VIDYULLEKHA

OFFERING BY SRI SATHYA SAI INSTITUTE OF HIGHER LEARNING ALUMNI

2023 Jan 1 Edition Cover Story

Cover Story

Sai Students and Entrepreneurship

An Experiential Expedition:

How SAI Enter-Prunes Lives!

Entrepreneurship. The buzzword among the GenZ. India has emerged as the third largest startup ecosystem in the world, with 108 unicorns (startups with valuations of $1 billion or more) with a total valuation of $340.79 billion, as of 7 September 2022. The year 2021 witnessed a record set of 44 entries to the coveted unicorn club, even as many ‘soonicorns’ (soon to be unicorns) waited in line.

So, is being an entrepreneur so easy? Can anyone and everyone become an entrepreneur? What does it take to be an entrepreneur? We will also answer these questions, with the added flair of ‘Swami and His students’!

We connected with a few of our alumni brothers, who have now moved on to become entrepreneurs. Presenting to you a unique cover story titled – ‘An Experiential Expedition: How SAI enter- prunes Lives!’ – for this special edition of Vidyullekha, the alumni magazine. Through this cover story, we take you through a journey, in fact, journeys of our fellow alumni brothers, who now own startups and have become entrepreneurs. And while doing so, we hope to give you a plethora of takeaways, inspiring anecdotes and WOW moments (Yes, you guessed it right! WOW = SWAMI).

Below is a brief introduction of the three entrepreneurs:

Anshuman Das – Founder, Labby. Grade 3 to 12 – Sri Sathya Sai Primary and Higher Secondary Schools, BSc (Hons.) Physics (2001- 04) at Brindavan Campus, M.Sc. Physics from (2004-06) at Prasanthi Nilayam Campus. Labby, an MIT startup, is building next-generation technology to provide fast, accurate, and affordable solutions for dairy farms (website: https://www.labbyinc.com)

Ram Ramdas – Founder, Wonderlend Hubs. Grade 11 and 12, BSc (Hons.) Maths (1980-84) at Brindavan Campus, M.Sc. Maths (1984-86) and Ph.D. in Mathematics (1986-90) at Prasanthi Nilayam Campus. Asst. Professor (1990-92) DMACS at Prasanthi Nilayam Campus. Wonderlend Hubs provides expertise in Credit Profiling, Loan Origination management and Incentive Compensation automation (website: https://wonderlendhubs.com)

Sathya Pramod – Founder, Kayess Square. Grade 11 and 12 (1990-92) at Prasanthi Nilayam Campus, B.Com (Hons.) (1992-95) first 2 years of degree were in Prasanthi Nilayam Campus and final year at Brindavan campus. Kayess Square is a boutique consulting company specialising in Transaction Advisory, Corporate Services and Restructuring (website: https://kayesssquare.com)

Here are excerpts from the interactions:

Every entrepreneurial journey has a story; happy or not so happy. Each story begins with an idea, an idea which seems new and unique, which could later prove to be groundbreaking. Or ideas could be modifications of or improvements on existing original ideas. To understand what truly inspired and motivated them, let’s hear it from our Sai entrepreneurs:

Anshuman Das: A startup wasn’t something that I always wanted to do. After I finished my PhD, I was considering taking up the academic line and becoming a professor. However, during my postdoctoral studies, I went to the Tata Center for Technology and Design at MIT. The Center’s mission was to look at challenges that are generally found in India, get the best engineers from prominent institutes and try to match problems with people who could possibly solve them. The stint at the center helped me get valuable insights into looking at problems.

Subsequently, I started working with many hospitals and other organisations in India. While I was working with these organisations, I started getting some clarity on the direction that I should take my career. I felt that whatever research I have done, should be useful to society. Not everybody thinks that way, because there are people who do fundamental research, and maybe in 30, 40 years, somebody might use their work. So, I was driven by the fact that I should make my research useful in some way to make somebody’s life better and have a positive impact on the society at large. In a way, giving back to society. One of the things that I was working on fit that thought. Broadly, the technology could be applied in different applications. And I felt that let’s start an initiative, like a company that could commercialise the research. That’s how in 2017, I started the company.

