Jagriti Yatra 2013 – Day 3

Jagriti Yatris got to talk about technology and entrepreneurship on day 3 with wizards of Indian e-commerce industry.

Let us see what an avid blogger Ajeet Bharti has to talk about Day 3 experiences of the Yatra;

“””We met a great batch of people who made it quite big in their areas. Subroto Bagchi is a known name and so is Sachin Bansal and other two. Today was the day when we talked about technology, with more emphasis on technology as a tool to smoothen various processes in the area of business.

At the Yatra, we have seven verticals (categories) where all of us need to focus as per our preferences which range from Education to Agriculture, Healthcare, Water & Sanitation, Energy, Manufacturing and Arts, Culture & Sports. And then there are four horizontals which are needed for enterprise to function smoothly and be replicated with a good financial viability. These horizontals are: Information & Communications Technology, Public Private Partnership, Financial Services and Business Services.

Though technology itself is a vertical but our focus was more on technology as a horizontal which enables businesses to have structure, efficiency and optimum utilisation of available resources. And a great thing was that two groups (including mine, total 40 people) had to give a presentation on it for an hour.

The role models, especially Subroto Bagchi were an inspiration. He started with drawing trains as a three-year old kid from a household with no electricty to founding one of the most sought after technology consultancy and platform creators in our nation, Mindtree Technology.

Emphasizing on his way of thinking that his aim was having a great setup where people could earn money and not just the owners, he went on to share his philosophy behind his efforts. Bagchi talked why it is good to fail but one must keep the entrepreneur alive even when the enterprise fails.

These were simple words, rich in meaning. I hope my fellow Yatris took home a lot of these simple words and must apply it wherever required; you don’t get to see these extraordinary people say, “Mindtree was ordinary people doing extraordinary things together.”

He said how ten of the co founders of Mindtree were all from very humble, lower middle class or middle class background. He stressed on the fact that we ought to have people, the team, which shares our vision. Money is a secondary thing, having a great team is a must for an enterprise to function smoothly and become financially viable.

Saying ‘reputation’ was the new money and a one-way road when lost, he remarked that one must not do any such act or thing that ruins the reputation as it takes a good time to have a name and a second to lose it all.

This great insight was followed by a panel discussion between Sachin Bansal, Abhinav Sinha and Shiv Kumar on their journey and challenges they faced as start ups and how can their models be replicated, their philosophy of marketing, their vision, attitude etc.

And it was inspiring. Young people earning crores of rupees and yet looking humble and talking simple was a lesson in humility.”””

Let us look at the wisdom snippets from technology business wizards of India, in the Jagriti yatra session:-

“If you want to try new things, you need to be irrational and over-optimistic.”
~Sachin Bansal

“If you want to start an enterprise, start early.”
~Abhinav Sinha

“India is the MissedCall capital of the world.”
~Abhinav Sinha