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The Magazine for Growing Companies A 9.9 Media Publication | inc.com Facebook.com/Inc @inc March 2013 | 150 | Volume 04 | Issue 02 THE WAY I WORK THE RIDE OF A LIFETIME Page 56 BUSINESS LESSONS FROM INDIAN MYTHOLOGY, COURTESY DEVDUTT PATTANAIK, ASHWIN SANGHI AND R. PILLAI PAGE 36 Epic Gyaan Hitendra Chaturvedi, founder, RLC, wants to save $14 billion worth of defective and returned goods from going to the scrap heap. RAVINDER RAO FOUNDER ARUNJYOTI ENTERPRISES on what it took to build the No. 1 company on our list of India's fastest growing, midsize firms Page 44 A Smart Pre-launchTrick Page 51 NEW RESEARCH What Your Employees Want Most Page 20
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Page 1: Inc. India March 2013

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A 9.9 Media Publication | inc.com Facebook.com/Inc @incMarch 2013 | 150 | Volume 04 | Issue 02

THE WAY I WORK

THE RIDE OF A LIFETIME

Page 56

BUSINESS LESSONS FROM INDIAN MYTHOLOGY, COURTESY DEVDUTT PATTANAIK, ASHWIN SANGHI AND R. PILLAI PAGE 36

EpicGyaan

Hitendra Chaturvedi, founder, RLC, wants to save $14 billion worth of defective and returned goods from going to the scrap heap.

RAVINDER RAO FOUNDER

ARUNJYOTI ENTERPRISES

on what it took to build the

No. 1 company on our list of

India's fastest growing,

midsize firms

Page 44

A Smart Pre-launch Trick Page 51

NEW RESEARCH

What Your Employees Want Most

Page 20

Page 2: Inc. India March 2013
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Always On The Go Hitendra Chaturvedi of RLC travels 20 days a month to meet clients, investors and people at his company’s 15 offices across India.

on the coverHitendra Chaturvedi, founder, Reverse Logistics Company. Photograph by Subhojit Paul. Design by Anil VK. Imaging by Peterson PJ

56 The Way I Work Hitendra Chaturvedi, founder of Reverse Logistics Company, does not want his company to be a congregation of “yes men”. He is not afraid to admit what he does not know and likes to hire people who can challenge him. as told to sonal khetarpal

44How I Did It Inc. India 500, 2012:The No. 1 Company How P. Ravinder Rao grew Arunjyoti Enterprises, which owns the Taaza brand of convenience stores, at an astounding 1,231 per cent. as told to sonal khetarpal

36The Chants of Success Three bestselling authors on what entrepreneurs can learn from India’s ancient epics, mythologies and other texts. as told to ira swasti

THIs edITIon of InC. magazIne is published under license from mansueto Ventures LLC, new York, new York. editorial items appearing on pages 20, 22, 29-30 and 34 were all originally published in the United states edition of Inc. magazine and are the copyright property of mansueto Ventures, LLC, which reserves all rights. Copyright © 2009 and 2010 mansueto Ventures, LLC. The following are trademarks of mansueto Ventures, LLC: Inc., Inc. 500.

60 I Wish I Knew Then... C.V. Subramanyam, chairman and MD of Cigniti Technologies, has learnt two key business lessons while building his IT busi-ness. One, don’t spread yourself too thin. Second, make sure you decentralise power in a business. as told to sonal khetarpal

CONTeNTS March 2013

2 | INC. | maRCH 2013

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10 Editor’s Letter

12 Behind the Scenes Martial arts, Chinese monks and a grand stage—companies that brought these three together for the spectacular The Legend of Kung Fu show

15 Launch A toast to the 2012 Inc. India 500 honourees your company has a brand name. great! Do you? The Inc. Data bank: What employees really want A Skimmer’s guide to Tipping Sacred Cows, by Jake breeden

12

29 The Goods business-friendly tablets Testing out backup batteries Online customer service tools Tech Trends: New ways to swap

contact information, by John brandon Web-based services for

acclimatising new recruits

26

22 Get Real By Jason Fried How building a business is like pruning an apple tree

24 Innovation A device worn as a watch, but works like a smartphone

26 All Things PeopleBy Hari TN Why you need your managers to be entrepreneurs, and what to look for when you hire them.

29

CONTeNTS March 2013

STRATeGy51 mARKeTING How a new detergent company created a market for itself—even before its launch.

15

4 | INC. | maRCH 2013

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1. Place of publication Nine Dot Nine Mediaworx Pvt. Ltd. A-262, Defence Colony, New Delhi-110 024

2. Periodicity of its publication Monthly

3. Printer’s name Anuradha Das Mathur Nationality Indian (a) Whether a citizen of India? Yes (b) If a foreigner, the country of origin N.A. Address A-262, Defence Colony, New Delhi-110 024

4. Publisher’s name Anuradha Das Mathur Nationality Indian (a) Whether a citizen of India? Yes (b) If a foreigner, the country of origin N.A. Address A-262, Defence Colony, New Delhi-110 024

5. Editor’s name Anuradha Das Mathur Nationality Indian (a) Whether a citizen of India? Yes (b) If a foreigner, the country of origin N.A. Address A-262, Defence Colony, New Delhi-110 024

6. Names and addresses of individuals who own the newspaper and partners or shareholders holding more than one per cent of the total capital

Pramath Raj Sinha N-154 Panchsheel Park, New Delhi 110 017

Vikas Gupta C-5/10 Safdarjung Development Area, New Delhi 110 016

Asheesh Kumar Gupta 103, Tower II, The Palms, South City-1, Gurgaon 122 001

Anuradha Das Mathur C-144, Sarvodaya Enclave, New Delhi 110 017

Kanak Ranjan Ghosh BH-44, Sector II, Salt Lake City, Kolkata 700 091

Helion Venture Partners India II, LLCLes Cascades Building, Edith Cavell Street, Port Louis, Mauritius

TVS Shriram Growth Fund IJE JayaLakshmi Estate #29, Haddows Road, Nungambakkam, Chennai 600 006

And others.

I, Anuradha Das Mathur, hereby declare that the particulars given above are true to the best of my knowledge and belief.

Form IVStatement of ownership and other particulars about the publication INC. as per Rule 8.

Dated: 1st March, 2012Sd/-

Signature of Publisher

peRSoNal pRoduCtIvIty

A Better To-Do List Inc.com columnist Minda Zetlin shares a few tips on making a dent in your dreaded to-do list.

1. Get moving. Don’t let the things with the most immediate deadlines dominate your workday. Consider which tasks will best advance you toward your most important goals.

2. Set your priorities. Decide on the three most important things for the day. Make time for such items, even if other things are pressing.

3. Remove the inessentials. Cut the bottom. Simply eliminating the bottom 20 per cent of your to-do list, on the reasonable assumption that those items aren’t of crucial importance, can help you focus on more pressing items.

the beSt of Inc.com

ContentsInc.com

8 | Inc. | MARCH 2013

Page 11: Inc. India March 2013

The warmth of insightfulcustomer engagement.

The precision ofmarketing analytics.

We use insights from customer data to drive response, build customer value and profitable relationships.We have delivered improved ROI for many of India’s most valuable companies, for over two decades.

Better argeting Higher Impact Greater esponse Increased Brand EquityT R More Loyal Customers

Maximizing returns on marketing investments

www.direxions.comBuilding Profitable Customer Relationships

More precision marketing insights @ www.cartesianconsulting.com Contact: [email protected] | +91 (22) 30163665

Page 12: Inc. India March 2013

about people, their businesses, and ideas I would’ve never thought possible. Despite the constant learning, for me, few issues have been as full of business insights as this one, thanks to the fascinating cover story by Ira Swasti. In The Chants of Success on page 36, three popular authors—Devdutt Pattanaik, Radhakrishnan Pillai and Ashwin Sanghi—whose books are based on ancient Indian texts or inspired from our rich mythology tell us how our cultural heri-tage and belief systems shape the way we approach business.

There is a wealth of wisdom in this feature, including why businesses in India are “relationship” and not “process driven”; why our workplaces are more inclusive but also more chaotic, and why as a culture we do not strive for excellence enough. This is powerful gyaan for anybody. But, for entrepre-neurs looking to establish practices and values that are both sustainable and productive it is gold.

In this age of fast-changing realities, business builders know that simply force-fitting Western models of management on Indian situations is neither advisable nor likely to work. Equally, it’s important to be conscious of the pos-sible traps Indian companies are culturally attuned to stumble into.

It’s only fitting that we put this package together in this month as we get ready to award and celebrate the honourees of the Inc. India 500, 2012 (our annual ranking of India’s fastest-growing enterprises under ̀ 1,500 crore). We hope a look into our shared past will help propel their growth stories of the future.

Undoubtedly, what I value most about editing Inc. India is how much I get to learn everyday—

Of Gyaan and Growth

Shreyasi [email protected]

MANAGING DIRECTOR: Dr Pramath raj SinhaPRINTER & PublIshER: anuraDha DaS mathur

EditOrialMANAGING EDITOR: ShreyaSi SinghAssIsTANT EDITOR: Sonal KhetarPalfEATuRE wRITER: ira SwaSti

dESiGnsR. CREATIvE DIRECTOR: jayan K narayanansR. ART DIRECTOR: anil VKAssOCIATE ART DIRECTORs: atul DeShmuKh & anil tsR. vIsuAlIsERs: manaV SachDeV & ShoKeen SaifivIsuAlIsER: nV BaijusR. DEsIGNERs: raj KiShore VermaShigil narayanan & hariDaS BalanDEsIGNERs: charu DwiVeDi, PeterSon Pj miDhun mohan & PraDeeP g nair

MarCOMDEsIGNER: rahul BaBu

StUdiOChIEf PhOTOGRAPhER: SuBhojit PaulsR. PhOTOGRAPhER: jiten ganDhi

COMMUnity tEaMAssIsTANT PRODuCT MANAGER: rajat guPta

SalES & MarkEtinGsENIOR vICE PREsIDENT:KriShna Kumar (+91 98102 06034)busINEss DEvElOPMENT MANAGER: arjun Sawhney (+91 95822 20507)AssIsTANT REGIONAl MANAGER (sOuTh & wEsT):rajeSh KanDari (+91 98111 40424)

PrOdUCtiOn & lOGiStiCSsR GENERAl MANAGER (OPERATIONs):ShiVShanKar m hiremathMANAGER OPERATIONs: raKeSh uPaDhyay AssT MANAGER (lOGIsTICs): Vijay menon ExECuTIvE lOGIsTICs: nileSh ShiraVaDeKarPRODuCTION ExECuTIvE: VilaS mhatre

lOGiStiCSmP Singh, mohD. anSari

OFFiCE addrESSnine Dot nine meDiaworx PVt ltDa-262, Defence colony, new Delhi–110 024

for any querieS, PleaSe contact uS at [email protected]

PuBliSheD, PrinteD anD owneD Bynine Dot nine meDiaworx PriVate limiteD.PuBliSheD anD PrinteD on their Behalf By anuraDha DaS mathur. PuBliSheD at a-262, Defence colony, new Delhi–110 024PrinteD at tara art PrinterS PVt ltD.a-46-47, Sector-5, noiDa (u.P.) 201301EDITOR: anuraDha DaS mathur

EditOr’S lEttEr

10 | inC. | march 2013

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Posters The visually stunning, larger-than-life posters of the show have been printed by Shree Sai Advertising and Marketing, a Noida-based company, founded by Sanjay Gupta in 2007. Manufactured in the dimensions of 60 x 6 feet and 15 x 8 feet, Shree Sai’s posters of the show bring alive the stunning choreography of the Chinese monks. The 20-people firm also designs and prints advertising material like signages and hoardings for companies such as Yamaha and Honda.