Ram Ramdas: I had done my PhD in Math, and I don’t think that, during my education I had envisioned that I would be an entrepreneur. Going back to my college days in Brindavan and Parthi. I think one thing that Swami quite often used to say, and I’m sure you might have heard about it from various teachers or old students and that’s implicitly stuck in my head. Swami used to say, “Don’t be job seekers, be job creators or job givers.” And I think that got ingrained into me. So, after my PhD and teaching for a few years, I was with consultancy services in an applied R&D centre. Doing research and innovation has always been something I liked to do. To look at problem statements and come up with unique sustainable solutions, has constantly been one of my drivers. This led to an opportunity to be a technology R&D leader at an European software company. It was during that time that I got this idea of having a technology platform that can manage a lot of real time or non-real time data and be able to apply a lot of configurable business rules, business logic, and create a decisioning and workflow kind of system. So, that was basically the idea with which we started our first company, Herald Logic. And now Herald Logic and Wonderlend Hubs are coming together.

Sathya Pramod: Entrepreneurship is a loaded word. It is what someone wants to do to accomplish something which not too many people have tried doing. It has a social element to it, but a lot of commercial elements as well. The person who is trying to do something, wants to show the world that this is possible. It takes a lot of guts, effort to do something. It is more about the passion and the dream that the person wants to realise. I always had this dream to work with young minds and early stage companies. I decided that I will start something that will help these companies realise their dreams, and in the process, I realised my dream of working with early stage companies. Currently, I work with about 45 to 50 organisations at different levels, including companies which came to us at the incorporation stage. Each of them is decently sized (300 to 500 members) and they are growing in terms of their valuation (some of them are valued at 500-600 crores). Seeing them realise their dream and being a big part of that, gives one that satisfaction and also the encouragement to work with more such people. Just to give an example. Many of the startups are badly lost, in the sense that they know what to do but not how to do it. I have been in the industry for 20+ years and seen things from multiple perspectives in India and outside India. And seeing the plight of entrepreneurs at times, gives you the energy to help them and make them move on.

Once you have got the idea and the motivation for your startup, next you need to have many diverse factors to fall in place as one cohesive unit. Many entrepreneurs find the first steps to be a cakewalk, but what are those factors that worked for our entrepreneurs?

Anshuman Das: Yes, there were factors that worked our way. The very fact that the company is still alive stands testimony to it. I’d say that being very patient and persistent in general is very rewarding. Being an entrepreneur, you are tempted to jump; this market is not working, let’s try something else, let’s try to pivot. That might work in some cases. But it wasn’t the case for us. Because we spent so much time building trust with our customers (farmers). It was not something that we could just ignore and move to something different. So, that paid off pretty well. I think the reward that we get is not just monetary. The problem became very personal. It stopped being transactional. Say, you started a bakery. You want to get emotionally linked to your customers. But for us, since we work with livestock and we see how hard they work, I wanted to make their lives better somehow. I wasn’t expecting anything in return, but it became a central driving force for us.

Ram Ramdas: I would say that basically when you start, you must have some of these factors that give you a head start or a competitive edge over other players in the market. For us, the ability to understand very complex problem statements and the various dimensions, in terms of the data, the workflows and very complex business rules was the edge. The ability to translate that into a customer solution. Second, from a technology standpoint, we may have a very deep understanding of the technology and implement a particular solution. But if those data elements, the business rules, keep changing, you need to provide the capability to your customers to modify in a simple way. Else, the solution will remain static. I think these two are the factors that allowed us to get an entry into the market and then be able to scale up, even though we were quite small.

Sathya Pramod: The favourable thing was that we didn’t start very early. I wasn’t looking at Kayess Square to meet my daily needs. On the financial side, we had a reasonable leeway and runway. I started Kayess when I was about 42. I had my reserves and other financial resources. My co-founder too had a similar structure. So, it didn’t matter if we went a couple of years without salary. Which is not possible if you start young. There was no pressure of revenue from day one. It took about one and a half years to figure out what was the right business model to work on; what kind of startups we want to focus on, which are the areas you want to support them on and things like that. It does take some time. Another advantage was that I had a 20+ year journey in the industry. So, a lot of leaders knew us really well. For getting references to push the startups to the right investors, it became easy. So, a lot of those boxes were ticked for us. It wasn’t like we were starting on a blank sheet. And I was always actively investing, getting to know the startups which are doing well. So, that gave us the fillip that even though one and a half years you are not doing too much, you can still survive. That becomes really important for any outsider who starts up.

