‘No guts, no glory’
What’s the ethos of entrepreneurship? Sridar Iyengar, former KPMG chairman, and past president, TiE Global, answers

By Meha Mathur
Is India in the right mode for growth of entrepreneurship? What constitutes entrepreneurship? How to help enterprises start and scale up? Can enterprise solve India’s poverty? These and many more issues were discussed at the recent Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) Entrepreneurial Summit in the national capital between December 11-13. Sridar Iyengar, past president of TiE Global, was a major force behind the event. Iyengar, former KPMG chairman, is associated with Bessemer Venture Partners. He is an independent advisor to businesses, particularly those operating in the US/India corridor. He serves on the boards of Infosys Technologies, ICICI Bank, Career Launcher and Rediff.com. He is now on the board of governors of the Indus World School of Business, Greater NOIDA, starting in 2008. Management Compass interacted with him on the essence of enterprise, during the TiE event. Excerpts.

This summit has brought to light many new dimensions of enterprise — not just about money-making and bottomlines, but also but also enterprise in media, enterprise in social spaces, enterprise in politics. Is this a new realisation?
Some people feel that we should remain very focused and only talk about areas where we (TiE) are strong in, that is technology. Other people say we should broaden the area, but only stay within ‘business’. Then there are people like me, who say that we are about entrepreneurial people, and entrepreneurial people will choose different ways of expressing their entrepreneurship. And that may lead them into non-business areas. Our role is to encourage that process. We chose this particular format — last year being the first year — to celebrate entrepreneurship. And once you say you are celebrating entrepreneurship, then it becomes very broad. This year, we have included dimensions like art and development work, and people are coming to us and saying that that was the right thing to do.

As it came out from the summit, there are two levels of entrepreneurship. One is players who are competing at global level. And one is SMEs. How to address their very divergent concerns, as they might have clash of interests?
A large firm is only a small firm, which has grown large. It didn’t start off on day one as being large. Here at TiE conference, there was a section on starting up, one on scaling up, and on going global. Having said that, a lot is common. Aspiration is common. Social accountability is common. So you can cater by dissecting audience.

Entrepreneurship might be the buzzword today, but most Indians are skeptical of it. There is the fear of what if I don’t succeed. Are B-schools the right places to solve these dilemmas?
No, B-schools can only prepare somebody for a career. I don’t think they do enough to promote entrepreneurship. But I would say that fear of failure is one of the reasons why a lot of them do not go into it. Failure is in fact an essential part of entrepreneurship. If you learn from a failure you become a better entrepreneur. But in India it’s not a climate where failure is tolerated. You are viewed as if you have done some thing wrong. You fail in business and immediately you become hero to zero. Which is wrong, because these are circumstances. You may be too early to market, you started with a wrong product, the market changed. The reasons of failure are many, so long as you understand them.
That’s one of the things we are trying to do — get the fear of failure out of the system. You got to dare. No guts, no glory.

Education has been cited as one of the major factors which can bring about an entrepreneurial revolution. Do you think that along with that, an attitudinal change at school level would help?
I think that being a businessman should be given respect. Traditionally, parents have been inspiring their children to become an IAS officer, a doctor. There needs to be an attitudinal shift among people who influence, who are in education. Within the education system itself, there needs to be a way of encouraging people who take decisions on their own. Our education system is learning by rote. The questions which teachers should invite, and answer, is ‘why’. When a child asks ‘why do I have to do this’, and the teacher answers, ‘because I tell you so’, that’s not the answer. If you can’t answer, that thing is not worth doing.

‘Khelne ke liye takat ki nahi, neeyat ki zaroorat hai’, is a dialogue in a recent movie. Do you think this holds true in business too? Is it a function of passion or capability?
Without passion you cannot achieve anything. It’s a differentiator. You might have all the right skills and right people around you but it’s your passion which really brings it all together. Enterprises start when your passion to do something is somehow communicated and becomes contagious to the next person. When somebody else feels as enthusiastic about what you are doing as you are, you have started the entrepreneurial process.

The other side of it is being at the right place at the right time…
Yes, luck has got a lot to do with everything. There have been great entrepreneurs, who in some of their attempts did not succeed because they didn’t see the window. They missed the window of opportunity. Or they started too early.

There was a session about ‘Small is Big’. And there have been developments in the last few weeks wherein Taj Group, in no way small, got a snub from Orient Express, on the grounds that a tieup with a group smaller than itself would erode its brand value. Does it send a wrong signal to entrepreneurs, regarding their aspirations to rise higher?
Small itself can become big. The terminology is mine. I chose those words. Ninety-three per cent of workers are from small businesses. As finance minister P Chidambaram pointed out at the conference, 60-70 per cent of workers are working for small companies, and not big giants. So, small is big. In aggregate, it is the small businesses anywhere in the world which create the most jobs. But we only talk about the big companies.

As regards this development, it’s a question of respect. I think you got to respect an entrepreneur, whether he runs a 10-person business or 10-thousand person business. Running a 10-person business may in fact be a matter of choice. Somebody is happy employing 10 or 20 people. That doesn’t mean that he is not capable of running a business with 10,000. Size is not the criteria, how big you build is not the criteria. There are a lot of companies which are very well-respected in relation to the larger enterprises. So what if they were not replicated on scale, hundreds of times.

There is the dilemma of being a smaller part of a larger, well-recognised set-up, that is being an employee, vis-à-vis being pivotal of something which is small. Isn’t there the issue of recognition and professional satisfaction?
I think it’s a self-serving statement that if you are small, nobody wants to talk to you, which translates into saying that if you are big, there is respect. At the same time I always say, unless you are the top of the ladder, you are second to somebody. It’s like saying, why does Amitabh Bachchan get as much respect as Narayana Murthy. AB has never created anything. But you are able to compare. But between AB and a young actor starting now, there’s that difference. But everybody who starts that journey has taken that first step. Where they stop the journey is entirely upto them. Some people like to grow big. Most of Indian businesses are very content. They don’t want to disturb family life, don’t want to spend whole night, don’t want to travel. They set up a business in Delhi or Mumbai and say I could make more money if I set up a branch in the other metro. But I don’t like to travel, I like to go home and help my son do his homework. What’s wrong with that.

You have used a term ‘being second to somebody’. Is the driving force in entrepreneurship being on your own and being your own boss?
At one level people say I want to change the world. I think that’s too lofty a goal. Most entrepreneurs don’t change the world. They change the immediate environment and touch the lives of a few people by giving them a chance. But they are doing mundane things. They have not invented a cure for cancer.

Intrapreneurship has emerged as the next big thing. How do you take this phenomenon? Is it an improvement upon entrepreneurship?
I have been an intrapreneur all my life. I decided to be an entrepreneur within an organisation. It is sometimes more difficult to be an entrepreneur within an organisation and change the direction. As is said, ‘Be the change that you want to see’, in large organisations you can be the change, by starting new things. But other than the money which is easier to come, everything else is difficult.

Doesn’t intrapreneurship require a lot of flexibility?
You need to have a very enabling, encouraging environment. If the person at the top is a confident person, then such an atmosphere flourishes. Otherwise you have a closed environment.