We had a guest speaker for “Planning an Entrepreneurial Venture” course. Mr. Manish Sabherwal, CMD of Team Lease Services Pvt Ltd, India’s largest temporary staffing company. Manish started his professional career in 1990 with the Nagarjuna Group. Went to Wharton to do his MBA in 1994 and had a clear cut vision to make an entrepreneurial entry into the insurance sector in India. In 1996 India Life was born. From pension/ asset management it went into provident fund administration to payroll administration to offering full-scale HR outsourcing services. In between, it had raised VC funding from VIEW Group. Got into a JV with Hewitt (to form India LIfe-Hewitt) in 2000 and later, Hewitt bought out 100% equity. Manish is now in the process of stabilizing and growing Team Lease to be the largest private sector employer in the country!!!!!!
Some Excerpts from his speech…Read on…Will be interesting.
MBA is like Intellectual Winetasting.
When you optimize something, starting values are always sub-optimal.
Entrepreneurship is not like the light bulb glowing on, it’s like a gentle sunrise!
Quality and Quantity of ‘wandering’ in your initial stages of entrepreneurship, forms the essense of ideation process.
Post-mortems have certainity than prescription!
The biggest danger is not aiming high and missing, but aiming low and staying there!
If you win the rat race, you are still a rat! There is no differentiating factor. What do you have special? What is your unfair advantage? That is the essence of ideation.
The Key skill in Entrepreneurship is Synthesis. Not analysis. By Synthesising, you see ten different things and come up with one solution.
God is not on the side of the biggest army but on the side of big shots. But If she is on the other side, you should pause and think! - Play your game carefully but boldly.
Don’t sell the land, sell just the house - Raise only enough money that you need, don’t give away considerable stake in your venture.
Success is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration..I think that fits to Agricultural society. This is age of knowledge, innovation.
Read Diverse materials. Read biographies, history, politics, mythology, psychology, leadership, strategic alliance…Involve in Diverse activities. Want to learn how to control someone who is stronger and bigger than you? Learn horseriding. Want to learn the value of persistence? Learn how to play with flute. Travel. Learn how to see world differently.
Network with Diverse people and connection. Don’t hangout with people from ISB 
Hangout with Musicians, poets, government people…Completely diverse…
Indian mind has the problem with sunk cost. Our memories are more than dreams. Sunk is gone! Don’t worry about it more. We have conflicting attitude between the wealth and those who possess it.
Export quality - What the hell does that mean? Does white people deserve better than us?
Someone said, “Secret to success is being in the right place at the right time”. Since we don’t know the right time, we find the right place and hangout!!
Family Enterpreneurs are many in India. They expect their children to come and take over the mantle. That led to the Sexually transmitted CEOs!! I am not arguing against that..but these are some of the causes of self-destruction.
Family Entrepreneurs and MNCs are both ends of extreme. Strike a balance. Don’t go native. Don’t go firangi. You must pass this smell test of global company while still keeping your Indian cost structure. That’s the sweet spot that you guys should target. So the best bet is the hybrid. You should be bisexual, you double your chances of finding your date!
You can start two kind of companies. “Baby” vs “Dwarf”. Both of them are small but the DNA of the baby is clean and scalable.
Napolean said, No Battle plan ever lives at the start of the battle. Yet People plan battles till the last detail. That’s a little bit of what I have learnt in Business plan.
Anything worthwhile in life takes time. Develop patience.
Don’t worry about competitors who pull rabbits out of the hat. You should know that supply of rabbits is limited!
Doesn’t matter you jump from the 50th floor or 100th floor, pain is still the same. 10 cr or 100 cr doesn’t make difference.
I have never met any unhapppy successful entrepreneurs. But I have met many unhappy successful Executives.
Anybody can by lucky or unlucky - But being unprepared is unforgiveable. Be ready for what you want to do.
Remember good judgement comes from experience. But experience comes from bad judgement.
There’s huge difference between what we teach and what you need to learn. Because we don’t know how to teach what you need to learn. What we teach is finance, strategy, marketing, accounting..But what you need to learn is how to be more patient, how to be more bold, how to be more courageous, how to be more kind, how to be more just…
Hardest part, as Aristotle said, is “Beginning of the work”. In the context of this course, it is committing to the Entrepreneurial cause. It is not deciding on one venture. It is committing to the Entrepreneurial mindset. You must nurture that mindset. You must keep it alive.
My confidence is in your hearts and your imaginations. May your soft heart working on hard minds make a thoughtful choices. Good luck and Godspeed!
(Standing ovation)…
From what I see the great speakers are who make our hearts light while enlightening the spirit and flooding the mind with thoughts. Insights blended with correct amount of humour, sarcasm, self-depracation and humility goes a long way….Captain Raghuraman, Sid Sinha, Ajit Rangnekar also fall under this category.
I not only multiplied my interest towards Entrepreneurship, but also magnified my interest to be a great presenter. But that’s not a day’s job or a year’s job…It will be a long-drawn process…
