Archive for the “Entrepreneurship” Category
As I sit here in my hotel room in San Franciso, on a warm autumn evening, I can’t help feeling excited about the approaching Tata Jagriti Yatra. When the concept was dreamt up in the living room of one of the organisers two years ago, who would have thought that we’d have reached this point where it is all about to happen in a matter of weeks? For myself, and many of the early organisers who have been with us since the first day, it has been almost a religious affair to meet every Saturday morning at 11am to plan and discuss this years Yatra. Some of us have never missed a single one of those meetings in the two years that have passed. They started off in the living rooms of organisers in London, then swiftly moved to local pubs and bars. Later we had the fortunate use of meeting rooms at a London office and eventually when the India team got established on the ground in Mumbai, we moved our meetings to teleconferences. In the early days we had people from London, California, Dubai and India all participating in our meetings and then, slowly but surely, the gravity of momentum started to shift towards India more and more. Today, the whole operation is being run out of Mumbai, with support and guidance from the original founders, and our team is evolving at an ever increasing pace.
Tata Jagriti Yatra is about enterprise lead innvotion. Some may badge that as entrepreneurship, others may call that innovation, and yet more may look upon it as creativity. Whatever your notion is and however you perceive the goals of the yatra, one core aspect permiates through the whole concept of the Tata Jagriti Yatra venture. That concept is of ignting the spirit of enterprise through exposure to amazing role models.
Since I was a teenager, a huge role model for me has been Richard Branson, the flamboyant and crazy British businessman who loves to pull stunts and break world records. In many ways, Branson inspired me to start up my own music magazine at the tender age of 16 in a similar vain to his very own “Student” magazine of the 1970’s. The zeel to continue in the publishing business transferred to a floppy disk based computer magazine called Digital Illusions. I started that magazine in the mid 1990s with a bunch of like minded friends out of the back of a bedroom. This was when the internet and the web had not yet reached the mainstream. We developed our own “Web” browser of sorts. It was more of a magazine content reader which display images, words and played audio and presented the magazine in ways in which most people had not yet experienced - all through a compact and neat little pieceo of software that friends and I developed ourselves with no real prior experience of how to go about doing something like that. the venture was an over night success and within a year we had over thousands of subscribers. The operation expanded to include numerous paid writers, and businesses actually parted with good money to place ads in my magazine when they saw what an avid and growing following we had. We could run rings around the traditional paper based magazines and have the most up to date news and reviews because we were not limited by the traditional print run because after all, our magazine was digital and played off three 3.5 inch floppy disks. Each month we’d include free “public domain” (open source) software on the third disk which would keep people coming back for me and every year at the annual computer fair being held in London, the spotty faced teenagers who run Digital Illusions disk magazine would walk out of those fairs with bags bursting with free software to reviews and free hardware kit to write about. I look back on those days and still think how crazy it was that businesses actually trusted a bunch of scruffy looking teenagers to take away their wares for next to nothing and write about it all in a professional manner. However, trust us they did, because ultimately we lead by example and took the leap of faith to immerse ourselves in something we were good at (computers and software), and enjoyed doing which event from the first issue of the disk based magazine. From our innovation in publishing media and presentation software to our ground breaking way of inticing people to come back each month for more through giving away open source software, the business spoke for itself and quite rapidly avid readers and advertsisers latched on to a good idea.
The reason I’m telling you about those heady days of yesteryears is because I would have never attempted what I did, had it not been for the role models I was exposed to. Branson’s almost reckless madness and risk taking in business, but also his flaboyant audacity to take on the establishment and ruffle their features was exciting to me as a teenager and it brough a starkle to my eyes. It is this sparkle we hope to capture during Tata Jagriti Yatra and we hope it inspirs the young minds of India to think out of the box, learn how to innovate and then drive the energy and innovation in to responsible and sustainable enterprises.
For all those Yatri’s who have applied to be on the train and have been accepted, I urge you to read Richard Branson’s latest book - “Business Stripped Bare. Adventures of a global entrepreneur”. I picked this book up on my business trip out to the US and I couldn’t put it down till the plane had landed. The book is a personal story of why Branson is in business. It tells the reader about what drives Branson to innovate and continually transform himself and his businesses around the world. For all those who are looking for some inspiration in their start-up business and for some excellent food for thought before you board the Tata Jagriti Yatra train on 24th December 2008, this book comes highly recommended.
All the best,
Kaustav
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It’s been a long time since we updated you all on the latest developments with Jagriti Yatra so here I am with an update.
A lot of new developments have been taking place over the last few months. The biggest news I have for you all is that we have finally opened our India office in the Prabhadevi area of Mumbai and we have appointed our project director and operations director! This is great news for us as we can now direct operations from the ground in India and meet people face to face. The project is now being directed by Gitanjali Banerjee and operationally directed by Swapnil Dixit. The office opened at the end of October and is going strong.
