyed: "Why does GOD have to select you for such a bad disease"?

To this Arthur Ashe replied:

The world over:–

5 crore children start playing tennis,

50 lakh learn to play tennis,

5 lakh learn professional tennis,

50,000 come to the circuit,

5000 reach the grand slam,

50 reach Wimbledon,

4 to semi final,

2 to the finals,

When I was holding a cup I never asked GOD "Why me; and today in pain I should not be asking GOD "Why me?"

Be thankful to GOD for 98% of good things in life.

How Japanese gets their Fresh Fish

The Japanese have always loved fresh fish. But the waters close to Japan have not held many fish for decades. So to feed the Japanese population, fishing boats got bigger and went farther than ever. The farther the fishermen went, the longer it took to bring in the fish. If the return trip took more than a few days, the fish were not fresh. The Japanese did not like the taste.

To solve this problem, fishing companies installed freezers on their boats. They would catch the fish and freeze them at sea. Freezers allowed the boats to go farther and stay longer. However, the Japanese could taste the difference between fresh and frozen and they did not like frozen fish.

The frozen fish brought a lower price. So fishing companies installed fish tanks. They would catch the fish and stuff them in the tanks, fin to fin. After a little thrashing around, the fish stopped moving. They were tired and dull, but alive. Unfortunately, the Japanese could still taste the difference. Because the fish did not move for days, they lost their fresh-fish taste. The Japanese preferred the lively taste of fresh fish, not sluggish fish.

So how did Japanese fishing companies solve this problem? How do they get fresh-tasting fish to Japan? If you were consulting the fish industry, what would you recommend?

How Japanese Fish Stay Fresh:

To keep the fish tasting fresh, the Japanese fishing companies still put the fish in the tanks. But now they add a small shark to each tank. The shark eats a few fish, but most of the fish arrive in a very lively state. The fish are challenged.

Have you realized that some of us are also living in a pond but most of the time tired & dull, so we need a Shark in our life to keep us awake and moving? Basically in our lives Sharks are new challenges to keep us active and taste better.....

The more intelligent, persistent and competent you are, the more you enjoy a challenge. If your challenges are the correct size, and if you are steadily conquering those challenges, you are Conqueror. You think of your challenges and get energized. You are excited to try new solutions. You have fun. You are alive!

Recommendations:

1. Instead of avoiding challenges, jump into them. Beat the heck out of them. Enjoy the game. If your challenges are too large or too numerous, do not give up. Failing makes you tired. Instead, reorganize. Find more determination, more knowledge, more help.

2. God didn't promise days without pain, laughter without sorrow, sun without rain, but he did promise strength for the day, comfort for the tears and light for the way.

3. Disappointments are like road bumps, they slow you down a bit but you enjoy the smooth road afterwards. Don't stay on the bumps too long. Move on!

4. When you feel down because you didn't get what you want, just sit tight and be happy, because God has thought of something better to give you. When something happens to you, good or bad, consider what it means. There's a purpose to life's events, to teach you how to laugh more or not to cry too hard.

5. No one can go back and make a brand new start. Anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending.

Don't Wait

There was a guy that was born with cancer, a cancer that has no known cure. He was 17 years old and could die at any moment. He was always at home, under his mother's care.

One day he decided to go out, even if it was just once. He asked his mother for permission and she agreed. Walking down his block he saw many stores. Stopping at a music store he looked in and saw a very pretty girl of his own age, it was love at first sight and he walked in.

He walked up to the counter were the girl was. She smiled at him and asked "Can I help you with anything?" The guy could only think that it was the most beautiful smile he had ever seen and stuttered, "Well, ummm, I'd like to buy a CD". He grabbed the first one he saw and gave her the money. "Do you want me to wrap it?" the smiling girl asked. The guy said yes and the girl went into the back room to wrap it. The guy took the wrapped CD and walked home.

From that day on he visited the music store everyday, and each day he bought a CD. And each day the girl wrapped them up and the guy stored them unopened in his closet.

He was a very shy boy, and although he tried he couldn't find the nerve to ask the girl out. His mother noticed this and encouraged him.

The next day the guy set out for the store with a determined mind, like the previous days he bought a CD and the girl wrapped it as usual.