BEHIND THE SCENES Companies at the Heart of Everyday Life

Digital marketingThe onus of bringing throngs to Nautanki Mahal, Kingdom of Dreams for the show, The Legend of Kung Fu was on the Noida-based digital media company, Iffort. Started by Daksh Sharma and Sunny Jindal in 2010, this 20-people firm took the show to a whole new digital level with the integration of a booking tab on Facebook, and the I Am The Legend Of Kung Fu contest. Iffort has earlier worked on promoting Groupon’s LOLympics, Wrangler’s True Wanderers and Fever Entertainment’s Ben 10 live shows.

12 | INC. | MARCH 2013

Page 15: Inc. India March 2013

Air conditioning Optimum temperature and proper ventilation is a must at any indoor event. The central air conditioning system at the Kingdom of Dreams is installed by Sterling and Wilson. Essentially an electrical contracting company, the family business, that was started in 1927, is now headed by Khurshed Daruvala. With more than 2,200 employees, this `1,500-crore company has worked for giants like Tata Group, Citibank, Dell and Intel.

Stage show organiserThe company credited for bringing this internationally renowned Chinese martial arts and cultural show to India is Arya Carnivals. Founded by Deepak Bahl in 2012, the company has purchased exclusive rights for five years from Beijing-based performing arts company, China Heaven Creation for the show. The company’s 18-people team was responsible for the lodging and transportation of the 55 artists and kung fu practitioners to India.

30.01.2013 6 p.M.The Legend of Kung Fu

pHOTOGrApH COurTESY KINgDoM oF DrEAMS rEpOrTED BY SoNAL KHETArPAL

Page 16: Inc. India March 2013

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Page 17: Inc. India March 2013

launch News. Ideas. People.

MARCH 2013 | Inc. | 15

March is a special month for the team at Inc. India as we all come together to celebrate the growth powered success of India’s fastest-growing mid-size companies—better known as the Inc. India 500, 2012 class.

These awards are part of the fourth edition of our annual rankings—our concerted effort to recognise and encourage entrepreneurial successes from the mid-size segment of corporate India which often fails to get its deserved attention. For these rankings, the chosen companies were picked independently by our research team from its in-house database along with companies that registered through an online campaign launched in February 2012. For more details of the ranking methodology, please see box (on next page).

Unsurprisingly, this ranking squarely mirrored the three distinct characteristics of the current economy—diversity, transition and slowdown. And each of these characteristics is visible in the sectoral break-up, the nature of business

and the award Goes to…

The Inc. India 500 class of 2012

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a skimmer’s

guide to the latest business

books

The book: The Top 10 Distinc-tions Between Entrepreneurs And Employees, by Keith cam-eron smith.

The big idea: Do you behave like a high-performing employee even as you run a business? successful entrepre-neurs know how to embrace their personal and professional failures to make them their most empowering learning experiences, unlike employees at the workplace.

The backstory: smith is an entrepreneur and an inspira-tional speaker. his last book, The Top 10 Distinctions Between Millionaires And The Middle Class, is about the mindset of self-made millionaires and the habits that anyone can master to become one.

If you read nothing else: secret 9 removes some of the fear and stigmas attached with failure. By relating the experi-ence of a business failure he went through—from blaming his partner to fully accepting responsibility for it—the author manages to convince you of the merits of failure. secret 6 lays down an essential management technique to motivate employ-ees—praise, correct and then praise again.

Rigour rating: 7 (1=Who moved my cheese?; 10=Good to Great). The Top 10 Distinctions Between Entrepreneurs And Employees is a quick guide on how to change attitudes to make it big in the business world. though the author does not provide any life altering advice, his usage of personal experiences makes it an easy read for aspiring as well as thriving entrepreneurs to relate to and learn from. —I.S.

16 | Inc. | MARCH 2013

that these companies have embraced and their performance from April 1, 2007 to March 31, 2011.

Taking top spot in our sectoral ranking was the food and beverage sector that raced up to the Inc. India 500 charts for the first time since we began our rankings in 2009. Another big change—from a combined growth rate of 143 per cent in 2010, the combined growth rate of our 500 honourees in the 2012 edition was a modest 41 per cent. Also, even as 124 companies from last year’s ranking continued to be on the list, this year’s ranking saw 376 debutantes, including our top company, Arunjyoti Enterprises, for

RANKING METHODOLOGYWe assessed inde-pendent Indian companies with sales turnover (posi-tive sales growth for the last three years) between `50 crore and `1,500 crore. If the company be-longed to a group, the group did not exceed `1,500 crore, as of FY 2010-11.

AverAge growth rAte (%) oF the iNC. iNDiA 500 hoNourees

top 10 seCtors: seCtorAl shAre iN iNC. iNDiA 500 (%)

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instance. It’s the fastest-growing company on our list with a whopping 1,231 per cent growth rate over the past three years (and this month’s How I Did It). Yet, many of our readers might not have even heard of this `79-crore company that owns Taaza, the grocery retail chain in southern India. Go to page 44 to read P. Ravinder Rao’s exciting journey, and his ambitious plans for the future. He isn’t alone in weaving a future full of promise and grand plans. As we chronicle 500 stories of growth each year, we’ve seen that to be a winner requires focus, vision and determination. Yes, sometimes the risks might not work, as is evident from the constantly changing mix of companies in our list. But, it is this vibrancy that makes tracking these companies both exciting and rewarding. —Inc. India

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launch

18 | Inc. | MARCH 2013

Q: Why is it important for an entrepreneur to build a personal brand if she already has a strong company brand?a: In this age, people have access to a lot of information. They want to know who the person behind the organisation is, and how her values and passions drive the business. So, an entrepreneur needs to be a brand in herself and be able to say—this is who I am, this is what I believe in, and this is how I embed my ethos and values into the organ-isation. Brands like Coca Cola or Reebok survived without their owners having popu-lar brands because they were from a different era. Today, you can’t imagine Facebook without Mark Zuckerberg or Apple without Steve Jobs.

Q: What does personal branding entail? a: A personal brand is the value an entrepre-neur adds to society or to the business. It is not as much about knowing how to dress or talk as it is about discovering what you’re really good at, and what drives you as a per-son. To help entrepreneurs discover that, I ask them questions such as—what are the three most important values in your life that you would not betray at gun point? Or, what’s the one thing you would do even if you were not paid for it, or what keeps you awake in the middle of the night? Knowing is not enough though. You need to communicate your unique skill or ability, which could be a passion for writing, a sport or anything else that makes you “you”—to other people. Some personal branding communication strategies include webinars, attending events where you

share your success as well as failure stories, and mentor new start-ups in your domain.

Q: What’s the difference between your per-sonal brand and the company brand?a: Ideally, nothing. Your company should really echo your values and ethics as an entre-preneur. Only then you will be able to grow the organisation with the vision you had in mind. But simply put, an entrepreneur’s per-sonal brand is about who she is, what she believes in, what are her goals and vision while an organisation is a much bigger entity which stems from the entrepreneur’s vision. For instance, one of the most revered entre-preneurs in India, Mr. Nandan Nilekani, has built such a powerful brand that he now rep-resents the futurist face of brand India via the UID initiative. It is the power of his personal brand and repute which has bestowed him with the honour of leading India towards a tech-empowered tomorrow. This is the true celebration of his personal brand, his legacy. 

Q: Why do you say personal brand is about reputation and not image?a: Reputation extends from your perfor-mance. It’s the experience people have in mind after working with you. On the other hand, the concept of image is an impression that you wish to create on your target group’s mind. Now, this may or may not be authen-tic. This is what you want people to think about you. Just by walking well, speaking well, you will be creating an image which may be misleading for your own brand and may do more harm than good to your credibility.

Q: Should your personal brand ever become more powerful than your company’s brand? a: Why not! There are three important rea-sons for that. First, people connect with peo-ple more than they connect with organisations. Second, your personal brand establishes credibility via your interactions with people, and once that happens, your brand becomes a force to be reckoned with. And third, it creates a promise of consistency in your performance which goes beyond your company. Your personal brand is the only legacy that will go with you, if you decide to start something new again. It is why people will invest in you again, after you’ve proven your style and work ethics. For instance, Bill Gates is Bill Gates even though he’s not a part of Microsoft anymore.

Q: What do you need to build a personal brand?a: The most important thing an entrepre-neur needs to know to start building her brand are the three Cs—clarity, consistency and constancy. Clarity in what makes your brand unique. A clear and focused brand promise is the secret of a good personal brand. Consistency in communicating your brand’s promise is the next step. You have to be consistently visible and available for your audience to reach out to you and connect with you. In personal branding, the adage out of sight is out of mind is very true. And con-stancy means you have to deliver your brand’s promise every single time, preferably exceed people’s expectations while doing that.

That’s Brandtastic!

Why your personal brand is the soul of your businessBrand strategist Tanvi Bhatt started Panache, a Mumbai-based personal branding stu-dio, in November 2007 to groom corporate honchos of India Inc. In these five years, she has authored several articles on personal branding and worked with clients such as the Times Group, Blue Star India and Angel Broking. In a conversation with Inc. India’s Ira Swasti, Bhatt delves deeper into why building a company’s brand is not enough for entre-preneurs; and why they need a strong personal brand to create a “brandtastic” experi-ence for their customers.

Tanvi Bhatt Brand strategist

Page 21: Inc. India March 2013
Page 22: Inc. India March 2013

The book: Tipping Sacred Cows: Kick the Bad Work Habits That Masquerade as Virtues, by Jake Breeden.

The big idea: Leaders pride themselves on traits such as creativity and passion. But unquestioned virtues curdle into vices when pursued relentlessly or in the wrong contexts.

The backstory: Breeden is on the faculty of Duke University’s executive education program and consults for corporations including Google and IBm.

If you read nothing else: Each chapter corresponds to a par-ticular leadership trait. so take a look in the mirror and choose accordingly. obsessed with innovation? chapter Four asks whether your creative energy can be better applied else-where, such as improving existing products. crazy for collaboration? chapter three points out that most people work better alone. so resist forming teams—or at least make them temporary.

Don’t “Just Do It”: Passion becomes destructive when leaders subvert other values, burn out their workers, or dismiss ideas that counter their beliefs, says Breeden. or when that passion stems from inse-curities. he suggests passionate leaders ask themselves, “Am I trying to prove something to myself or someone else?”