The second important announcement I am excited to share with you all is that we recently got our first major round of sponsorship. It’s a start but there’s still a long way to go for us. However, this kick-start has given us the ability to book the train for the journey and get our operations staff paid. We’re hot on the chase for corporate sponsorship and also courting interesting with individual donors. I can’t over emphasize enough just how important it is for us to get your support for this project as it will enable hundreds of young adults in India to realise their talents and help catapult them in to the world of bottom up, grass routes entrepreneurial thinking.
Moving on, I have the pleasure in announcing that Shashank Mani, he who was responsible for the 1997 Azad Bharat Rail Yatra in India, and the inspiration behind the Jagriti Yatra is launching his book, India - Journey Through a Healing Civilization. The book chronicals the events leading up to the 1997 Yatra and goes in to the trials and tribulations of organising such an epic journey. There is plenty of insightful information about the importance of grass roots entrepreneurship and Shashank’s own professional views on how India must progress economically and culturally in the future if it is to grow a sustainable and diverse economy and compete on the world stage. The book is published by Harper Colins and will be launched at Waterstones, Picadilly on 1st December 2007 between 2-5pm. Come along and meet the author and purchase a signed copy of this great book.
I’m quite a keen blogger and also listen to many podcasts out there on the web. A recent one which caught my attention a few weeks ago was on the SmallBozPod, a blog and podcast dedicated to small business startups and entrepreneurs. I was reminded today about the story they ran back in October this year on Asian entrepreneurship by my colleague Ben so I thought I’d share it with you all. The podcast talks about collaboration between Indian and British business and how the Indian entrepreneurial spirit is being seen globally today. Highly recommended so go take a listen when you have a moment.
That wraps things up for now. I promise to post more regular updates from now on and your comments are all very welcome so please don’t shy away from filling out the comments form.
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The growth of India over the next fifty years will mirror the growth that took place in North America over the past 200 years. An evocative book that captures this story is the Pulitzer Prize winning effort of Daniel J. Boorstin’s The Americans: The Democratic Experience. The author traces the creation of myriad institutions in North America as it grew from a former colony of the British to the pre-eminent economic and social model of the last century. This story’s own context is starkly different from India. But the analogy of the story is helpful : institutions were created in a new country which had a different geographic, demographic, intellectual and emotional setting from Europe. The USA had a strong European intellectual influence to start with, but the reason it succeeded is because it adapted that mindset to suit its own environment. They created a national university system, which moved learning beyond the Ivy League colleges, they perfected an insurance network, they created a food distribution system, they invented an aerospace industry, where starting from PanAm onwards aviation brought the death of distance. India will have to create similar institutions and systems over the next 50 years. Boorstein also eloquently demonstrates that the process of building a nation is a two step forward and a one step back process. The important message though is that some of the seemingly ‘impossible’ problems India faces today were faced by other countries as they grew from a young nation to a mature democracy. When we are faced with those difficulties, we also need to take a long- term view and keep that positive frame of reference that comes across in Boorstin’s work.
However, as North America became a successful industrial nation powered by oil, Model T cars and the threads of Amtrak that started criss-crossing its vast land mass, Boorstin warned of the dangers in blindly following existing, ‘successful’ models and the ‘momentum’ they generate. He said: ‘The sense of momentum which overwhelmed Presidents burdened ordinary citizens. ….. the future of American civilization could not fail to be determined by the mass and velocity of enterprises already in being… Fewer decisions of social policy seemed to be Whether-or-Not as more became decisions of How-Fast-and-When.’
As globalization has made the world a smaller place, a number of emerging countries like India run the risk of not asking Whether-or-Not questions. As India starts accelerating forward in its own ‘democratic experience’, we have to be careful of not heading down the How-Fast-And-When tunnel. At the start of its own journey, North America borrowed its intellectual heritage from Europe, but moulded it to the reality of North America, and we face a similar challenge at this juncture.
What we must adopt from the West is the spirit of scientific inquiry. But the age of networks, electrons, biotechnology, agri-business and relevance of intangible assets must warn us against creating mechanical institutions. As this is the beginning of our own development journey, we can use and connect with the Indian mind which has always respected knowledge and respects service.
Recent environmental awareness in the developed world is asking fundamental questions of the industrial civilizations of Europe and North America. Commentators have declared that the ‘demand for carbon-free power is about to become the most disruptive force since the Internet’, and a new world-view is being called upon to stem the damage that may already have been caused by the industrial sprint of the past 200 years. In this context, China is already well down the how-fast-and-when tunnel by building large factories, industrial plants and carbon intensive industries. India, till recently seemingly a laggard in industrialization, still has an opportunity to ask whether-or-not questions, and perhaps put a healing balm on the Industrial damage already underway.
An even more important lesson from the ‘democratic experience’ is the dynamics of democracy. The real fruits of democracy come when citizens ‘work’ their democracy, when they engage to build institutions. More than the Roosevelts and the Kennedys, it was the cattle rancher and the railroad pioneer who built USA. Modern India and its race forward will be shaped not only in state capitals but also by the bottom up entrepreneurial innovations taking place across the nation. India’s progress will take place not only in the halls of Parliament, but by the various mini institutions that we visited during our travels. India will be shaped by the creation of a Tilonia, by the courage of a Kiran Bedi, by the experiences of the submarine commander in Vizag and by the innovative factory manager at Bajaj Auto.