While she was busy he left his telephone on the counter and rushed out of the store.

 

The following day the guy didn't visit the store, and the girl called him. His mother answered the phone, wondering who it could be. It was the girl from the music store! She asked to speak with her son and his mother started crying. The girl asked her what was the matter. "Don't you know? He died yesterday." There was a long silence on the phone...

Later that afternoon the guy's mother entered his room to remember her son. She decided to start with his closet, and to her surprised she saw a big pile of unopened CDs wrapped in festive paper. She was curious because there were so many of them, and she opened one.

As she tore open the package she noticed a slip of paper that said:

"Hi! You're cute; I would love to meet you. Let's go out sometime. Sophie"

The mother started crying as she opened another, and another, and another. Every single CD contained a slip of paper that said the same.

Moral: That's the way life is, don't wait to show those special people the way you feel, tomorrow could be too late.

by Vijay Mahajan (Basix)

The single most important quality you need to have and cultivate further is to get up and walk every time you fall down. I am writing this the day after I turned down an equity investor from whom we have been seeking funding for the last several months, due to irreconcilable difference on terms. But while that deal broke up at 10 pm on Monday night and on Tuesday morning I was at the breakfast meeting with another prospective investor.

Likewise, one has to persist in terms of operational difficulties. Our expansion in Jharkhand state has seen many ups and downs due to poor law and order situation there. One of our field staff was shot dead by robbers, what did we do – we did not pull out. The day after the cremation, a hundred BASIX field staff, led by all of us in the senior team, went out doing our regular work – originating loans, collecting repayments, providing technical and marketing assistance to customers, etc.

But the second and equally important ability one needs to cultivate is the ability to learn – from experience, from critics, from competitors, from failures, from summer trainees, from mother-in-law and from regulators! Expert knowledge is useful, but increasingly has shorter and shorter shelf life. So what is permanent is the ability to understand a new situation and respond appropriately, using both learning from the past but also a fresh appreciation of the situation. Some of this comes from the self and some from others.

This brings me to the third point. Entrepreneurship is widely misunderstood to be a personal trait. It is so, to some extent. But entrepreneurship is a social construction – it is a phenomenon where certain behaviors get expressed in certain individuals, due to the support of their ‘eco-system” – colleagues, family members, investors, regulators, competitors and customers. All of these interactions cooked in the skull of the entrepreneur, make for the heady mix that all of you are after. So nurturing this eco-system and interacting with it are extremely important.

You go through several years of either nothing significant happening or you actually have setbacks. For me, there have been blockages in going forward rather than going back. But I know of several entrepreneurs who have had several setbacks. Basically they bounce back.

I realized that if we continued to remain dependent on grants for our own functioning, and government loans for the community, it’s going to be a very slow path. We won’t be able to control anything.

The kind of things that one does in an organization every five years, we were doing every six months. We thought ‘ki yeh fit ho gaya’. We have gone from a concept note to local area bank in two years flat.

by S B Dangayach (Sintex)

First of all you should do what you like the best of all. Number one. Then there should be convergence and there should be compatibility with what you think your conscience tells you, and what you want to do.

I do want my conscience tells me to do. That is what I mean by integrity, total integrity. That is what I advice young people as well.

There is a simple mantra of four I’s. The first I is Initiative. Second I is Intelligence, correct choices. Thirst s Industry, which is obviously hard work. Fourth I is Integrity. If you take up something, either give your whole of it, or not take it up at all.

by Anand Halve (chlorophyll)

Goals:

Follow your heart. (The brain can do so many things, but only the heart can answer the meaningful questions of life)

Think of the intangibles you value first – and let them determine the tangibles. (Steve Jobs and Michael Dell are driven by different intangibles… figure out who you would rather be.)

Don’t deter your joy at a beach today, for some imagined future weekend in Acapulco – by the time that happens your diabetes may not let you enjoy the pina coladas.

Money:

Money is not an end in itself. (Anu Aga, ex Chairperson, Thermax, once said: “Profits are important but not only thing… without breathing, you and I can’t live, but if you ask me what is the purpose of my life and if I say breathing, it is such a narrow way to define it”.)

Create love and affection in your workplace. (People give up their lives for what they love but no one will do it for an EBIDTA.)