Rigor rating: 7 (1=Who Moved My Cheese?; 10=Good to Great). Breeden trots out plentiful research results. But, like many consultants concerned with client privacy, he rarely reveals which companies or leaders his anecdotes describe. —Leigh Buchanan

inc. data bank What makes employees unhappyThe sluggish economy has kept employees from jumping ship, but a big chunk of the American work force appears disgruntled. One recent report suggests that 86 per cent of employees plan to look for a new job in 2013, up from 60 per cent in 2009. Here’s a look at what’s making workers unhappy—and what they really want. —Matthew Wong

here’s the gooD News Most employees are “completely satisfied” with some aspects of their jobs.

the bAD News The list of top complaints suggests the past few years have taken a toll on workers in a number of ways.

Portion of employees who are “dissatisfied” with these aspects of work:

MeNmorE moNEY: 45%A PromotIoN: 39%

woMeNrEDUcED hoUrs: 51%FLExIBLE hoUrs: 50%

What they want most from employers tends to vary, depending on age and gender.

But experts say real job satisfaction is more than benefits or perks.

oN-thE-JoB strEss: 33%

thEIr co-WorKErs: 69%

hEALth BENEFIts: 31%

sALArY: 28%

AmoUNt oF vAcAtIoN tImE: 54%

thEIr Boss: 54%

Free beverAges

18%

Free MAssAges

8%

A tAblet or sMArtphoNe For

persoNAl use17%

In addition to basic benefits, employees asked for some perks.

“of all the things that contribute to a happy workday, the one thing that stands out from my research is making progress on mean-ingful work. Feeling like you are able to move forward on a daily basis engenders real joy.”TeReSa M. aMaBIle hArvArD BUsINEss schooL ProFEssor AND co-AUthor oF THE ProGrESS PrInCIPLE

All percentages represent the portion of hr managers who received these requests. soUrcE: 2012 hr BEAtsoUrcE: GALLUP

MilleNNiAls (ages 32 and younger)

morE trAINING: 40%

geN-Xers (ages 33 to 50)

A hIGhEr JoB tItLE: 49%

a skimmer’s

guide to the latest business

books

2 0 | Inc. | MARCH 2013

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Page 23: Inc. India March 2013
Page 24: Inc. India March 2013

Back in July, I wrote about our efforts to bring more focus and discipline to 37signals by parting ways with some of our older products. We were so committed to eliminating nonessential offerings that we decided to sell a service that was generat-ing $17,000 a month in profit. “We’re a small com-pany with a small team,” I wrote, “and we have to use our resources wisely.”

Today, we’re about to launch two products. Both of them are significant departures from the way we usually do things. And we have a bunch of more ideas in the pipeline.

Whatever happened to that newfound emphasis on focus? Was that a mistake? Did I change my mind?

Let me explain—by telling you about my apple trees. I live in Chicago but own some property up in Wisconsin. There’s an old stone farmhouse, a couple of barns, some majestic oaks, rolling prairie, a river, and a few apple trees.

I’ve been trying to learn how to properly prune them. The trees are handsome and healthy, but if you don’t pay atten-tion, they can grow unwieldy and succumb to a variety of ail-ments. There are any number of reasons to prune a tree. You might do it to make it look prettier. Or you might trim one area in order to favour other limbs. It could be to cut away disease or to prevent a new disease from taking root. It could be to get the tree to generate more fruit.

So I’m regularly taking a saw or shears to my apple trees. Sometimes, when I’m done, I step back and am not necessarily pleased with what I see. In fact, a freshly pruned apple tree can be a sad sight, looking thinner and weaker than it did before you started. But that’s an illusion.

In almost every case, cutting things back is a way of favouring what is left. You help the tree flourish by picking the winners. What’s more, pruning opens up new opportunities for your tree.

When Good Ideas Bear Fruit How is a business like an apple tree? Sharpen your pruning shears and find out

Light gets in where it couldn’t before. Air circulates better. And new growth appears. If you did the pruning right, you’ve given your tree a stronger foundation for the future.

Now, back to my business. A few months after cutting back our product line, something unexpected happened: We sprouted some new ideas. During a discussion about one of our products, a couple of ideas suddenly emerged for new ones. I can’t go into specifics just yet, but one is a variation on an existing product, and the other is entirely new, something we’ve never offered. We’re finishing them up right now and are pretty excited.

I am convinced that these ideas never would have emerged had we shied away from cutting some of our old items. Or, to put it in more arboreal terms—as a business, you won’t grow strong new limbs if you don’t prune the old ones.

In fact, I believe that a healthy company is like a healthy tree: Well-developed roots (your vision), a strong trunk (your peo-ple), and vibrant leaves (your products) work together to convert the sun (revenue) into energy (profits).

Hokey? Perhaps. But I often find inspiration in nature. Besides, it’s high time we entrepreneurs stop using those hack-neyed sports and military metaphors. But that’s a topic for another day.

Follow Jason Fried on Twitter: @jasonfried.

Get Real BY JaSon FRIedJason Fried is co-founder of 37signals, a Chicago-based software company. He prefers Braeburns.

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innovation Companies on the Cutting Edge

“It integrates as an artificial limb of the user, providing the benefits of a fully

connected computer.” — Pavneet Singh Puri, co-founder, Androidly

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Composition The display screen has two buttons on both sides.

The SIM card is placed underneath the battery.

It comes with an in-built USB connector.

The Android OS has been optimised for the watch’s 2-inch screen.

Features• Full access to Google Play Store • Weight: 160 gm• Dimensions: 6.4 × 4.2 × 1.45 mm• Processor: 416 MHz• Memory: 256 MB RAM• Removable storage: 8 GB SD included. Up to 16 GB SD• Screen: 2 inch, Capacitive Touch screen with 320 × 240 resolution• Connectivity: Bluetooth 2.0, WiFi B/G• Cellular: 2 GSM network • Camera: 2 megapixel

a smart wrist Simply put, Androidly is a phone miniaturised to the size of a conventional wristwatch. The quartet of amateur tech geeks who developed it—Apurva Sukant, Ankit Pradhan, Pavneet Singh Puri and Siddhant Vats—claim it is the smallest and the lightest smart phone in the world. And, that it allows a consumer to do everything they had been doing with their smart phone on a funky watch. The beginnings of the idea emerged over a casual dinner when Pavneet Singh Puri couldn’t retrieve his phone from his pocket and check his work e-mail because his hands were dripping with curry. It set the four friends thinking about why gadgets needed to be picked up and put down, and why gadgets require both hands to function. It was the proverbial Eureka moment. Now, the smart watch is ready for a market launch. Open source evangelists that they are, the Androidly team has released all their hardware design and software code under unrestricted licenses, hoping that this may serve as the base for future innovations. Till then, gadget geeks can call in some delight by pre-ordering an Androidly—available in all colours—on the company website. Price: $229-269

androidly androidly Smart Watch

PHOTOGRAPH BY SUBHoJit PaUL RePORTeD BY SonaL kHetarPaL

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All Things PeoPleBY hARi TnHari TN is the global head of human resources at Amba Research, a Bangalore-based investment research outsourcing firm.

Start-ups usually depend upon spotting an opportunity and finding a profitable way of exploiting it. Simple as it may sound, this calls for a rare blend of risk taking, action orienta-tion and clear thinking. It sounds almost intuitive that firms attempting to build new businesses need managers with precisely these traits. Firms that are in a high growth phase, irrespective of size, also require man-agers with these traits. It is therefore extremely important to hire the right managers—what we call, “entrepreneurial managers”, all of whom exhibit the below traits.

1. They can make the right things happen: In other words, your team members should have the capacity to determine what is right, make it happen, and make it happen quickly. It is helpful to note that all the three ingredi-ents are crucial. Even if one of the three ele-ments is missing, it could result in a fatal handicap that will gradually begin to show. People who can think very clearly, and often strategically, but without the aptitude or abil-ity to make things happen would soon fail. Similarly, enthusiastic doers that can’t think clearly (or in very simple terms do not know what to “do”) suffer from the curse of well executed, but sometimes random pursuits. Determining what is right calls for an ability to think clearly. In a managerial context, thinking clearly invariably boils down to dif-ferentiating the few things that matter from the many things that don’t. Having the confi-dence to steadfastly ignore inconsequential

Are you hiring right? high-growth firms need to build a cadre of “entrepreneur managers”

They are unable to let go of marginal factors. Further, entrepreneurial managers also rec-ognise that “speed” is always of essence. They always demonstrate a sense of urgency, turn around things quickly, take quick decisions and respond quickly to new developments. Often, speed is also a surrogate for energy. You can’t energise unless you have energy yourself. People who set a high pace around them at the work place usually engender a

issues and refuse to be distracted is an incred-ibly powerful trait. Plus, those that think clearly always ask smart questions—ques-tions that can help make a choice, extract the most important issues in a given situation, evoke insight and help get to the root cause. This is different from conventional intelli-gence. I have seen many conventionally intel-ligent people struggle to cut through the smoke and noise to get to the key problems.

2 6 | INC. | march 2013 illustration by shigil narayanan

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ALL THINGS PEOPLE

high pace and a sense of urgency. Of course, they make mistakes once in a while, but don’t get dragged down by these mistakes. Those that come in close contact with such indi-viduals feel inspired to take more risks. There-fore, energy is often contagious.

2. They invariably achieve a perfect balance between delegating and being hands-on Achieving this fine balance reflects several underlying cognitive and execution capabili-ties of a good manager. It is common to find senior managers who go to extremes, and extremes are dangerous. What does an ability to achieve this balance indicate? One, it shows that the manager is capable of being hands on and knows what her team is doing. Second, it shows that the manager can prioritise well and understands her real role is to add value by doing things that she is supposed to be doing and not by doing things that her team is supposed to be doing. She will step in to help the team if there is a crisis or if the team has reached a dead-end, in terms of thinking or execution. She will deep dive only to help the team come out of the crisis, or cross the hump to begin cruising again. Average managers take pride in being too hands on or often have an incorrect under-standing of what and how to delegate. When they delegate, they often a) do not clearly communicate what is expected or b) do not have the rigour to periodically review whether things are on track or c) are unable to customise the extent of delegation based on who they are delegating to.

3. They nurture insightful conversations One of the most powerful drivers at a work-place is the collective ability of the leadership to have candid conversations. Strong teams demonstrate this ability. Weak teams avoid conflict, skirt difficult issues, bring them up

obliquely and end up politicising them. Issues therefore never get resolved. They fester underneath. In strong leadership teams whenever differences arise between two indi-viduals or there is a problem (say customer dissatisfaction), the two individuals con-

cerned (say the head of sales and the head of customer service) would discuss the issue transparently with an intention of fixing it, rather than worrying unduly about where the fault lies. In weak leadership teams, the head of sales and the head of customer service would run a whisper campaign to put the blame on each other. Candid conversations are easy to under-stand, but what are insightful conversations? Insightful conversations are those that often result in “aha’” moments. Great managers always have stories to tell or teachable points to share. They encourage their teams to develop (and share) points of view on a wide range of issues. They realise the power of insightful conversations and create an envi-ronment that nurtures such conversations. Through these conversations, they help create clarity and cut through the clutter that obfus-cates and consumes attention.

