Sunday, April 12, 2015

Notes on Entrepreneurship

After the sad demise of my corporate career back in January 2014, I made one last desperate attempt to resuscitate it for a year, and do so at all costs. Nevertheless, BOOM!! My professional career crashed and it crashed worse than what I had imagined it to crash-land like! Of course, I have never had a liking for the typical interview questions that most corporate HRs grilled me on, one of their favorite questions was "Why Biotech and Why MBA?", as if I were doomed to die in a lab and no part of me ever, was capable of delivering whatsoever value to the existing business world, besides, you guessed it right "A BIOTECH LAB"! Welcome to the corporate jungle! The Indian one is worse, we seem to have a one nut fits only one screw mentality and boy I do not know what metamorphosis these HRs who are Alumni Cum Laudes from the best of the universities that this country boasts of, seem to undergo! I think they are all victims of mangled mindsets. Again, you can shoot down my views by dismissing what I am saying and quip that - "NOOOOO this is rubbish" or better still try to calm me down with your overt optimism, a level of optimism that is both preferred and infectious in this corporate jungle, the same that asks us to smile, even if we see a big elephant in the room. Circa 2008, Wall-street's crash was possibly an indicator of how well that theory works, and the aftereffects of it is not something that we seem to enjoy now. But I am fine with the brilliant shows of optimism and dismissals because the same Nouriel Roubini who was once called Doctor Doom for pressing the panic button on Wall-street's seemingly high levels of optimism and bullish figures is now apparently worshiped during the "bearly" lows! Hey, I totally understand that optimism!


Surely, classroom teaching somewhere failed our corporate jungle or I don't know if it's the reverse. The Indian corporate jungle is like a wound up box, that follows what I personally call the distasteful, structured Operations Research one-man-does-one-skill-best-with-mastery approach; that best fits an Operations Research class but not the reality. Clearly I do have my differences of opinion with the corporate jungle here. Although, I do not subscribe to the idea of an all wimpy and crazy Illuminati group which is trying to ensure that this world gets dumber by the day so that the rich and powerful few can control the masses, as theorized by David Icke and which further states that the modern day workforce is turning into a bunch of "Sheeples", or people who are forced by these authorities to think small, have no imagination, and don't develop an extensive knowledge or authority over a skill so that they can control the 80% of the world, sometimes starts to sound real! Real because a business analyst in this corporate jungle can no way understand codes and a developer normally is an idiot who codes all the day and has no talent to communicate well with the clients, or better still nearly all women who have crossed the age of 30 are definitely planning to settle down, nest and have a child. Hey, I have been asked that so many times that I have started to feel deeply indebted to the HRs that they are far more concerned about my genetic continuity and lineage, than what my Parents, In-laws or Husband could have ever express in their lifetimes!! Since that is a concern, I wonder whether these people have their kids post joining the company, have none at all post joining the company or better still hire a surrogate mother to have their children. But all said and done, life at the opposite end of an interview panel sucks!


And so began my tryst with entrepreneurship, and with it several failed attempts and associations that were beyond my imagination; and a period in my life that is best explained as a sojourn that is exploitative and not worth my time or my efforts! And then I had this voice inside my head, that I am done listening to these stupid stories about start-ups, I want to regulate that marketplace! How? Talking about it is a start, being the spokesperson for such causes and being the Influence in this ecosystem is a start! Of course I forget to mention that given the level of confidence this ecosystem has ingrained in me, right now I am pretty sure some one is on it, plagiarizing it successfully and copying my idea as I publish this note, but then you know what? You can only go so far! Entrepreneurship is not about having a flowery website, some stupid coverage of your entrepreneurial story and a blatant buyout! It is about an idea, a business, running a quality based-cut throat business where your responsibility to pay your employees and maintain a certain level of decency and professionalism with your clients be it internal or external, matters the most, than going to the print media and blabber your story with smiles and recite the tales of one's established backgrounds that would easily crumble even before they stand the test of truth! My experience is that most of the entrepreneurs in India are simply put "Immature and Unprofessional" and I have met the likes of those who project themselves as the greats but exhibit none of it in reality! And then there are those who do their work silently without much boasting, but their work speaks volumes than their tongues or their marketing campaigns.


At this point you would be thinking that "This lady has gone bonkers" Yes, let’s begin with that stance first. To establish rules and regulate this market I need to face that opposition, and I definitely need to face those dismissals! Just yesterday I faced brickbats for trying to counsel someone who had experienced what is a classic case of an idea-steal! Those who speak of an idea steal also steal an idea, and they come with some pedigree and that in a grave sense sounds appalling to me! Let us work on creating a start-up ecosystem that is based on principles of ethics and integrity; and let us not just do lip-service to that concept.


Until then..


General consultant for all things Unruly!


Saumya Sunder

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