Today’s success mantra
Stay focused on start ups and early stage companies

By Satya Narayanan R.

Scene 1 - reflection
At 24, I was a desperately restless guy. According to my estimation, even a reasonably chaotic and entrepreneurial set up like Ranbaxy could make use of only 20% of me, despite the fact that my first superior, Sandeep Sahney, was a wonderful mentor and gave me ample space and freedom in many ways. When I looked around, I saw men and women, in their 50s (or more), wearing the CEO hats. It would have been too boring to wait that long to print a business card for myself that read ‘CEO’; this restlessness partly explains Career Launcher’s (CL’s) coming into existence.

Scene 2 - AFter a session
As I came out after a taking a lecture on entrepreneurship and its relevance to the students’ immediate future (the summer internships/the final placements), I reflected upon a few company names that I had heard of with regard to placements including P & G, Infosys, Accenture, HUL and others.

The tussle
I may choose to assume that I was a normal 24 year old guy at Ranbaxy. I could also assume that 24 year olds today, are as impatient (if not more) as I was. They would love to have a wider and deeper influence on the company they join; they would love to exhaust every ounce of their energy. They would love to be challenged to do things never done before. They would love to be central to the fate of the organisation. Where else would you find all this but at start ups. The reason is that large corporations are slow, their size acting as a limitation. Far too many employees will have as many stakes put in different directions; a fact that the organisations would hate to admit. This situation is just not exciting enough for young, restless minds. This is where I would urge the youngsters to stay focused on start ups. I can list at least a 100 start ups in the country that are founded by top class professionals and a dozen of them that will go on to make big in the corporate world. In addition, there are a large bunch of new era organisations that are being founded by bright, irreverent and future oriented youngsters in diverse fields such as social entrepreneurship, etc. I recently had a brief chat with Sahil (IWSBian 2010) on Facebook. He was excited about shifting to Bangalore with his stint in the start-up arena continuing. I am sure he will have the satisfaction of being central to the fate of his company.

Your role model
Glorious failure is always better than an average success. Life is worth chasing a glorious failure, provided you stay focused, give your 100% and take responsibility for the choices made. A decade from now, I would love to see an IWSB alum emulate Nandan Nilekani. At a young age, he had the clarity to go and join Infosys, (then a start-up in Pune) as the youngest member of the founding team. He stayed focused, made a telling contributing to the growth of Infosys, and became the successor of Narayanamurthy! Today, fun, freedom, responsibility and a humongous net-worth (Nandan’s would be a few thousand crore Rupees) are all well linked to start ups!

— The writer is the director at Indus World School of Business, Greater Noida