Management writers have underplayed, and underestimated, the power of simplicity. The ability to simplify is a terrific strength and can provide an edge. There is often a ten-dency to come up with complex programs, and complex strategies, because that is much easier than simple programmes and strate-gies. Simplifying calls for identifying the core issues and making the right approximation. There is a famous saying by Albert Einstein— “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted”. The simplifiers are those that under-stand what counts in most situations and design their solutions around these. There

can be simplicity in process design, in think-ing about cause and effect, or in establishing the key drivers in any given situation. Simplic-ity comes about only through clarity. And clarity quotient in a team can be enhanced multifold by a manager who can nurture insightful conversations and, in the process, encourage everyone to develop teachable points of view.

4. They don’t hesitate to express them-selves, and demonstrate their opinionGreat managers invariably express them-selves. They can do that in several ways: a) when they like something, they say so and when they don’t like something they say so too b) by demonstrating through walking the talk. Behaviour in a team is driven less by a lecture from the manager on what her beliefs are than by appropriate strokes (positive or negative) when actions are in line or out of line with those beliefs. For instance, if a man-ager believes that good execution is critical, she could enhance the quality of execution in the team significantly by pointing out instances of good and bad execution with inputs on what should have been done differ-ently in cases of bad execution and demon-strating good execution herself in every situation. Great managers can provide some hard feedback in the morning and follow it up the same evening with a friendly chat over a cup of coffee. Average managers do not feel confident expressing dissatisfaction when they do not like something either because they do not have the skills to express dis-satisfaction at a behaviour or outcome with-out this rubbing off on the overall relationship with the individual or simply feel uncomfortable in doing this. Whatever the underlying reason, it does not engender high performance.

It is not always easy to figure out with a 100 per cent reliability whether someone would demonstrate these traits through a ninety minute interview, but if you know what to look for, you are starting with a huge advantage and there is a much greater prob-ability that you will pick the right candidate.

great managers always have stories to tell, or teachable points to share. They encourage their teams to develop points of view.

2 8 | INC. | march 2013

Contact Hari TN at [email protected].

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Acer IconIA W700 Our top pick, this Windows 8 tablet, which can run desktop versions of Microsoft Office programs, functions much like a laptop. The tablet has a sharp 11.6-inch, 1920- by 1080-pixel display and a speedy Intel Core i5 dual-core processor. It also has front- and rear-facing cameras, as do the other tablets here. During our test, it booted in 10 seconds, and the battery lasted nine hours. On the downside, the 2.1-pound tablet is a bit hefty and has a smaller app selection than do Apple or Android models. cost: $999 for a 128GB solid-state storage drive

iPAd fourth generAtIon The sleek 1.4-pound iPad, which runs on Apple’s iOS platform, offers the best selection of business-friendly apps in our test group, including a full-featured version of Square’s mobile cash register. The tablet’s 2048- by 1536-pixel Retina display, which measures 9.7 inches, was crisp and colourful, topping the other models here. Powered by Apple’s A6X processor, it booted up in 20 seconds during our test, and the battery lasted a respectable eight hours on a full charge. cost: $499 for 16GB of storage

google nexus 10A nice travelling companion, this 1.3-pound Android 4.2 tablet comes loaded with Google Now, an app that auto-matically serves up meeting reminders, flight details and other timely information. Its 10-inch, 2560- by 1600-pixel display looked crystal clear during our test. The Nexus, which is made by Samsung, also includes a near-field-communication chip for transmitting data with a tap. Powered by an Exynos 5 dual-core processor, it booted in 19 seconds. One gripe: The battery lasts only seven hours. cost: $399 for 16GB of storage

surfAce WIth WIndoWs rt Much like the Acer, this 10.6-inch Windows RT tablet features Microsoft’s new tile-based start screen and has a limited selection of business apps. The 1.5-pound Surface offers mobile versions of Office programs, but they are not designed for use by businesses. Powered by a quad-core processor, the Surface booted in 26 seconds, the slowest time among our group. During our test, its 1366- by 768-pixel display looked a bit washed out. The battery lasts eight hours. cost: $499 for 32GB of storage

Your Business Toolbox the goods

tablets Are ready for Business Which one should you pick?for years, tablets have been touted as the Next Big Thing in consumer electronics. Finally, there are several models suitable for serious business use. We tested four tablets, running four different operating systems, to see how they stack up. —John Brandon

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GO MOBIlE

An app that allows location-based advertising on your cellphone

Power in Your Pocket Putting backup batteries to the testAs many people learnt during Hurricane Sandy, a low-battery warning on your smart-phone can be panic inducing when you’re in a power outage or simply away from an outlet. Rechargeable battery packs can help by adding hours of juice. Here are three options to consider. —Adam Baer

2.hYPerJuIce 2 externAl BAtterY Powered by lithium-ion cellsThis 1.5-pound external battery can simultaneously power a MacBook and any two USB devices, including tablets. The device, which measures 8 inches by 4.8 inches, contains military-grade lithium-ion cells that last for about 1,000 recharges. During our test, it added 15 hours of battery life to a MacBook and extended the iPad’s battery for more than 24 hours. It took about four hours to juice up the battery, which can then fully recharge an iPhone up to 19 times. One caveat: To charge a MacBook, you must use Apple’s MagSafe Airline Adapter, which costs $49. cost: $300

1.solIo clAssIc2 BAtterY PAck + solAr chArger Powered by the sun

This 10.1-ounce solar battery can power any USB device. To power it up, spread out the panels and angle them toward the sun on a flat surface, preferably outdoors. During our test, it took about 10 hours to charge the Solio on a sunny patio in Southern California. The smartphone-size device fully charged an iPhone 4S in 1.5 hours and charged an iPad 4’s battery from 20 per cent to 40 per cent in about 90 minutes. You can also charge the battery, which lasts for about 500 cycles, in roughly six hours using an included USB cable. cost: $100

3.eton BoostturBIne2000 Powered by hand crankThe 7-ounce Boost, which is roughly the size of a smartphone, has a turbine and retractable crank that you can turn to generate power. During our test, it took one minute of crank-ing, at roughly one turn a second, to create enough juice for 30 seconds of talk time on an iPhone 4S—enough for an emergency call. It would take about three hours of cranking to fully charge a phone. But you can also charge the Boost with an included USB cable and use it as a regular battery that fully powers most smartphones in about two and a half hours (sorry, no tablets). The device lasts for about 300 recharges. cost: $60

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the goods Products + Services

Developed by Pune-based Shaunak Khire in 2011, Adlibir-ium is a mobile app that helps small and mid-size businesses, that can’t afford to build com-pany websites, to advertise through mobile-based web-pages instead. For creation of ads, the user can either down-load the app on a smart phone and follow the steps, or use the SMS service to get an auto-matic graphic ad created based on the inputs.

On signing up with the plat-form, the app creates a mobile-optimised page for the company on its online mer-chant website called enter-prises.me, and guarantees to the point of refund 10,000 to 15,000 ad views in the compa-ny’s local area. It also claims to ensure 50-70 clicks for a prod-uct business and two to five leads for a services business, each month. The app allows a business to sell and track store cards, loyalty subscriptions as well as take basic orders from its customers. It also gives users reports on sales, clicks and views.

On the other end of the busi-ness spectrum, it lets custom-ers pay at venue, pay on delivery or through a credit card. This location-based advertising app is currently in its beta version and is priced at $500 a year. —I.S.

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hElP DESK

A holistic approach to customer service

These days, customer commu-nication comes in many forms, including phone calls, e-mails, and tweets. Whatever the medium, online customer ser-vice platforms make it easier to field and respond to questions and complaints. here are two to consider. —J.B.

ZendeskWhen a customer makes contact via phone, e-mail, chat, discussion board, Twitter, or Facebook, Zendesk automati-cally creates a ticket and places it in one central inbox. Multiple employees can access the inbox and respond directly to customers on various plat-forms. A dashboard features charts and graphs illustrating customer satisfaction ratings and other metrics. Zendesk, which has apps for a variety of mobile devices, supports 11 languages. cost: Starting at $20 a year for three users, then $29 a month per user

sAlesforce desk.com Much like Zendesk, this service creates a universal inbox for comments from a variety of platforms. It also routes tickets to specific employees according to expertise and availability. On the platform, you can create a database of common responses and include photos and videos. Desk.com, which supports 35 languages, has an iPhone app and works in most mobile browsers. cost: Free for one user, then $49 a month for each additional user or $1 an hour per user

It doesn’t matter how big or small the threat is, there are consequences (busi-ness reputation, legal charges, loss of competitive edge, and other unforeseen damages) of any level of breach of your company’s secured data. Unless you run a completely offline business, chances are that you have a fair amount of interaction with the web, which is rapidly becoming the top infection point for all sorts of security vulnerabilities. But fret not. Here are a few basics to safe-guard your data. —Jayesh Shinde, thinkdigit.com.

Is Your Business safe?

keeping your data protected all the time

secure Your netWork And connectIons While working from home, how do you ensure that you connect securely to your office server for an urgently required file? Vir-tual Private Networks or VPNs is the answer, think of it as your very own pri-vate, completely secure tunnel through the inter-net. Windows 7 has a built-in VPN feature which you can explore (just type “VPN” in the Start Menu field) to hook up two com-puters. You can also check out third-party solutions such as OpenVPN or hamachi which are free and easy-to-setup.

don’t Ignore encrYPtIon Make data encryption part of your work policy, whether you have two or 20 employees. Every com-puter that has business data on it should be encrypted at the hardware and software level to ensure that even if a lap-top is stolen or lost, the data on it is always encrypted and impossible to recover. Tools that let you do this are TrueCrypt, an open source favourite, and Windows’ own Bit-locker utility. Both of them are used to securely encrypt entire hard drive volumes, with or without hardware encryption.

onlIne BAckuPs Are crItIcAlIt’s important to backup your data at short, fixed intervals before disaster strikes. Cloud-based ser-vices provide a cheaper alternative to do this. While there’s nothing wrong in services such as Dropbox.com and Norton-zone.com, we recommend investing in a dedicated service that offers sup-port. You could check out SpiderOak and SOS Online Backup service—the for-mer encrypts and never deletes your data, and the latter offers incremental backup and syncing of data from PCs and attached network drives.

the goods Products + Services

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the goods Products + Services

tech trends john brandon new Ways to make contact Business card alternatives

WElCOMING COMMITTEE

looking for a better way to acclimate hires? here’s the skinny on two web-based services that use games and social networking to streamline the process—and make it fun.