Swami says, “Life is a challenge, face it.” Not everyone gets a rose bed of success to walk on. One comes face to face with myriad hurdles and obstacles. But how do you face it if you are venturing into an unknown path? Let’s see what challenges were encountered by our brothers and how they worked their way out of those challenges.

Anshuman Das: The line of being an entrepreneur is very difficult, especially for people from my background. We don’t have training in running a business, although it’s common for engineers and scientists to start a company. It can be really challenging to enter the industry. For example, in my case, I work with farmers. But I had zero farming background. So, I had to build personal networks and it takes time. And building networks as an immigrant in the US, it’s not as easy as we can do with farmers in India. To build their trust, there are no shortcuts; it takes a long time. Other challenges are common. You don’t start making money on day one. You have to raise funds from investors. If you are not able to raise money in time, then you will run out of funds. Again, if you are in a foreign country and you run out of funds, you are going to be in a difficult situation. That’s one. Now, you want to raise money but the investor is going to ask, “Where is the product? Why should I give you money?” You have to make some progress somehow. There are technical challenges too. We were working on a hardware device with a huge cloud component. To find the right talent, to build and test it out was another challenge in itself. The unique challenges today include those related to supply chain. You say that you will release a product on a certain date. But it gets pushed because of delays in supply chain. I’d say that in every aspect of business, there are challenges.

Ram Ramdas: When you initially start up, the biggest challenge is to get people – early customers, investors – to believe in you. When it comes to trusting a small, unproven company with important business problems that they want to solve, it’s a huge risk for whoever is taking that decision. So, one is the funding, the ability to convince investors that this is a business worth investing in based on your vision. Translating that in the minds of both the investors and the customers is a big challenge. And third, I would say even from an employee standpoint, we want to get good talent into the company. Obviously, people may like a lot of the other things that you do. But two things really matter a lot. One is, to convince them that if they join, they have a very good, long- term growth and career opportunities. And second, is to have some degree of job security.

Sathya Pramod: All of us start with something, and kind of morph into something else. For example, Flipkart started with buying books and selling and later turned out to be one of the biggest online marketplaces. So, not everyone will get it right the first time. The beauty about startups is that you need to be nimble, you have to hustle and figure out what will work for you. In our case too, we started as services. There were people who were asking us if we could offer multiple services. But the problem is, Again, the question: “If you are getting a good amount of revenue by offering these services, why do you want to leave them on the table?” As an entrepreneur, the biggest decision you have to make is to stick to what you want to do. Again, having an idea is not enough. The execution is key.

“Tell me your company, I will tell you who you are”, says Swami. The organisation is what it is, because of the people who are a part of it. It is the employees that give meaning and value to the existence of a company, especially so for startups. Let us get to know what work culture exists in the startups spearheaded by our Sai entrepreneurs.

Ram Ramdas: At Wonderlend Hubs, we have what we call a principle of ‘Disagree but Commit’. It means that on a tactical or strategic issue, if there are five people who are involved in that decision, it is possible that three people may feel one way and the other two feel another. But you must have a very questioning culture. Not because Ram said something or XYZ something. You should have a critical conversation. But the conversation must be outcome driven. And once that outcome has been agreed, even though you may not intellectually agree with it, you must commit to it in terms of the action. All the five people are 100% aligned with the team to execute. I think this is a very core principle.

Sathya Pramod: It’s a very open environment out here. For example, I sit with my team. They know exactly what I am working on, who are the people I am talking to. I am a big believer that knowledge is not power, but it’s more of how you use that knowledge. So, everyone knows everything out here. There’s no secret out here. It’s an open culture. Anyone can talk to anyone at any time. Everyone has access to all the research reports and software.

Swami has promised us, “Wherever you may be, I am always with you, in you, around you.” And this has been experienced by our brothers. Be it while making a crucial decision or seeking help when in a dilemma, they could feel Swami’s invisible hand, holding their hands and showing them the right path. Or an indication on what Swami wants them to do. Let’s hear it from them.