People and Value:

Surround yourself with like minded people. (You can’t plan together, if the guys at the table are Gautam Buddha and Genghis Khan.)

Define your Do’s and Don’ts, before you start. Post-facto, any acts can be justified.

No deal is worth losing your self-respect.

The Last Word:

Finally, if you don’t laugh enough, your business model is probably wrong!

The buffer that we talk about is having enough money in the bank to pay fixed expenses for two months. You need to have it at any given point of time.

by Venkat Krishnan (GiveIndia)

The MBA qualification from good institute is the best possible ‘income insurance’ you can get in India today. So if at all there is anyone who can take risks with a low downside, it has to be you!

My advice to ‘would be’ entrepreneurs – nothing is perhaps a greater truism that the ‘3 year rule’- if you are able to hang on and survive for 3 years, you’ll be up and running and by the fourth year, you will be better off as an entrepreneur than you’d have been in a job. I’ve seen this happen in my own three efforts that I have been involved with as start ups, and with several friends I’ve seen build business as well.

Just try and experience the joy of ‘giving’ first hand. Give your time, money, skills to people who need it, and help improve their lives, and trust me, you will get far more joy out of it than anything else.

…somehow the idea that the MBA degree gives you much more access to more opportunities, financially you will be much well off, that in turn is empowering.

In social entrepreneurship, one should see himself as an instrument or tool that is available to society.

…whenever you look into the things that make a difference to the quality of our lives, we somehow think there is no need to apply scientific thought.

I think if there is passion in environment, people pick it up. I have seen it in every place I have worked in.

In America, every school that I went to… there was this sense of civic responsibility, that as a citizen it is our duty to help

by Cyrus Driver (Calorie Care)

Any time is a good time to start up but keep in mind; the odds will be against you. You must carefully plan how you will be financially sustainable. Create a nest egg to draw on or make sure you have some alternate source of income. The other option is to start up after 10-15 years when you are an industry expert.

Start small and then expand after you feel you have the product and processes right.

It’s good to be consumer of the product you are planning to launch, as you don’t need to do endless market research. You know what will sell.

by Deepta Rangarajan (IRIS)

It is so true working for a while really makes so much of difference before you start your own enterprise. It doesn’t matter where you work. When you actually work and you deal with nuances of day to day situations, decision making and dealing with people, you imbibe a knowledge which is really helpful when you start being an entrepreneur basically.

I think, for us, much of what have done has not followed a well scripted plot. And this could be true for several entrepreneurs. You work with a board game plan. Depending upon the availability of resources and the opportunities that present themselves at each point in time, you flexibly modify your plans and move along. You alter. But you ensure that you keep moving broadly in the direction that you want. If you say, this is my scripted plan, this is what I am going to do, if it does not end up happening as per that script, you will be tremendously disappointed.

On the other hand, if you are open and flexible, you will have opportunity that you never even thought of. There was nothing called XBRL when we started, and it is becoming a huge opportunity. Like a colleague of mine was saying, you need to keep the sails open and then wait for the wind to blow.

One has to have a creative streak if one needs to be an entrepreneur. A strong desire to want to create something and to make that happen.

While we are not tremendously greedy, we don’t constantly compare our net worth with somebody else. Having said that, it is fantastic to create wealth. Because often, it is not only an endorsement of that fact that you have done well, it gives you tremendous opportunity to do other things as well.

Why so few women entrepreneurs? I think a woman has to do with the fact that women have primary responsibility for the children and family. If you have primary responsibility for caring for your family and you want to be an entrepreneur, in terms of balancing life, you could do something more cottage, may be from home. If I had kids I would definitely re-size and re-scale the way I could be involved with the company.

by Ruby Ashraf (Precious Formals)

You can achieve beyond your dreams, so it’s OK to dream and make an action plan to turn it into realty.

There is not one formula to be successful; everyone who is successful has gone through failures in the process. It depends upon how hard we kick that failure and learn from it and take up the challenge stronger to be successful.

As an entrepreneur you don’t say that ‘I have to reach a particular place in five years’. You just keep doing whatever you are doing. You have plans, you have goals, and you know a strategy. But still one doesn’t even anticipate that so much work will be done… you just keep doing it.