Welcome neW hIres This service sends an e-mail to newbies directing them to an online welcome page with personal greetings and advice from colleagues. On their first day, employees log on to play basic trivia games about the company’s history, culture, and products. Man-agers can customise content and track employee prog-ress. cost: Starting at 50 cents per employee

AllABoArdA more robust option, AllAboard lets new hires log on to view company videos and slide shows and earn prizes by answering trivia questions. Much like Welcome New hires, it lets new employees see how they rank on a leaderboard and chat in discussion forums. Managers can log on to view detailed reports on their progress. Unlike Welcome New hires, the service has apps for Android tablets and the iPad. cost: $30 per employee —Jennifer Alsever

When I hand out business cards at trade shows and other events, I always wonder if they’ll end up on the bottom of someone’s bag—or, worse, in the trash. Over the years, I’ve tried several smartphone apps designed to exchange contact information, but many of them work only if both people have the software installed. Recently, I tried out two promising alternatives, near-field communication and QR codes, at the L.A. Auto Show.

Near-field communication, which now comes standard on some high-end smartphones, makes it possible to transmit contact information and other data by tapping another device, card, or tag containing an NFC chip. I tested it using Vizibility’s NFC Mobile Wallet Card, which looks like a plastic business card and contains an NFC chip and a QR code. To create my card, I went to the Vizibility site, typed in my contact details, and chose a design with a stock logo (you can also upload your own logo). I signed up for the premium Metrics Pack, which costs $5 a month, or $49 a year, and includes an NFC card, which was mailed to me, and the ability to track activity online. For an extra $15, I also purchased 240 QR code stickers to slap on my old-school business cards, making it possible for people to scan the code with a smartphone app and instantly upload my information.

As I wandered the aisles of the auto show, I came across a company rep with an NFC-enabled smartphone. Uploading my contact information was a cinch: He opened the Android Beam feature and tapped his phone

to my card. But, of the three dozen people I talked to throughout the rest of the day, only one had an NFC-enabled phone. In fact, most people had never heard of the technology. I had more luck with my QR

code. About a dozen auto-show attendees I approached had QR scanning apps on their phones, which allowed them to pull up my virtual business card. Some people were too busy to grab their phones, so I gave them paper cards with my code. After the show, I logged on to Vizibility.com and saw that another dozen people had scanned the code. Not bad! Unfortunately, I could not see their names or contact details, only their locations.

My verdict? Near-field communication is promising, but it may take another year or two for it to catch on as more phones with NFC chips hit the market. I was more impressed with QR codes. Now, I can rest easier knowing my contact information is safely stored in the phones of the people I meet, just a tap away.

neAr-fIeld communIcAtIonhOW IT WORKS: You can transmit contact information by tapping together two products containing NFC chips.

AVAIlABlE ON: Many high-end smartphones, including Androids and BlackBerrys, as well as stickers, tags, and business cards with built-in NFC chips

Qr codeshOW ThEY WORK: People can scan QR codes with a wide array of mobile apps to access your contact information.

AVAIlABlE ON: Business cards, stickers, and mobile apps

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3 6 | INC. | march 2013

the chants of

successBy Ira SwaStI

Design by praDeep g nair

authors Devdutt pattanaik, ashwin sanghi and radhakrishnan pillai reveal business

secrets from our ancient texts

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march 2013 | INC. | 3 7

Ancient Indian texts and epics are a treasure trove of wisdom on the way we live, how we approach work and life, and the influences that make us uniquely Indian. Sadly, these texts haven’t found much attention as an area of study in context of

modern business—how have they moulded the way we run our companies, and manage our teams? Or, shaped our views on profit, branding and leadership?

In this special feature story, we’ve attempted to bring together three best-selling authors—Devdutt Pattanaik, Radhakrishnan Pillai and Ashwin Sanghi—each of whom have unlocked the secrets of mythological and historical Indian gems such as the Ramayana, Mahabharata and Kautilya’s Arthashastra, and revealed them to be prized management handbooks relevant even today.

In the course of this story, we’ve discovered fascinating insights into the innate traits and cultural inclinations that have defined business and entrepreneurs in India. Take what Ashwin Sanghi, author of The Krishna Key, and an entrepreneur himself, points out, for example. Sanghi says the concept of balance between Lakshmi and Saraswati, or money and wisdom, continues to be a cornerstone of management philosophy in India. It’s this balancing principle that has helped the country’s knowledge economy take-off, he says. Or, author Radhakrishnan Pillai’s insight on how the New York Stock Exchange has a bull on its entrance, and the Bombay Stock Exchange, Goddess Lakshmi. “For them, wealth is an animal. For us, it’s a Goddess.”

Read on to find out other pearls of wisdom, identify the cultural roadblocks that stop Indian businesses, and learn from the leadership principles of great sages such as Ved Vyas, Valmiki and Chanakya.

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3 8 | INC. | march 2013 mUraL painTing by shigiL narayanan

the chants of success

Mythology Mantras

DevDutt PattaNaIk

Renowned mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik believes that the western model of doing business may not serve well in India because it operates in a different context, socially, economically, politically and psychologically.

The Indian way of business is highly individualistic, emotional and relationship-driven, he says. In his latest book, Business Sutra (soon to

be launched), Pattanaik attempts to show how the “Indian” way of doing business—as apparent in Indian mythology, but no longer seen in practice—accommodates subjectivity and diversity, and offers an

inclusive, more empathetic way of achieving success. Here, he reiterates how such an approach to business leads to greater success.

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the chants of success

MAntrA 1

The importance of relationships

In India, you cannot expect to get results in business without developing relation-

ships. While an average American busi-nessman would rely more on planning and processes, an average Indian businessman relies more on intuition and relationships. While the Western model can be short-sighted (look at environmental issues) and stripped of emotion (because of profession-alism), the Indian model can be chaotic (lack of planning) and filled with irrational decisions (due to favouritism). The good thing is: the Western model creates a sense of order but demands compliance and alignment. Likewise, the Indian model gives a lot of creative freedom and an emo-tional springboard to employees in an organisation. The western model does not give great value to emotional and intellec-tual growth; what matters is economic growth and skills to enable that. The Indian model on the other hand, can create eco-nomic growth through emotional and intellectual growth, if the leader drives it.

MAntrA 2

Inclusiveness: welcoming

but inefficient

Being inclusive of all people in an organ-isation can create a sense of belonging

among employees, but it could also lead to inefficiency, if not managed properly. I believe inclusiveness is a result of the faith in the concept of rebirth in India. When you believe you live only once, your purpose in life is to do the right thing; there is no room for another way. The value of your life is the sum total of your achievements in this life. On the other hand, when you believe you live many lives then you know that the value of your life, no matter what you do, is zero because the denominator of your existence is zero. The point of life then becomes to

allow introspection and strive for under-standing. It makes people more inclusive than exclusive. Subsequently, it makes organisations more diverse as they allow all kinds of beliefs to thrive, even those that discomfort them. But , this comes at a price: when everyone is included and all ways of functioning accepted, a workplace can end up being very inefficient.

MAntrA 3

Approach business as a ranga-bhoomi, not a rana-bhoomi

The word rana-bhoomi signifies a bat-tlefield. In the contemporary business

world, all organisations function like a battlefield; modern management is, in fact,

Dr Devdutt Pattanaik is an author, illustrator and speaker who has penned down 25 books on the relevance of mythology in leadership, entrepre-neurship, branding and governance. he also runs two popular TV shows business sutra and shas-traarth on similar lines, and serves as the chief belief officer at the Future group.

inspired by military strategies. So, we "com-pete" and "fight to win" and seek to "grab" market share. The whole approach to busi-ness is violent; the whole point is to win, stand on top of the list of market capitalisa-tion, and grow at any cost to the satisfaction of the insatiable shareholder. Is that good? Does that mean we are still animals, or even worse—eternally hungry and paranoid, never content, and mocking those who sleep in the shade after eating their fill?

Entrepreneurs should instead create their company into a ranga-bhoomi which means a playground where affection domi-nates the enterprise (notice how we chuckle at the idea—it's because we have bought in the myth of the ruthless enterprise and the dog-eat-dog world). Yet, there is a possibil-ity to create an ecosystem where we grow by enabling others to grow emotionally and intellectually. This eventually leads to everybody growing materially.

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the chants of success

Chanakya

NeetiDr raDhakrIShNaN PIllaI

Author and academic Dr Radhakrishnan Pillai believes

the principles of Chanakya, one of India’s greatest leaders, can help

train today’s entrepreneurs to manage people and businesses

better. According to Pillai, Indians are born entrepreneurs who had

traditionally been engaged in trade for centuries. But, the series of

invasions India witnessed have brought in both a sense of

mediocrity and a job-seeking culture. Yet, he says, even today

most Indians would ideally like to start their own ventures. So, what

makes Indians entrepreneurial? Dr Pillai ventures a few answers.

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neeti 1

The ability to adapt is essential for sustainability

It is a well-known fact that the flexibility to change with the changing needs of the

business and the environment is the secret to a long lasting business. And the good news is that Indians have a natural ability to do this. How else would Wipro have moved from being a dalda company to become an IT giant? Or Mahindra and Mahindra which was traditionally an automobile company diversified into fields like finance, software and tourism? If Indian companies were not adaptive to the changing times, they would have been washed away when the markets opened in 1991.

But it’s not just important to adapt to environmental changes in business, but to

neeti 2

The power of goodwill

Indian entrepreneurs believe a lot in good-will, referrals and word of mouth publicity.

If you look at Indian family-run businesses, expenditure on marketing and branding is very low as compared to the west. In fact, you’ll find several thousand crore businesses that don’t even have a website in our country. They just don’t feel the need to do business that way. A lot of business transactions here are carried out over simple, verbal commitments based on trust. If an Indian entrepreneur says she’ll deliver a business worth `1crore and she doesn’t, she loses her credibility in the market forever. Having said that, if an entrepreneur wants to build a global company, word of mouth marketing will only be the first step and she will have to use other forms of market-ing to establish the business internationally.

neeti 3

Great leaders seek excellence

If you look back at history, India used to be a land of prosperity and good gover-

nance. However, many centuries of foreign invasions have made us content with mediocrity. Think about it. In a nation of 1.2 billion people, there are only a handful of world-class, globally competitive busi-nessmen. Moreover, most Indian compa-nies are used to copying trends from the west. Why aren’t there enough trendsetters among us? Is it because we’ve always been taught to be content with what we have? We are happy being successful. We don’t aim for excellence, or to be world leaders. Indian entrepreneurs need to emerge from this mindset. They should seek to become leaders. As the saying goes—“You never win a silver medal, you always lose a gold medal." Indians need to learn to never accept the number two position and search for only the gold.

Dr radhakrishnan Pillai is the founder director of the chanakya institute of public Leadership, a training school that aims to create a new breed of public leaders by teaching them management principles of india’s ancient leadership guru chanakya. he has also authored Corporate Chanakya, a bestselling book that has been translated into 10 regional languages, made into an audio book and a training film.

people needs as well. For instance, in family-run businesses in India, if the father or mother is running the business, the son or the daugh-ter slowly changes the business to make it more professional, and adapts it to the next generation. I think the reason we are so good at this is because we have grown up with a lot of diversity in our living environment. India is a country that is hundreds of countries put together. We deal with numerous people from different states speaking different languages on a daily basis. Interacting with such diversity has taught us the power of adjustment and adaptability quite well.