As countries like India start to take off, they will take off on the wings of passion of its young citizens. A country starts to prosper when the people – alongside the government – start building. While we have a number of seemingly insurmountable problems, we have a future that is powered by the momentum of a growing country. Gerd Behrens drew a contrast with the attitude in more developed economies, ‘The West resembles a marriage of convenience, while other growing civilizations are passionate affairs’.
More so for those pouring to fill the glass of India.
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‘Is the glass half empty or half full? Depends whether you are pouring or drinking’ said Bill Cosby’s mother in a conversation that reminds me of India in this 60th anniversary year.
On the fiftieth anniversary of India’s independence, in 1997 we organised a national adventure – the Azad Bharat Rail Yatra. Two hundred young Indians participated in that Yatra and have since remained in close contact over the years. This is an extended family forged by the memories of twenty-two days of exhilarating, non-stop travel on a special train that covered 7,000 kilometers of India. We keep in touch through a web-based forum, and at heart; we simply remain attached to India. As I write this, these participants are planning another Yatra – the Jagriti Yatra with the theme of awakening entrepreneurship.
Our aim for the Yatra was to discover the other India, an India beyond the English language. To me, this India was in the smaller towns where I had grown up as the son of an army officer; it was in my town of birth, Gorakhpur, and in Barpar, our ancestral village in the Deoria district of eastern Uttar Pradesh. During our travels we found more than one India. But the central theme that dominated the journey was India integrating with its own genius. By doing so will we build a country that is different and therefore able to compete and prosper in the new world. Only if we understand who we are and are comfortable with it, will we live lives of integrity. Participants discovered this first hand. They celebrated the integrity they saw amongst those they met during our travels.
The journey was layered by what I call the ‘paradox of positivism’. The more we celebrate India’s achievements, the less inclined will we be to strive for more. And yet, if we do not applaud our achievements, the positive energy necessary for that forward movement will remain absent. During the journey we tried to break this paradox by looking at India as a ‘glass half full’. We saw the many, seemingly insurmountable problems India faced. We saw cities and villages that could easily be classed as underdeveloped and poor. We saw the enormous challenges posed by a rapidly growing population and the many divisions India faced across the different regions we visited. But we also noticed the enormous progress India had made in the first half-century of its freedom. The miracle of a billion strong democracy was worthy of applause. Our blossoming higher education system, even then, was a modern day success story. The judiciary kept our national spine erect. And yet, as we looked ahead, in our fiftieth year of Independence, it was clear that our national task was far from complete.
Ten years down the line, in its sixtieth year of Independence, the ‘paradox of positivism’ remains. Headline growth rates, the acquisition of international companies by Indian companies, a leading IT service sector, a climbing sensex, astronomical rise in property prices and a growing entrepreneurial culture all reflect India’s growing prosperity. But the paradox should remind us of the dangers of national hubris. The average per capita income even now remains barely above that of Africa. Large parts of India suffer enormous power shortages; our corruption index fails to decline, our infrastructure continues to be patchy, and our institutions are still immature. Yet certain sections of India seem to have declared victory in just the first few stops of this national journey.
The Yatra explored, and my book argues that while we have to applaud past success, we have to prepare ourselves for a national journey that has just begun. Another twenty to thirty years of forward movement is required before we can call ourselves a truly developed nation. During our own twenty-two-day journey we recognized that we have to be brave, be willing to take risks, build institutions in order to succeed but, above all, have the courage to be original. In an era where computers, networks, bio-technology, agri-business, environmental issues are re-shaping the global developmental agenda, copying an industrial developmental model is a poor recipe for success. Each leg of the journey brought out such themes - whether it was the developmental models discovered in Tilonia, our discussions around China during the visit to Bodh Gaya, the focus on institution-building in Jamshedpur, or the cultural debate in Aurangabad. These themes were brought to life by the participants who led these discussions, and brought their perspectives from different parts of India. As I recall our discussions, I find those themes still fresh and surprisingly relevant to India today. Perhaps this should not come as a surprise. These discussions took place amongst the young of India, the future of our country. Then and now.
But the relevance of these discussions now extends beyond India. As globalization and technology have made India more visible, so has it offered us a historic opportunity to contribute. In an India where, the pursuit of knowledge is equated with the pursuit of wealth and happiness, its ideas have new meaning. As large parts of the world are beginning to suffer from the first signs of an ‘industrial hangover’, can India bring in a new developmental perspective? The developmental path we saw being taken by some of the original Indians we visited during the journey is bearing fruit ten years down the line. These social, economic and even cultural entrepreneurs are using an original approach to build new institutions, a new India. The emphasis on sustainability and environment, empowerment of locals, a strong service ethos, grassroots entrepreneurship, offer new modes of thought and action. Can these developmental models show a different path to others? The spirituality and knowledge mindset of India combined with the bustling confidence of a 1.1 billion strong democracy can reshape the global debate on development. Another yatra, planned for early 2008 will be a poetic milestone to mark this new era of change.
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