Anshuman Das: I have certain experiences where I have felt I received Swami’s invisible support. Initially, the times were very difficult. We used to run out of money quite often even as we were waiting for a round of funding. I used to pitch at startup competitions and somehow win some prize money to help me through the month. Or there would be some invited talks that would pay me a little extra. So, there always was some opportunity that would show up and help me with my finances for that month. I experienced this even in the beginning, where I had to make make-or- break decisions and needed some clarity. Like when you have two investors, with the same deal and similar other details, and you can only choose one. You need to make up your mind. That time you need an internal force to give you clarity.

I’ll tell you about a major experience. Before I had started Labby, I did some consulting work for a very large optical company. They asked me to make a device to see if the technology that I was working on, can be applied in the alcohol industry. I did make a prototype for them. Then I started thinking that maybe there is a market in that field. But I don’t drink. So, working in that industry was making it very difficult for me. Like for instance, I would go to some customers, they’d offer me a drink. And it used to be very awkward then. And many times, I thought, “Why am I doing this?” It so happened that my dad was not feeling well and I had come to India. A family friend, who was then the Managing Director of the National Dairy Development Board, visited me in the hospital. We just got talking. And then he said, “You should be looking at milk as an application. And not alcohol and stuff.” That gave me a lot of relief. I am definitely going to try this. It’s something which I can relate to much more than something that I am not comfortable with. And it is very dear to Swami; there is a Gokulam in Parthi and Swami was very close to cows. And culturally too, it was way better at a comfort level. The family friend was connected to Amul. I went to Amul and saw their factory. Through this experience, I felt that there was a Divine intervention from above that helped me in taking the decision to work on something from which I would find more satisfaction.

Anshuman with Sri Ratan Tata

Ram Ramdas: I think a startup is not a linear journey at all. It is a rollercoaster ride. You should have the belief that you’re true to your purpose. It’s not about whether you’re dishonest in your practices within your organisation. More than anything, you should be true to yourself. I have never ever felt that I need to give up. And that I think comes from the core, there’s that kind of a very strong guiding spirit within us which comes from Swami. The spirit of knowing that you need to do something because that is true to your purpose, irrespective of what kind of outcome it produces in the short term. I think that’s what has kept me going.

The Sai army of students are prospects to become entrepreneurs in the future. What message do the current crop of Sai entrepreneurs have for the future bunch of Sai entrepreneurs?

Anshuman Das: Entrepreneurship is about solving problems and bringing value to customers. Always keep an eye out for problems around you and turn them into opportunities. It is not an easy path but the satisfaction is immense when you play a part in making someone’s life better.

Ram Ramdas: First, find your purpose. You must really understand what is the purpose of the startup? The long-term purpose of your startup has to be core to you. Second, you may not have all the means that you need to work to accomplish that purpose. But you shouldn’t let that deter you. And third. As Martin Luther King says, “You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” So, if you think that you need to have a complete picture of what you’re going to be building and only then, you can start. It’s probably utopia! In fact, even people as successful as Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, none of them envisaged the state of what their organisation was going to be. So, you will not have clarity. But that should not make you afraid of saying what is it that I want to do today or, tomorrow. There has to be a strong purpose, but an entrepreneur needs a bias for action. Don’t quantify. Don’t theorise too much. Don’t overanalyze. What I like to call as ‘Paralysis by Analysis’. Only when you do things, you will learn. Eight out of ten things you do may not be the right things. But doing it itself, becomes learning.

Ramdas with Swami

Sathya Pramod: I am a big believer that you need to see the world a little bit before you jump into entrepreneurship. At least 3-4 years of experience in a corporate or a startup, where you will see the world and that will help you sharpen your pitch a lot more. You can start it out of college. But the thing is, that you are so raw that you don’t know what you need to do. Gain some experience. Partnering with a solid co-founder becomes a very, very important thing. Have your first customer in mind when you start. Make sure the customer is ready to back you. So, if you have these three, you can accomplish whatever you want.

Sathya Pramod with Swami

This article was a humble attempt to explore the entrepreneurial journey of some of our alumni brothers. Who can give us more relevant, reliable and most importantly, relatable inputs and insights, better than our own alumni, who have undergone the rigours of the Sri Sathya Sai education system and now have blossomed into bright personalities, applying the valuable lessons in their everyday life. We are grateful to brother Anshuman Das, brother Ram Ramdas and brother Sathya Pramod, for taking out time from their busy work life, and sharing their entrepreneurial journey and much more.