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the chants of success

Karmic VersesaShwIN SaNghI

Even though Ashwin Sanghi’s books are historical thrillers based on Indian epics, his entrepreneurial experience has helped him connect

the dots between their ancient wisdom and modern day business practices. Sanghi believes that the notion of karma—that our past

life’s actions have a bearing on our present life and our present actions impact our next life—makes Indian managers more resilient

to setbacks in business. There is a feeling of this too shall pass that overtakes to deal with losses better. Conversely, this same notion

could make them complacent and resigned to their “fate” or “destiny”. Here, Sanghi highlights three other spiritual beliefs that

could shape the way entrepreneurs approach business in India.

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march 2013 | INC. | 4 3

the chants of success

Verse 1

Balance wisdom and wealth

The concept of a balance between Lak-shmi and Saraswati—or money and

wisdom—continues to be a cornerstone of Indian management philosophy. That same balance is apparent even in the Mahab-harata—when Krishna asks Arjuna and Duryodhana to choose between him and his army before the war—in effect, a choice between strategic intelligence and material possessions. Essentially, he was offering his wisdom as a strategic thinker and a war strategist, or his army. This is probably one

of the most beautiful aspects of Indian man-agement where knowledge and wealth cre-ation are given equal importance. This is partly why we have a flourishing economy in times of a capital crunch right now. Unlike the west, this is not a conscious choice for us. The buzz now is a new concept of building the knowledge economy along with focus-ing on private equity and capital. But India has always known and practised this. I don’t think the IT sector boom would have hap-pened if we hadn’t put a premium on knowl-edge. Nor would have India's knowledge economy taken off as it did. So we don't need to relearn that concept. We've always placed an equal premium on both.

Verse 2

Look at the big picture

There was a lot of scepticism when Google adopted its informal corporate motto—

don’t be evil. People said it was foolish. I don’t know whether Google is living up to its motto or not, but I have to say that there is a very philosophical and karmic context to it ; one that other corporates also must embrace. The notion of karma says there is a system of checks and balances, that there is life after death, and that every action has an opposite

It was inheritance that made ashwin sanghi an entrepreneur but passion that made him a fiction writer. managing director of the mK sanghi group of companies that has interests in real estate, automobile distribution, industrial gases and turnkey engineering projects, sanghi has authored three bestsellers till date—The Rozabal Line, Chanakya’s Chant and The Krishna Key.

and equal reaction. If you believe in karma, it essentially means that there is a massive personal computer somewhere that is ensuring that every action in our life is recorded and the corresponding effect of that will be given to you in this life or the next. Most corporates tend to forget these checks and balances while doing business. They forget that their short-sighted actions today could have implications on their tomorrow. For instance, if an organisation uses natural resources in a way that is harm-ful to the environment, it may be good for the organisation’s balance sheet for now but eventually the company will have to deal with the environmental consequences along with the rest of the world. Somewhere I believe, this philosophy of don't be evil has been lost in the business world.

Verse 3

Focus on the real

The 5 Vs of ancient wisdom—the Vedas, Valmiki, Vyasa, Vishnugupta and

Vivekananda—have guided our inherent belief system. The notion that our bodies are not permanent, that we came with nothing and will leave with nothing, and that change is the only constant are ingrained in us. Yet these fundamental lessons have been lost in business somewhere along the way. We have forgotten the notion that everything is an illusion or the concept of maya. Very often, what you see in an organisation is not real. Figuring out what is real and what is illusory is as much of a challenge for corporates as it is for the sages and seers of our age. Several years ago, a finance professional said to me—any idiot can read the balance sheet but deci-phering what is going on behind the balance sheet is where the true challenge lies. In that sense, the balance sheet is the Indian notion of maya, which tells you the profits last year, the ROI, the amount of tax paid but the real economics and politics behind the balance sheet is the "reality". If we were to understand this age old principle, our organisations will be much better managed.

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4 4 | INC. | march 2013

It isn’t surprising that P. Ravinder Rao found his entrepreneurial calling in an agriculture–related business. Growing up, Rao was enamoured by farmers. It’s a match that is clearly leading to great wins, both for him and Arunjyoti Enterprises, the Hyderabad-based com-pany he acquired in 2008. Arunjyoti Enterprises owns and operates the Taaza brand of con-venient stores, popular in south India. Over the past five years, Rao has led the company to great harvests of growth, including a CAGR of 1,231 per cent over the last three years. His next bumper yield—a ̀ 200-crore annual turnover, Rao claims.

Because I was born and brought up in Karim-nagar, a small agricultural town in Andhra Pradesh, I have always been fascinated by farmers. Growing up with them, I saw how they toiled throughout the day in the fields. It’s from them that I first learnt about hard work, dedication and devotion to one’s work.

Influenced that I was by agriculture, I decided to take a combination of zoology, botany and chemistry as key subjects for my graduation from Osmania University, Andhra Pradesh. I graduated in 1996, and began working in Sin-gareni Collieries Company taking care of their industrial relations. In 2000, I left my job so that I could start my own consultancy practice. I would essentially advice and help agriculture-based businesses. I also helped my brother in his agricultural marketing company, Manisha

Agri Biotech. It was during this time that I got in close contact with Pabbathi Subramanian, a family friend. He was a visionary man, and I learnt a lot from him. He became a tremendous pillar of support. He saw the potential in me and motivated me to move beyond consul-tancy, and start my own business. My elder brother was also extremely encouraging.

Luckily, at that time, our CA came to us with the offer to buy the Kolkata-based Arunjyoti Enter-prises. It was being offered for sale at a very rea-sonable cost. Plus, buying an existing company seemed a smarter idea to me than to start from a completely empty slate. Incorporating a new company is a challenging, time-consuming pro-cess. Buoyed by everyone’s faith in my abilities, I bought the company in 2008 with my own per-sonal savings and a loan from my family.

As toLd to soNAL khetArpAL / Photographs by a. Prabhakar rao

HOW I DID IT

Tapping Opportunities

Polsani ravinder rao arunjyoti Enterprises

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Growing PresenceRavinder Rao wants to break in to the unorganised retail market of vegetable sellers and local kirana stores, and add 1,000 more Taaza neighbourhood outlets in the next six years.

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HOW I DID IT

Arunjyoti was a finance company dealing in investments but I was keen on following in my brother and my mentor’s footsteps. I too wanted to start trading in agri-based products. More specifically, I was extremely interested in the supply chain of agri-based products, i.e. sourcing products directly from farmers and providing it to the end user for consumption. So, we started buying agricultural products like bio-pesticides, bio-fertilisers, agri-based chemicals and farming equipment from manufacturing companies and supplying them to farmers. This decision served us well, and in the first year itself we reaped a turnover of `40 crore.

the same year, we also set up our first organised retail outlet under the brand name Taaza, in Hyderabad. We wanted to break in to the unorganised retail seg-ment of vegetable sellers and the local kirana stores and capture that market by establishing Taaza as a leading neigh-bourhood retail store for fruits, vegeta-bles, grocery and FMCG products where customers can buy good quality products and get value for money.

however, we could not grow our retail seg-ment as planned. Due to the unfavourable image of the retail industry in 2008, the banks refused to give us any loan for expan-sion. We had to set up retail outlets from the internal accruals of the company and an additional personal investment of `2 crore. That slowed the pace of our retail business. To boost the overall growth of the com-pany, we concentrated on the trading verti-cal of our business. We worked on expanding our distribution network con-siderably and in the second year, we grew our business to `70 crore.

As we were growing, we ensured our plans for growth of our business were clearly delineated. For the retail segment, we had come up with a kirana model—opening up convenience stores in the interiors of resi-dential complexes to cater to the household needs of that neighbourhood. The key advantage of such a strategy is the low rent in residential areas as compared to com-

mercial complexes. This considerably reduces our overhead operating expenses for stores making our business model sus-tainable in the long run.

Also, we wanted to expand the range of products and services offered at our stores. In order to do so, we introduced our own branded range of FMCG products last year. We also began providing value-added ser-vices like bill payment (electricity, water, household tax bills) services, mobile recharge, buying of air, train and bus tickets and even tour packages. To retain our cus-tomer base, we formed a loyalty pro-gramme where each customer gets extra points when shopping with the Taaza Gate-way Card, and can avail periodical offers and price discounts.

even though we did not add any major retail outlets in the last few years, we have got a great response from our current five outlets. Due to the small number of stores, we do not have the economies of scale advantage as yet. However, to grow our cus-tomer base and brand recognition, we have

started marketing the Taaza brand through door-to-door marketing. We have realised it is the best way to establish brand presence and build personal relations with the people in the store’s vicinity. It helps us to understand their requirements and address the existing problems regarding the availability of merchandise and its quality. We also advertise extensively through pamphlets in newspapers.

Going forward, we intend to open one out-let for every 2,000 households in Hyder-abad and Secunderabad in the next two years. We are specifically looking at open-ing captive stores in high-rise buildings where there are a cluster of 600-800 house-holds. This is to meet our larger plan to open 1,000 outlets all over India in the next six years. Once we have a considerable number of outlets, we will be providing Taaza vans which will deliver FMCG items including fruits and vegetables at the con-sumer’s doorstep. We are looking at these evolving models and working very hard for a substantial growth in the retail segment in the next year.

the diversifying Game merely growing Taaza is not enough for ravinder rao. he is intent on adding more segments to arunjyoti’s trading platter.

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the path to optimisation

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The best kind of optimisation plan is the one that helps you reach your unique business goals. To get you on your way, Honeywell has created Attune Advisory Services, a complete suite of building

management and cloudbased services designed to continuously improve energy and operational efficiencies at your facility. We’ll make observations, process the information and give you the recommendations you need to help improve energy and operational performance. Plus, it’s the only program providing access to our worldwide team of experts. When you need an energy management plan that is comprehensive, customisable and ready to grow with your business, you’re going to want Attune Advisory Services.

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© 2013 Honeywell International Inc. All rights reserved.

Page 50: Inc. India March 2013

HOW I DID IT

For now, we want to concentrate on opening company-owned retail stores only. Next year onwards, we will consider the franchise model for opening our branches. Once our brand presence is established at one particular location, it will then help us to get a better value for our franchise stores. We are also planning to leverage on corporate farming. We intend to provide the owners of big plots of land all the infrastructure and neces-sary products for farming and then divide the profit on the produce with them on a profit sharing basis.

Apart from growing our current verti-cals, we are also adding more segments in Arunjyoti. Our main consideration is to add value to all the stakeholders. But,

“Door-to door marketing is the best way to establish brand presence and build personal relations with customers.”

things on that end haven’t always gone according to script. For example, last year, we started dealing in computers and peripherals. But, we hadn’t esti-mated the market response correctly. We couldn’t sell fast enough. As a result, our inventory started stacking up. It locked up our capital. In any case, this was a very low profit margin game. Our foray into computers led to considerable losses, and we eventually discontinued our operations. It was a tough time.

In contrast, the newly added division in trading—building materials (mostly cement and steel)—is doing very well. In a span of one year, we already have orders worth `200 crore from various infrastructure compa-nies to supply cement and steel to them. By end of this fiscal, we are expecting a turn-over of around `150 crore just from this venture. With the new verticals and the many new plans for development, the next two years look exciting and we are looking forward to crossing many milestones.

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strategy Tactics. Trends. Best Practices.

MarketingPre-sales soaped up!How a detergent company readied customers before launch

Introducing a new product in an existing prod-uct category is an exercise in giving answers, especially to that one question that comes up each time a potential customer is approached—why should I buy the product? Krya Consumer Products, a Chennai-based manufacturer of natural, eco-friendly detergents founded by husband-wife duo Preethi Sukumaran and Srinivas Krishnaswamy, didn’t want to get boxed in by the questions when they went out to sell their new reetha-based cleanser. So, before the company launched its product in May 2011, they created a blog and a Facebook page to answer the persistent questions they knew would undoubtedly come up.

Having worked as brand managers in inter-national FMCG companies before turning entrepreneurs with Krya, Sukumaran and Krishnaswamy had strong instincts about how to approach a market. Although they were confident an environmentally sustainable option for a household detergent had a good market in urban centres, they realised that since it was a new concept, they needed to prepare their potential cus-tomers beforehand.

So, in December 2010, when the duo was still working on sourcing raw materials and logistics to kickstart their manufac-turing, they started a blog and a Facebook page to create aware-ness about the different ways of sustainable city living. Instead of

“Having worked in international FMCG firms for

eight years, we knew how many harmful products went

into everyday products.”

social Media Champs Krya founders created tremendous buzz around their products using a blog and a Facebook page.

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strategy

sustainable Living Sukumaran and Krishnaswamy used social media to create awareness about the bigger goal of their venture—sustainable living in an urban city.

without incurring a lot of costs—including discussions such as how to optimise detergent use, judiciously using washing machines, or treating hard water to wash clothes. Several of these discussion threads were actually initiated by readers themselves, Krya claims.

Obviously, an online community as engaged as this has also pro-vided a great feedback platform when it comes to product develop-ment. It’s certainly reduced Sukumaran and Krishnaswamy’s need to travel extensively, and helped them gain insights from across India. Only half in jest, Krishnaswamy admits their community also does a great job of motivating and pushing them. In fact, the latest question doing the rounds in the company’s community is—what next? What else does Krya have in store for its loyal followers? Lots, if the founders

the product itself, a majority of the print space on their blog was dedicated to other ways of living a sustainable life in a city. For instance, they wrote on a variety of issues such as composting at home, creating eco-friendly business cards, using green alternatives for mosquito repellants, and fabricating baby sustainable diapers.

For them, it was important to clearly define what they stood for as a brand which was the bigger goal of their venture—sustainable liv-ing. “The idea was to define the problem first, and then to introduce the solution. With the blog and the Facebook page, we had set the context for bringing out a new detergent in the market and to give people a reason to buy it,” explains Krishnaswamy.

Of course, the blog also gave them a great opportunity to drum up excitement for the product. The two posted regular sneak peeks into the product’s progress. For example, they took the blog’s readers through the journey of how the packaging evolved, from the reusable and recyclable cardboard material used to package the product to sourcing the raw material of the detergent from organic polyculture farms in Andhra Pradesh. Even as this approach gave them a chance to talk about how the company lived out its mission in every small way, Krishnaswamy says it also helped educate and inform environ-ment-conscious customers.

“Adding value to the user, through not just the product, but creating awareness about other ways of sustainable living is more important to a consumer than internal company milestones,” he says. Most companies get this wrong by putting company-spe-cific news and events on their marketing collaterals which really holds little meaning to an outsider.

When the product was finally launched in May 2011, the duo already had a customer base ready to sell to. They say their blog aver-aged 7,000 page views per month last year. That com-bined with their not-so-big but deeply engaged community shored up sales numbers. In fact, just within a year, the aver-age sales of their eco-friendly detergent had reached one lakh units a month.

Expecting to see interest from only passionate envi-ronment-conscious individuals, the two were surprised to receive orders from people of all age-groups, genders and regions alike. “Now that everyone has an internet connection, we saw people from very remote areas such as Peechi, Dungarpur, San-gareddy and Uppinangady ordering the detergent from us. In fact, in some cases, courier services didn’t cater to these places and we had to send it by post,” says the IIM Bangalore graduate.

While the duo confess it’s difficult to say what would have happened if they had launched the product before creating an online community, Krishnaswamy is certain it would have taken much longer for people to understand and appreciate the point they were making and show the same enthusiasm to buy the product as they did now.

“add value to the user through your company blog instead of posting corporate milestones.”

Since the launch, the company’s online social activity has only increased as the team sends their products to other bloggers for reviewing and regularly contribute to other blogs and magazines that talk about sustain-able living. But building an online community has had another tangible business advantage. It has helped the founders understand their customers’ needs and interests much better

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strategy

in developing an old cleaner that could be used in different mod-ern day settings where consumers expect after sales services and use washing machines and hard water to wash cloth. And detergents were their clear choice of product to spearhead the environmental crusade. Not without ample reason either—deter-gents are used by everybody. They have been red flagged by the Environment Ministry to have caused extreme levels of air and water pollution. And they are a product that consumers don’t really put much thought into while buying as they would for per-sonal care products such as shampoos or face washes.

But it wasn’t until after a backpacking trip around the world for a year, that the duo realised that if the products had worked so well for them, they could help others too. “When you move from being an employee to an entrepreneur, you have to unlearn some lessons and learn fresh ones. We had been working in a large comfortable well-oiled machinery setup where everything was available through a single mail or phone call, with big budgets to work with,” Krishnaswamy says. “But as an entrepreneur, you need to learn to work efficiently on your own, on a startup budget and travelling was a great way to do that.” —Ira Swasti

are to be believed. Their next batch of eco-friendly products includes shampoos, face washes and moisturisers.

a Lather JourneySukumaran and Krishnaswamy had worked for eight years in Marico and Johnson & Johnson before quitting their jobs to start the venture in 2010, and in the process, they had seen the amount of harmful chemicals that went into making daily consumer products. “So for the past several years, we’d been experimenting with creating eco-friendly products such as shampoos, floor cleaners, dishwashing soaps and detergents for everyday use in our own house,” says Krishnaswamy, who prefers to take a bus instead of the car to go to work everyday. And they had been pretty successful too. By the end of 2009, they had developed workable products for their home by using a completely natural cleansing agent—soapberries, better known as reetha, and made their families switch to these eco-friendly products too.

The biggest innovation of their product however, did not lie in their using reetha (as reetha has been used for washing and clean-ing in India, China and other parts of Asia for centuries) as it did

advts.indd 56 12/22/2009 3:02:47 PM

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ask the expert

Dr Mahipal Sachdev Founder, Centre for Sight

Q: Centre for Sight is India’s second-largest ophthalmology chain with 44 centers across the country. We expect a turnover of more than ̀ 125 crore this fiscal. The company has successfully leveraged private cloud to achieve real-time multi-location, multi-business integration. We are now looking up to our IT team to further strengthen this initiative and make Centre for Sight a more resilient organisation. What solutions can I expect from my IT team when it comes to business intelligence, asset management and new-age disaster management?

A: There are many resilient and robust applications that are available on a cloud model including ERP, DW/BI and Disaster Recovery (DR). Disaster Recovery organisations can also look to deploying a public cloud, because they will not have to invest in trained manpower. As the DR datacenter can be owned by service providers to run these services, there will be no investment on the setting up of the DR datacenter. For the rest of the applications, the existing environment needs to be examined. If the current running applications have additional modules available, which are well tested and integrated for BI, CRM, SCM etc., they would enable easy integration. Many other standard applications are also available that can help get the datacenter upto speed on these aspects.

Ashish WattalNational Product Manager– UCS Cisco India & SAARC

ADVERTORIAL

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Next Gen UCS servers for Next Gen ComputingIn a series of interactive articles, Cisco will shed more light on its Unified Computing System (UCS), thereby enabling CIOs to better manage their IT infrastructure

How has Cisco made server I/O more powerful and

much simpler?Answer: One of the key differentia-tors of Cisco UCS (Unified Comput-ing System) with Intel® Xeon® processor is the way in which high-capacity server network access has been aggregated through Cisco Virtual Interface Cards and infused with built-in high performance virtual networking capabilities. In “pre-UCS” server system architectures, one of the main design considerations was the type and quantity of physi-cal network adapters required.

Networking, combined with comput-ing sockets/cores/frequency/cache, system memory, and local disk are historically the primary resources considered in the balancing act of cost, physical space and power consump-tion, all of which are manifested in the

various permutations of server designs required to cover the myriad of workloads most efficiently. Think of these as your four server subsystem food groups. Architec-ture purists will remind us that everything outside the processors and their cache falls into the category of “I/O” but let’s not get pedantic because that will mess up my food group analogy. 

In Cisco UCS, I/O is effectively taken off the table as a design worry because every server gets its full USRDA of net-working through the VIC: helping por-tions of bandwidth, rich with Fabric Extender technology vitamins that yield hundreds of Ethernet and FC adapt-ers through one physical device.

Gone are the days of hemming and haw-ing over how many mezz card slots your blade has or how many cards you’re going to need to feed that hungry stack of VM’s on your rack server.

This simplification changes things for the

better because it takes a lot of complication out of the equation.

There is also a need for higher processing power for bringing

new choices for design optimization. What is happening on this front?Answer: Cisco has been working hard making server networking better with improved and optimized efficiency.  With the advent and advance of multi-core pro-cessing, the workhorse two socket server has become a real performance monster. In fact, for some applications the amount processing power required, relative to the other food groups I mentioned in my previ-ous answer, is outstripped by the capabili-ties of the mainstream processor family, which in today’s incarnation is Intel’s Xeon E5 2600 series.

In response to this phenomenon, Intel subdivided the Xeon lineup to include a new “EN” class of processors, the E5-2400 series, which ease back on the gas pedal of Moore’s law for designs that don’t require as much processing power in relation to local storage and memory. This creates a new class of cost & performance optimized systems for lighter workloads or for stor-age heavy systems (think big data) at the entry end of the portfolio.

Three of our new UCS M3 series systems fall in this category:  the B22, C22 and C24.  At the same time, Intel has brought four socket server options, formerly the prov-ince of the mission critical, “EX” end of the spectrum, down into the mainstream.  An example of this is our new UCS B420 blade.  So if you want four socket core count and performance but don’t necessarily need the comprehensive RAS features of an EX class system, you now have a price/performance optimized solution for that need.

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Intel, the Intel logo, Xeon, and Xeon inside are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries

For any queries regarding UCS, please send them to [email protected]

Page 58: Inc. India March 2013

The Way I Work | hitendra Chaturvedi, rLC

I don’t have a title on my card. If people ask, I’m the Chief Troublemaker.”

Much like he enjoys revving up his Harley Davidson, Hitendra Chaturvedi enjoys accelerating the growth of Reverse Logistics Company (RLC), a company selling seconds products through their brand Green Dust. Running a business seemed an unlikely pit stop for somebody like Chaturvedi, who has worked at corporate giants such as Microsoft and Ernst & Young. Yet, it was Chaturvedi’s three year stint at the Texas-based reverse logistics company, Newgistics that changed the course of his career and led him to found RLC in 2008. Today, he’s happy with just five hours of sleep, and is using best practices from his previous companies to outfit RLC’s culture. A passionate and certified pilot and painter, Chaturvedi is now most focused on his new goal—of evolving from a manager to a leader.

as ToLd To sonaL kheTarpaL | PHoToGRAPHs bY subHojiT PAuL

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strategy

My day actually never ends. With e-mails synced to my phone, I can work anywhere at any hour. My car, my home is my office. Yet, I wouldn’t say I am a workaholic. Running your own company is like being on a vacation; you just never get tired. So, I sleep around 2am and wake up by 6.30am. After doing puja and downing my usual breakfast of cereal and fruits, I leave for office. I ride my Harley-Davidson to work, and by 7.30am I am in office. For the first half an hour at work, I don’t switch on my computer. I use the solitude to collect my thoughts, and make a note of whatever comes to my mind in my diary. By 9am, I have already replied to all my mails, made presentations, seen various reports from the day before and given feedback.

The seeker The harley-Davidson enthusiast who takes his ride to work says entrepreneurship taught him 90 times more than his 17-year corporate stint.

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strategysTraTegy

For some it is money, for others it can be recognition, competition or job security. Aligning their motivation with the company’s goals ensures everyone grows together with the company. This has to start right from the time of hiring them. I personally interview each and every employee of this company to be doubly sure that we hire the right people. I prefer to get those people on board who complement my skill set. Getting people exactly like you is the worst mistake an entrepreneur can make. It’s important for entre-preneurs to know what they don’t know and I hire the best from that domain. I do not want my company to be a congregation of yes men, people who nod their heads at everything I say. I want them to challenge me in the board room. I admire people who create their own identity, rather than follow others. I constantly engage with my staff and encourage them to communicate their ideas on projects and work processes. I do not sit in the ivory tower and give directions. I ensure I know exactly what is happening on the ground. If I don’t know something, someone will take advan-tage of that and it might lead to more office politics. I am totally against that. Often, I do surprise visits to our different offices to find out the real story.

eing a good manager is mostly about listening. In fact, listening is my most effective work habit. Of course, the challenge is in listening to everyone, and yet to be neutral. I try not to get swayed by anyone’s personal opinion or prejudice against a colleague. But it gets dif-ficult at times. It is then that I remind myself that it is not only an employee but also his or her family that is fed with the cheques I sign. I cannot let them get affected by making rash decisions because of an individual grudge. To be truly objective, especially when it comes to personnel decisions, I always stick to the facts. From the first day we began the company, we introduced an IT-based performance manage-

Beyond 9am, I don’t have a typical working day. I am on the road a lot. I travel 20 days a month to meet clients, investors or to visit our different offices. Wherever I am, I spend 60-70 per cent of my time managing the 500 people we have in our 15 offices in India. That people are the greatest asset of an organisation is a gyaan that a lot of successful entrepreneurs talk about. To be honest, I used to be very cynical about such corny statements. But, over the last five years, I’ve learnt that it’s actually very true. When you are running a company, you can predict most variables such as demand, supply, market reaction, but you can never really know how people react to different situations. A company is much like the popular television show Big Boss. People from different back-grounds and distinct personalities are brought together. The CEO or the founder is much like the Big Boss voice in the background which gives them tasks, guides them and resolves their frictions.

To make everyone work together and be joint to a purpose, I ensure each of my employee understands why Green Dust exists. There are two main reasons that excite me—one is that we are contributing to being green and sustainable. India has a return rate of 4 per cent, that is, products worth $14 billion get returned every year and they sit idle at the original equipment manufacturers’ (OEM) ware-house. RLC takes those defective, returned or unsold products from OEMs, repairs them, provides a year’s warranty, and sells those fac-tory seconds at a lesser price, thereby saving them from going to the scrap heap. By mak-ing them usable, we are helping the environ-ment. That, to me, is a cause worth battling for. What also motivates me is making aspira-tions come within the reach of the aam aadmi who is always stretching his rupee and might not buy a product at its market price, but can afford it at 25 per cent less. These are essentially the two reasons why RLC exists and I am trying to incorporate this in each employee. I have also got posters with the company’s vision, mission and values pasted all over our offices.

Beyond company vision, a good manager must understand what drives each person.

My company is not a congregation of yes men. I like

people to challenge me.

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strategysTraTegy

agement team, including the founder, Jeff Bezos is in the warehouses packing boxes to ship to customers. Such practices help to keep the organisational structure flat. I also do not have my designation printed on my business card. When people ask me, I just say, “I’m the Chief Troublemaker”. In spite of these efforts, the general mind-set in India tends to lean towards a lot of hierarchy. As a founder, everyone expects me to have answers for all their questions. Some-times, it does get lonely battling people’s expectations, and the com-pany’s challenges. I do wish I had a sounding board to discuss my dilemmas. In fact, I believe it’s probably wise to have a co-founder.

To beat the stress, I work out at the gym daily, seven days a week. My everyday routine of morning puja and exercise in the evening help me face the problems. I also get inspiration from the books I read. I particularly find this quote from Mark Twain very stimulat-ing, “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So, throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” But, the real motivation, I think, I draw from my own personality. I am my own worst critic. I am never satisfied with what I do and that pushes me to do better and better.

just keep on shifting forward but it’s only when you start enjoying these moments of happiness that the destination becomes really worth it. I remember how I would travel in an auto and live in bud-get hotels in the initial years of starting the company. Working for big names like Ernst & Young, AT Kearney and Microsoft, I was used to chauffeur-driven cars and five-star hotels. However, as a founder of a growing company, I gave it up. It was a different kind of life altogether.

The first five years of heading RLC has taught me 90 times more than my 17 years of work experience put together. I have also realised that when you are working for such established companies as Microsoft, you tend to become big-headed. It is because you are always acknowledged and treated well. What I didn’t realise then was that it was not me or my designation that appealed to people, it was the Microsoft brand. When I started RLC, I realised people don’t care about me as much. I decided that at RLC, I wanted my senior management team to be as grounded. So, every manager, whether it is the VP or the CFO, spends half a day every month at our call centre taking customer calls. It is important that they know what our customers are taking about and what is actually happen-ing on the ground. In Amazon, every Christmas, the entire man-

ment system. Every quarter, each employee self-assesses and is assessed by his or her reporting manager on the basis of certain key performance indicators. I normalise all the reports in a bell curve on the basis of top-10 per cent, mid-80 per cent and last-10 per cent employees. The top 10 per cent get all the promotions, raises and incentives. That way, all employees know their position in the company and can plan their career, accordingly. This allows for complete transparency and clarity in the appraisal process. I’ve picked this approach from my stints at Microsoft and AT Kearney. They had struc-tured their performance appraisal just like this.

I’ve been fortunate to work in some good compa-nies. So, I am always trying to bring in the best practices from my previous work places into my company’s cul-ture. I want RLC to be one of the best places to work in. It’s my aim that people should enjoy their work. For that, a light-hearted, healthy atmosphere is essential. I am proud our attrition rate is less than three per cent. Making people feel acknowledged is hugely necessary. I make it an effort to talk to my employees on a personal level, even if it is one sentence about the well being of their family, so that they know I notice and care. On people’s birthdays, marriage anniversaries or other spe-cial occasions, an e-mail is blasted out to the whole company. I message each of them personally. When we have office parties, festivals or other events, we plaster the whole office with photos from the event. I got this idea from Southwest Airlines in Dallas, USA when I did a management consulting project for them.

I have realised that celebrations, experiences and emotions is what we ultimately remember. Milestones

standing out Not having a brand like microsoft or Ernst & Young to back you can be humbling, chaturvedi says. To make sure his senior managers are grounded as the company grows, all of them spend half a day every month staffing the call centre.

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After successfully leading Balaji Transport, a leading transportation and logistics com-pany, C. V. Subramanyam made a surprising foray into the information technology business when he founded Cigniti Technologies in 1998. But, success eluded him for the first 10 years. It was only when his son, Srikanth Chakkilam returned from the US that the tide turned. Soon, the father-son duo transformed Cigniti into India’s largest independent software testing services company. Today, it has a revenue of more than `140 crore and over 500 employees. Yet, Subramanyam says wise entrepreneurs know that keeping their focus on one core area is the key to business success.

C.V. Subramanyam, chairman & MD, Cigniti Technologies

In 1998, I was already a successful busi-nessman when a friend introduced me to a American company that wanted a local partner to establish a joint venture in IT services. I knew nothing about technology but thanks to my partner Bill Taylor, the business grew well for the first few years. When he chose to retire in 2001, I decided to continue on my own, and expanded the business into software services and soft-ware products. But, that was a costly mis-take. We were spreading ourselves too thin by trying to do everything. Also, because of my lack of knowledge, I relied too much on one person whom I had elevated to be the CEO. Without my knowledge, he cen-tralised all decision making. It wasn’t a healthy atmosphere, and we struggled to grow for six years. To make matters worse, in 2008, when the CEO resigned, he also took away some clients with him. I was nearly at the verge of selling off.

For advice, I turned to my mentor Mr Raghupathy, the executive president of India Cements. He told me to do three things—have a big vision and believe in it, focus on one area within IT, and build a strong professional team instead of relying on just one person. Encouraged, I plunged

into rebuilding the company. Fortunately, my son Srikanth Chakkilam also returned to India around the same time after com-pleting his masters in Computers and MBA from the US. Since he understood the technology business, he identified soft-ware testing as our focus area. Together, we set an audacious goal to become one of India’s largest independent software testing services company in three years. At that point, we were only a `5 crore company and we were aiming to grow 25 times in

three years. Many people laughed at me and said given my track record in IT, it was impossible.

We repositioned our company as an independent software testing services firm and put together a professional top man-agement team. Luckily, we managed to bring in many new clients. We also became a Microsoft Gold partner in 2008. Through a friend in the US, we got a multi-million dollar project for custom software development. The order was more than twice our revenue. Yet, I decided we will not take the order. I did not want to repeat my mistake of going after too many things. I spent many sleep-less nights wondering if I had done the right thing. Eventually, with a continued focus we started getting more orders and by 2012 we emerged as India’s largest inde-pendent software testing company. Now, we’ve set a new goal of becoming the world’s largest independent software test-ing services company in the next three years. No one laughed this time. Our per-severance had paid off, and our perfor-mance was a fitting answer to all the naysayers who had advised me to sell the company. —As told to Sonal Khetarpal

The Focusing Act C V Subramanyam knows his costliest mistake was spreading himself too thin.

I wISh I knew Then...

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